Part of every Korean public school "Native English Teacher's" semester is seasonal English camps during winter and summer vacations. We come to accept that this is part of reality, but how these camps play out is vastly different from school to school. What I thought I was getting myself into with teaching summer film camp being conducted in the student’s foreign language differed somewhat from reality. Learning that there was zero budget and no curriculum set aside for summer school didn’t really surprise me, but I did have to evaluate exactly how much investment and work I wanted to take on with choosing a topic like filmmaking with a group project short film. I assumed this would be setting high expectations and making a lot of work for myself. On the other hand, I hoped it would be fun for both the students and for me, so I took the plunge.
Giving credit where it’s due, I should admit upfront that I would have been sort of sunk without Waygook.org for the original inspiration and some of the lesson materials for getting started with. But I did a lot of independent research in the weeks leading up to summer school, and I adjusted most of my PowerPoint materials beyond recognition from the originals (not so with the handouts though, haha). It helped being able to see some actual student-made films for some inspiration too.
Mr. Kim said summer camps have varied a lot in the past as far as schedule. During the last two summers, one had 2 weeks of camps, split with a week for 1st and 2nd grade, and the other year had just one week, but I think it involved either mixed classes of grades or teaching one session to one grade followed immediately by another section for the other grade. Or something. Regardless, it differed from my schedule: July 18-26, or, a M-F and the next Monday and Tuesday, with grades 1 and 2 mixed in the classroom together. One of the VPs decided that to give the students the best quality experience, the class should be limited to a roll of no more than 20 students. These students were selected by my main co-teacher based on their final exam written grades that they had competed the week or two before.
Figuring out who would come to camp was just the beginning of planning. There were a few major variables that I had no way of accounting for when I planned the camp: First, would the students have cameras of their own or not (since I didn’t have enough to cover everyone)? Second, would the students be able to understand me well enough with no co-teacher? Third, would they be able to attend regularly enough to complete a project like this that really needs consistent participation every step of the way? Fourth, what room would I actually be occupying and what technology would it have? Fifth, would the students have the time/knowhow to edit the movies themselves before the last day or would I have to do all that myself? There were other unknowns too, but that covers the biggest ones. Let’s just say there was a lot of alternating between praying and worrying.
After doing some shopping in town and in nearby Bucheon, I collected spiffy folders for group portfolios, a tripod, some new SD Cards for camera memory, name tags, paper goods, and a few extra prizes. The first day of camp, I got to school around noon (was told to arrive by 1:30 for the 2:00-4:00 camp), printed off my materials for the first day, and waited the information for where I would be holding the camp. Five minutes after camp “started,” I was escorted by a teacher to the classroom where all the students were waiting quietly for me.
That first day was nerve-wracking! I took pictures of all the students in order of the roll call (and promised I wouldn’t post them online, so I can’t show those, sorry) so I could start trying to learn their names. That doesn't apply to later group shots though, of course, which they understood. I had the usual first day problems with technology and overacting my teaching persona, but they went along with it all pretty well. (By the end of the week, the official roll was down to 15 regularly-attending students. Only a handful had perfect attendance between other summer camps, student gov’t meetings, club service projects, dentist appointments, doctors’ visits, and academy (hagwon) classes. …One would think summer English camp was not exactly a high priority, wouldn’t one?)
Deciding on groups was a particularly interesting equation, since there were only three boys in regular attendance, and only three (all female) second graders. This was not a good situation, and the students wanted to form a group of 3 boys, a group of 3 2nd graders, and a group of 9 1st grade girls. I was like, …nuh-uh, nope, sorry, not gonna happen. So after a bit of shuffling, and more than a few bashful hellos between students, we settled them into more balanced groups. The boys were still all together, but they had some girls in the groups too. We definitely had a lot of icebreaker events the first day of class. The only thing I attempted to go over was movie genres. Many of these have the same word in English and Korean, so they followed along easily. (This picture IS posed, by the way)
Each day we had a very set routine—we started with an Eat Your Kimchi Kpop music video review for some fun English listening, went over the lecture part of the PowerPoint, sang “silly songs” to loosen up, and did conversation/writing/group work related to the movie project for the rest of the class. Though the songs were well below their level, and some of the words were nonsense words, one of my goals was getting the kids loosened up enough that they’d be comfortable acting in a foreign language in front of a camera by the end of the week—no small goal, heh. They loved the Hokey Pokey and “Waddle-ee-a-cha” (complete with motions) the best. By accidental experimentation, I learned that they were much more comfortable dancing about in a silly fashion when the lights were off and all we could see was the PowerPoint. The one day I forgot to switch the lights… argh.
Since this was summer school, I felt like I could loosen up a little more than usual about some things, even though I didn’t have a co-teacher to rein them in if things got out of hand. The good things was, nearly all of the students really wanted to be in the camp, so they were pretty eager about it anyway and were very cooperative. But I added a little team competition for group games, and gave some fun prize incentives. My usual (only?) prizes during the semester are small stickers; the students collect these and stick them on their school ID/lunch cards. For camp though, I upgraded to chocolate, US. Pennies, and glow-in-the-dark silly bandz (the latter two sent from the US by my mom—she’s awesome). The kids went crazy over the silly bandz! They’re a bit late in coming over here to be a part of mainstream school fashion, but one girl assured the rest of the class that her cousins had traveled to the US and silly bandz were all the rage at the time.
Through the week, students learned storyboarding methods and words, ideas for dialog and conversational interaction, script writing (basic structure and some terms of the trade), camera techniques—including sound, angles, and lighting, and some basic editing program tips. They actually kept up great! One trial and error aspect was a contest to get them speaking English. The first time I said I’d take away points if I heard Korean, and groups with points left would get prizes. So no one said much of anything that day. *wink* The second day of the competition, I said the group that I heard speaking the most English (I’d write marks) would get prizes; they were much more chatty then.
After the second day, they had to have decided on a genre for their movie, and a general theme. The first group “17 Again” chose comedy: a parody of “How I Met Your Mother.” The second group “N.Y. Jery” (an acronym of their last names) selected horror/farce: a ghost story set in their dorm at school, which would involve some after-hours nighttime filming (but I think all the girls in this group lived in the dorms). The third group “Five Girls” chose what they called a drama, but it was a little more of a comedy by the end: a fat girl improving her image and rejecting the talent hosts that had previously rejected her.
My students ended up having enough cameras of their own for one for each group, and they settled into their roles as director, actor(s) and camera operators pretty well. …I explained that I was the producer for the week. :) I gave them the requirement that each group had to include a plot, character interactions, and spoken English dialog and they sort of took off from there. The groups didn’t exactly include equal amounts of dialogue, but since they had to describe the storyboards in English, talk to me in English, and write all the script directions in English, I figured they got in a decent amount of practice anyway. They also had to deal with unmeasurable factors like nerves, weather, interruptions by teachers on unannounced photo shoots of us, and classmate absences.
It must have been an engaging project, since students did voluntary filming after hours, and one group edited their entire film (including bloopers and a—…politically incorrect…—bonus movie) over the weekend, completely taking me by surprise, and leaving me thrilled but not quite sure what to do with them on the second Monday. I myself was doing a LOT of after-hours planning (I don’t think I went to bed before 2 a.m. a single day during camp), so it meant a lot that the students were putting in similar effort, without being asked. Kinda made me feel warm and fuzzy all over! The one downside of the early-finishing group was that they had to complete their work because their main actor had to go to a science camp starting that Monday, so he missed the last 2 days of camp.
One group ran out of time, and had camera incompatibilities with the school computers. They had to edit the movie on my personal laptop that I had brought in case of Murphy’s Law. I added a few sound effects to the ghost story at the time frames they told me to note beforehand, and they gave their stamp of approval to the finished project. The other groups did their own editing, saving me the time I feared I would have to spend.
Camp finished well, the students completed their movies, and aside from a few technical difficulties on the movie screening day, we had a good conclusion to the “week.” I think we were all sad for it to end, so that made me feel positively about the time invested. The students were all awarded a certificate of achievement on the last day—not quite the award show I had wanted to have, but sometimes plans have to be adjusted a little. I’ve probably set the bar a little high for myself come winter camp, but there’s enough time (and enough more ideas on Waygook, haha) that I’m sure I can come up with something. The only thing that remains is getting some DVDs burned with the students’ collected movies, for their own benefit. It’s not a requirement, but something fun I wanted to do for the students who stuck with it. It was a joy to work with them!
I may do a little more editing and/or bonus features before the final cut, but for now the videos can be seen on Youtube. They’re private links, but you can get there with the URLs.
How I Met Your Mom by 17 again.
“One Day of Gays” (Politically incorrect, extracurricular, but more confusing than offensive bonus movie by 17 Again. No English dialogue, just a lot of loud screaming, so check your volume).
Mystery of InJeaSuk by NY Jery.
Challenger by Five Girls. Yes, one girl was missing the day this picture was taken.
These are fantastic! :) I loved hearing about your crash course in English and film. So fun :) I'm glad you were able to post these.
ReplyDelete- Tara