The school year in Japan runs on three semesters, roughly April-July, August-December, and January-March. Kids get a vacation in between each semester: as little as two weeks, up to a month for some schools in summer.
Between the last semester of the year and new year starting in April, my school runs a two-week day camp for kids who want to keep their English skills polished (read: moms who don’t want their kids underfoot while they’re on vacation).
The kids seem to really enjoy it, as it’s a low-pressure environment, but the planning is pretty stressful for the teachers, because it’s basically a one-off for planning purposes. This frees your hand when planning, but it doesn’t give you any real direction, and lesson planning without any goals or direction is not easy.
We have three camps at our school, and together with Joe (a new teacher as of a few months ago) I’ve been in charge of the oldest group of kids. It’s actually two one-week sessions back to back, with a few of the same kids enrolled in both weeks, so we couldn’t run the same plan twice. We decided to go with flowering plants for week one and birds for week two.
The picture is lunchtime with the kids and assistant in the classroom. In the background, you can see some of their artwork on the wall, and you can sort of see the tree in the corner on which we’re been hanging various birds made out of origami.
Between the camp and planning classes for next semester, I’m swamped.
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