Last summer, I worked for two weeks with a company called Project International, who set up summer schools around the UK to teach foreign children English. I worked at a school called St Teresa’s, and it was an extremely fun and rewarding experience!
My role at Project International was mainly as one of the teachers. This was very daunting as I had little previous teaching experience, but after 2 weeks I felt a lot more at ease, and I think teaching improved my confidence a lot! I was teaching the youngest class at the camp, and my students were all between 10 and 13. At first, I thought this was the best deal as they were all really cute, but it was actually very challenging, as some of them didn’t speak very good English. This meant that often it was hard to get across what I wanted them to do, and this was frustrating. I have a lot of respect for teachers now, as it is a lot of hard work!
My class and I getting ready for the talent show!
One of the best things about Project International was being introduced to so many new people- both the other staff and the children. We had 5 different nationalities at the camp – French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Brazilian. Outside of my teaching, I was also responsible for taking children on excursions to places like London and Windsor, and to help run activity sessions in the afternoon and evening, such as a talent show and a fashion show. My class performed “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction at the Talent Show, and it was really sweet- I felt so proud of them!
One of the highlights of my time at Project International was when I was on night duty. I had to tell everyone to go to bed, and a few French boys were complaining and claimed that they could not understand what I was saying. Unluckily for them, they did not realise that I speak French, so I simply told them to go to bed in French. The look on their faces was priceless!
I would definitely recommend people to spend part of their summer working at Project International. Yes it’s hard work and very full on, but its also rewarding and lots of fun.
You can find more about working at Project International by looking at this website, http://projectinternational.uk.com/