Summer School

One of GVI Thailand's interns, Vicki, spent a couple of days helping out and teaching English at a local summer school program. See below for Vicki's take on the experience:



On Monday and Tuesday morning of this past week, I was graced with the opportunity to teach English to children at a summer camp in Ao Luk. For the past few weeks I’ve been searching for ways to work with children of the community, but it’s hard this time of year because schools are closed for summer vacation. Lucky for me, GVI staff were able to find a teacher who was excited to have me. The children at the camp ranged in age from 8-13 years old and were grouped into six different levels according to their age. The summer camp is education based, so the head teacher wanted me to run lessons that were geared towards what the children were already learning at camp. For a couple of hours each morning, I arrived at the camp and was immediately handed over to a group of 20-30 eager students. On Monday, I spent my first hours with the youngest group. We did activities based on learning our colors and animals. We played some twister, played some charades, and had a good laugh. My second hour was spent with the oldest group. We worked on practicing time and daily routines. We played a huge group-game of concentration that everyone really enjoyed. On Tuesday, I couldn't’t wait to go back to camp after seeing how big of a success Monday was! Today, I spent one hour with the oldest group, teaching household chores and engaging them in natural conversation. Then, I spent time with the middle-group of children. During this class we reviewed time and daily routines. The children got really into a dart-board-style sentence creation game I had devised. Don’t worry; the darts were just balls with suctions cups that happen to stick wonderfully to white boards! At the end of the day, the children gave me a surprise group hug and sang a goodbye song that nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was two days of hard work that left me sweaty and completely exhausted, but I wish those mornings never ended. Sadly, summer camp is now over. Maybe I’ll just have to come back to Ao Luk for next summer…

Summer School