Camp Unity: A Weekend Focused on Leadership and Multiculturalism

Last weekend, I worked at my friend Alison's weekend camp at her school. She organized a weekend camp called Camp Unity and invited about 10 other Peace Corps Volunteers to work as counselors and teachers. The camp was a great success, we had kids from 7th-11th grade attend and divided up into 6 teams of about 10 students. Here are some highlights from the camp!

I led the Pink Team with my friend Avital (from Dnepropetrovsk)... guess who decorated our team room? I'm glad that Avital knows so many great team cheers, I'm embarrassed to say that I've forgotten a lot of cheers from my swimming days.

Props to Avital for the best team cheer!

Pink team and green team together at team time. 

The first thing that we did with our campers was Living Libraries, which was great because they got to ask us questions about ourselves and we got to judge their level of English. I was glad that Alison asked her students to prepare some questions and impressed with what they came up with. I got asked some really great questions, such as what has been my most exciting moment in my life and what traditions do I have in my family.

Catherine sharing her experiences. 

Showing photos of my family. 

Next, we split up the teams and taught lessons. I taught a lesson about multiculturalism with Carolina and Ira. We talked about the difference between a stereotype and discrimination. It was really interesting to hear what the kids thought were different stigmas and stereotypes in Ukraine. We also had lessons on leadership, which included a really crazy team building challenge - the teams were given 25 balloons and a roll of tape, then asked to design a chair that would support the weight of 1 person. This turned out to be hilarious, I'm glad that Tiago found this challenge on YouTube :)

This was the most successful balloon chair - a round pouf designed by the counselors. 

The kids found a loophole where they could also use their hands in addition to the balloons and tape. 

In the afternoon, we had some game time where the kids were given the choice of art class, music class, playing Mafia (the card game) or playing American football outside. We also played some standard American camp games throughout the whole camp such as the Tram of Love, People to People, Hee-Ho-Ha, name games, etc.

Nathan leading "Hello, my name is Joe and I work at a button factory"

Boom-chicka-boom!

American football outside... thank goodness there isn't snow yet. 

Music class with Tiago. 

Art class with Danny and Shannon.

Mafia with Nathan and Catherine. 

Anyways, I think that the camp was a great experience for Alison's students and I'm glad that I was able to be a part of it. I wrote a VAST grant for PEPFAR funds earlier this fall and I will be planning a camp focused on HIV/AIDS trainings for my 9th and 10th form students, and a 1-day seminar for my 11th form students in the spring... I hope my project turns out as well as this one!

Another Visit to a Village School

I went to visit one another of the village schools in my rayon (district) yesterday with two of the English teachers from my Lyceum. Our town only has two schools, the Gymnasium and the Lyceum but there are about 10 or so small village schools. Some of the teachers work at multiple schools, my English teachers only work at this village school once a week. I visited one of the other village schools around Valentine's Day last year with another English teacher friend.

With my English teachers Liliya and Larisa.

This school was also small with an average of 5-8 students per grade level and only a handful of teachers. The kids were very nervous to speak English with a native speaker and some of them seemed almost shocked to meet a real live American. I visited 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th-11th grades while I was at their school. Some students asked great questions, like what is the difference between Ukrainian students and American students and they were all very curious to hear about the American educational system of grading and choosing your own classes.

The director of this school is a biology teacher and she has accumulated quite the collection of stuffed birds, fish, and other animals from her husband (who is a hunter). So the teachers proudly showed me their natural history musem, which happens to be the biology classroom. This classroom was PACKED with all these taxidermied animals and I was very impressed with how lifelike and well preserved the animals were.

Birds everywhere!

I think I would be too distracted by all these to be able to focus in this classroom...

They also showed me their school museum, including a display for the Young Pioneers (a youth group during Soviet times) and other old momentos from Soviet times. This kind of school musem is actually fairly common here, I've seen it at other schools along with traditional Ukrainian embroidered fabrics and costumes.

The Young Pioneers display.

The corner dedicated to The Great War (WWII).

In other news, it has already started snowing in Ukraine and I'm preparing myself for the winter ahead... not exactly looking forward to walking to school in the ice and snow, but at least the holiday season is coming up soon!

Happy Halloween!

Last weekend, I organized a Halloween party in Kharkiv and we had a great turn out of people who came to the party in great costumes! There weren't very many traditional American Halloween costumes like witches, ghosts, m&m's etc but some of the costumes were really original like the Super Mario brothers. I dressed in the traditional costume of an 11th form Ukrainian schoolgirl :)

Excited for Halloween!

Sam (my sitemate) came as a Jabbawockee from America's Next Best Dance Crew.

Mario and Luigi with the Princess!

Where's Waldo?

Pepsi promoter, a cowgirl, a carnival girl and the Statue of Liberty!

With a few other girls from Kharkiv Oblast - a black cat, a Lichtenstein, flapper girl and the Queen of Hearts.

A basketball team from Vinnytsia Oblast.

I miss Starbucks!