Sendai/Nikka English Camp pt 1: Camp Overview

Last week I got the huge privilage to join in on Nikka Jr High English Camp.  This was a camp held at a resort in Sendai which is in the heart of Miyagi prefecture where the tsunami and earthquake happened.  I will start by saying that the events of last year were LARGELY downplayed.  The camp was to get the students ready for an upcoming trip to Singapore, and we focused on that, the future, rather than the past.  If you didn't know any better, you wouldn't even have realized what some of these kids have been through over the past year.

Nikka Jr. High is a special school that you have to test to get into to.  It has the regular subjects as well as some subjects usually found in western schools.  There is an emphasis on the arts with things like a school wide choir contest and talent shows.  There are also science fairs, field trips, etc  I also got the impression that the school is not cheap and that the kids were kind of rich.  Supposedly it is the second jr high school in the nation, although I find that a little hard to believe considering it is not in Tokyo.  In other words, these weren't your average jr high school students.

The camp had a simple set up.  The students were split up into groups of 8 students.  Each foreign teacher got a group and then there were two extra foreign teachers in charge of running the camp.  There were ten groups and I was with group number ten.  The other teachers were actually all kind of big-wigs from my company.  Quite a lot of interesting personalities and big egos, but entertaining people.

The three days consisted of working in groups to go over situations the students would encounter on their trip.  We practiced what to do if you got lost, lost something, in customs, etc  We had the students act out their own made-up situations and I had a wonderful pair do this dialogue.

a: Excuse me.  I'm looking for my car.  Have you seen it?
b: Maybe...  Please tell me about it.
a: It's red.  It's made in Italy.
b: Please tell me more.
a: It is about this size.  It has leather seats.  It is very cool.
b: Oh yes.  I think I have seen it.
a: For real?  Where?
b: It was stolen.... BY ME!
a: OH NO!!

For Japanese kids, this was pretty good for only five minutes of brainstorming.

Also during the three days we made a Nikka Book, a paper version of Facebook.  The kids went around and interviewed each other and then made profiles for each other.  We then displayed all of the pages for everyone to see.

We also had free choice activities where students could choose what they wanted to talk about.  I led the music group and we discussed our favorite music groups/singers and what was more important, music or lyrics.

The main part of camp was for each group to polish a presentation they had been working on and then present it at the end of camp.  I will talk more about that in another post.

Of course there was free time and meal time where the kids were just kids with the exception that they had to speak English.  For some kids, this didn't really work.  I had one girl in my group who would only speak if asked a direct question.  For others, though, they absolutely made good use of the foreign teachers.  Approaching us all the time to chat, ask questions, etc  These kids really benefited from the camp and improved a lot in only 3 days.  I really wish this opportunity was available to more students in Japan as it was such a natural, fun way to speak English.  I wish the kids that didn't want to be there could have been replaced with kids at average schools who would have taken advantage of the situation.

Below are pictures of the hotel, but I am a horrible photographer.  Not sure how much it cost, but if you are ever in Matsushima (about an hour from Sendai) I highly recommend the place.