Saturday, July 14, 2012

Summer Camp 2012 Part One

For the last couple of weeks, I was in northern Morocco working at a summer camp.  Moroccan kids have been out of school since June, so some of them have been attending camps all over Morocco to learn more English and to engage in various extracurricular activities.  At this particular camp where I was, the youths ranged in age from 11 to 17.  The kids who attended this camp live in, and thus traveled to this camp from, various locations in Morocco.

While it was a camp, it was located in a city.  Taxis run regularly on the street where the camp was held.  Hanoots (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "grocery stores") are within a block of where the camp was held.  So, the camp was held in an urban area.

The camps are run by the Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sports.  As PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) we help to conduct activities at the camps.  In addition to me, there were three other PCVs working at the camp: Cassandra, Rachel and Josh.  All of them are also Youth Development PCVs.  They're all in their first year of their Peace Corps service.  We all traveled to this summer camp from the different towns where we live in various parts of Morocco. For the duration of the camp, we slept in our own room, in the same building in which the youths were sleeping.

At Camp, the kids wake up between 7am and 8am.  We, the PCVs, the kids and the Moroccan staff, ate breakfast together at the camp a little after 8am.  Typically it's tea and coffee, milk, croissants, some bread, either baguettes and/or the usual round, flat Moroccan bread, perhaps accompanied by butter and apricot jam.

For a couple of hours in the morning, the kids attend English class. At this camp, two PCVs taught beginner level English classes. I taught an intermediate level English class. Another PCV taught a more advanced level English class.

Not only did I know that I would be teaching an intermediate level English class, but since three of us PCVs interviewed the campers on the first day of camp to assess their English speaking abilities, I had a sense of what the students in my class both knew, and also found confusing, in the English language. I was entering the classroom aware that I could help by clarifying when to use the simple present verb tense and when to use the present continuous verb tense. So, I was helping them to determine when to say "I swim" and when to say "I am swimming."

While teaching English during this summer camp, I encountered difficulties in teaching which I usually face while teaching here in Morocco. Often there are students who aren't particularly focused on the lesson and who don't seem motivated to learn. During this summer camp, I decided to move such sluggish students so that they were no longer sitting next to each other, but instead were sitting between bright, motivated students. It seemed to help. The previously lethargic and uninterested students started taking more notes and following along more than they had been.

After English class, in the early afternoon, we PCVs, the kids and the Moroccan staff ate lunch together.  For lunch, we often ate salad, followed by a tajine, which is somewhat like a Moroccan stew.

After lunch, there was free time.  Some of the kids used the time to nap.

In the late afternoon, sometimes we PCVs ran activities for the kids.  One day a couple of the other PCVs taught yoga to the kids. On the 4th of July, a couple of the other PCVs made chocolate chip cookies, which were delicious! The kids seemed to enjoy them too. On the 4th of July, I led a discussion with the kids about the 4th of July, why and how US citizens celebrate it as a holiday, and how the USA declared its independence on July 4. From there I explained that the 13 stripes on the US flag represent the 13 original states, and that the 50 stars represent the current 50 states. The other PCVs and I then explained where we come from in the USA, pointing out our geographical origins on a map of the USA which one of us PCVs had made. He'd also made a map of Morocco. We had each of the campers come to the front of the room and say where he or she is from, and write his or her name and city on the map. We left the maps taped up to help campers get to know each other and us, and to implicitly reinforce the cross-cultural exchange we had been trying to promote.

In the late afternoon, the kids also participated in activities run by some of the Moroccan staff running the camp.  Typically the Moroccan staff ran activities involving song and dance for the kids.

After these late afternoon and early evening activities, we, the PCVs, the kids and the Moroccan staff, ate dinner together.  For dinner, first we always ate harira, which is a type of Moroccan soup which contains chickpeas, and sometimes also lentils, among other things.  Sometimes after the harira, we ate spaghetti covered with powdered sugar and ground nuts, or meatballs in a red pasta sauce with some bread.  On some nights after dinner, we ate yogurt for dessert.  On other nights, we ate fruit, such as muskmelon, for dessert.

On the final night of the camp, some of the youths performed in a talent show. Some of them sang or danced.  Others acted in a skit, which they performed in Darija.

When the kids were leaving the camp, some of them were crying. I noticed that one girl, who had seemed to be uninterested in English class and other activities, was crying when the time had come to leave. I noted to one of my fellow PCVs that it seemed counterintuitive that she was crying because camp was over, after it hadn't seemed like she had enjoyed the camp. Then it occurred to me that perhaps she was sad because previously she had been unhappy due to a lack of connections and emotional closeness in her life. Perhaps she found such nourishment at the camp, and was sad because she was leaving what she had been craving and had finally found.

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