Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

I went on a business trip today and yesterday. I helped out with the Taishi High School summer English camp. Taishi High School is another school in the area, not my school. My main purpose was to teach a workshop about giving speeches. Five hours a day for two days, I helped 14/15 year old high school freshmen (mostly girls) with pronunciation and intonation. About 10 kids at a time. The whole thing was in a very nice educational facility a lot like a hotel. It's called Hoshinoko-kan, which could be roughly translated as Starchild house. Everything was clean, nice and new. Good meals were served by wait staff dressed like regular hotel staff. It was a pleasure to stay there. During the workshops, we sat around a coffee table in a Japanese style room with tatami mats. The room was in the corner of the building with a massive fountain and flowing water all around us.

But, the highlight was the other activites the kids did. The planners of this thing, especially the ALTs (foreign English teachers like me), came up with some fantastic ideas. For one, they had a newspaper fashion show. The kids broke into groups of about 10. Each group received a stack of newspaper, scissors and tape. They had 15 minutes to design and create some attractive clothing. They were outstanding. One group made a kimono, decorated with color photos cut out from other newspapers. Another group duplicated their school uniform. We judged them and ultimately awarde first prize to the kimono girl, along with numerous other creativity awards for all the other groups. An activity like this fits well with a group that is literally about 85% girls. The other cool activity was a skit contest. We gave them some props, which the Taishi High School people gathered and purchased from many different sources. Wigs. Real boxing gloves. Medals. A diving mask. You name it. They wrote (in English of course) funny skits and performed them for a panel of 5 foreign English teachers, including me. They were great. The winners did a skit about a "World's Biggest Pumpkin Competition" in which the winning pumpkin was able to talk. It was a pumpkin contest inside a skit contest. Anyway, they were all great. The kids' creativity was really impressive. Sometimes, Japanese kids can seem a little dull. But, that's just what they do in class. Give them an interesting project or assignment and they light up. It's wonderful to see.

Here are some pictures. The ones marked with an asterisk (*) were taken by a fellow ALT who was also coming from a different high school to help out.

Newspaper fashion show models. The one in the center (or maybe slightly left of center) is wearing a newspaper kimono. To the right of her is a girl wearing a newspaper school uniform. Those two were my favorites. *

This skit was a little like a fairy tale about a contested marriage. What was funny was that they picked actors who didn't physically resemble their characters. They had to over-act a bit to make it work. It was great.

For example, this shy boy had to act out the part of the bride. *

All the kids and us foreign English teachers (ALTs) in a group photo. Not shown are two Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) who helped organize this.

Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

8/9/2005, English camp with another high school