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Whew, it's over
I'm finished my week of that summer camp job. A little weird to think I'll never see any of those kids or teachers again... well, actually, the teachers, who knows, we all do have each other's full names and phone numbers so for all I know they might show up again somewhere else in my future here. Or next summer, even, if any of us do the program again. Sadly, the two oldest (and nicest) kids in the program are both 9th graders this year which means they can't come back next year regardless.
BTW, I never really explained it well, but this is the English summer school I was working for this week. (The page is in Japanese though, sorry.) The upshot is that these kids' parents spent $700 or so for a week of having them hang out with foreigners babbling at them in English for 7 hours a day while going on fieldtrips. I can't actually tell if that's a good or bad deal -- if you know that the typical native-teacher English conversation class here for kids tends to cost like $20-30 for a 45-50 minute lesson (well, it did at GEOS I think) then it's actually about spot on.
If you're wondering, too, the teachers got paid about $500 for the week, plus transportation costs plus a little for our training session, AND we got lunch every day paid for and ice cream, as well as our admissions paid to a whole ton of places like the zoo and the Miraikan and the Odaiba stuff and the Enoshima stuff and the aquariums, so in some ways we basically got paid to be tourists.
Which isn't a bad deal except for the fact that we were literally working for 7 hours straight each day without any real breaks, following around a group of kids the whole time and babbling at them in English. I had a group of older students, BUT all the teachers kind of shared responsibility for the entire group, so even like, today, one of the little boys got bullied really badly by two of the little girls, and another little boy comes up to me babbling at me frantically in Japanese like "my friend is over there in the hallway crying, i don't know what to do, help!" and I just went over to deal with it. Things like that. And I originally had two older girls and one younger girl, but it just wasn't working so one of the other teachers let the younger girl just join her group of younger kids and took care of her. I also tried to have the other teachers speak a lot to one of my students who was really advanced.
So, it was work. But I mean, it's kind of neat to spend a week of "work" going off and doing things like petting penguins and seeing robots and going up a lighthouse and riding ferris wheels and such.
On the other hand, I am EXHAUSTED. The walking alone took a lot out of me, but then helping to keep chaos from completely erupting while going there and back -- since we always took trains or subways -- was pretty exhausting in its own way.
Overall, I think it was a good experience.
But afterwards today I went to get kaitensushi and I did an hour of solo karaoke as a way to destress, and then I came home and watched the Giants-Yakult game and zoned out for a while. I guess I'm still kind of zoned out even right now. Whoosh. Working on some of my Hokkaido photos from last week, and then maybe I'll try to make a photo post with a little of the stuff I saw this week on the touristythings too.
BTW, I never really explained it well, but this is the English summer school I was working for this week. (The page is in Japanese though, sorry.) The upshot is that these kids' parents spent $700 or so for a week of having them hang out with foreigners babbling at them in English for 7 hours a day while going on fieldtrips. I can't actually tell if that's a good or bad deal -- if you know that the typical native-teacher English conversation class here for kids tends to cost like $20-30 for a 45-50 minute lesson (well, it did at GEOS I think) then it's actually about spot on.
If you're wondering, too, the teachers got paid about $500 for the week, plus transportation costs plus a little for our training session, AND we got lunch every day paid for and ice cream, as well as our admissions paid to a whole ton of places like the zoo and the Miraikan and the Odaiba stuff and the Enoshima stuff and the aquariums, so in some ways we basically got paid to be tourists.
Which isn't a bad deal except for the fact that we were literally working for 7 hours straight each day without any real breaks, following around a group of kids the whole time and babbling at them in English. I had a group of older students, BUT all the teachers kind of shared responsibility for the entire group, so even like, today, one of the little boys got bullied really badly by two of the little girls, and another little boy comes up to me babbling at me frantically in Japanese like "my friend is over there in the hallway crying, i don't know what to do, help!" and I just went over to deal with it. Things like that. And I originally had two older girls and one younger girl, but it just wasn't working so one of the other teachers let the younger girl just join her group of younger kids and took care of her. I also tried to have the other teachers speak a lot to one of my students who was really advanced.
So, it was work. But I mean, it's kind of neat to spend a week of "work" going off and doing things like petting penguins and seeing robots and going up a lighthouse and riding ferris wheels and such.
On the other hand, I am EXHAUSTED. The walking alone took a lot out of me, but then helping to keep chaos from completely erupting while going there and back -- since we always took trains or subways -- was pretty exhausting in its own way.
Overall, I think it was a good experience.
But afterwards today I went to get kaitensushi and I did an hour of solo karaoke as a way to destress, and then I came home and watched the Giants-Yakult game and zoned out for a while. I guess I'm still kind of zoned out even right now. Whoosh. Working on some of my Hokkaido photos from last week, and then maybe I'll try to make a photo post with a little of the stuff I saw this week on the touristythings too.
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