Italian Adventure

My summer with ACLE was a very different experience to anything I could have imagined before taking the trip to Italy. Before going, myself and two friends who were also going to orientation with me, were very apprehensive about what the next month was going to involve.

Orientation:
We flew into Nice so had to travel across the border into Italy. This sounds fairly self explanatory, taking two trains, however the trains were quite run down and covered in graffiti etc.
We were met in the train station by Helen and Charlie and were driven to the golf resort. As my friends and I had requested to stay together, we were placed in a room with one other Canadian girl who was lovely. The room was nice (two sofa beds and a double bed) with an en suite bathroom and a mini fridge. We were given some time to relax before dinner and we were excited to start our training the next morning.
On the first day of orientation we were met by a warm up circle. This was a truly nerve wracking experience as we came to the realisation that we would have to do this, by ourselves in only a weeks time.
There was really nothing to worry about as the training days at orientation really prepared us for camp life. The ACLE Tutor Manual has everything you would ever need to know and more in it so you will never be stuck without ideas.
On the Thursday of Orientation we were given our first camps and who we would be going with. I was going to Foligno in the very centre of Italy with another Irish girl, Hilary. ACLE had arranged a bus to take everyone to Milan to get trains from there, however, myself and Hilary had to get an early morning train from San Remo to Rome. It took roughly 9 hours to get to Rome, then a further 2/3 to get to Foligno.
This wasn't as bad as it sounds actually as it gave myself and Hilary the chance to chat and get to know each other a bit more as we didn't really talk much during Orientation.

Camp 1 - Foligno
In some ways, Hilary and I were lucky in that our first camp was quite small. There was only one other return tutor and it just so happened that Foligno was her final camp so we were quite happy to let her do any activities that she thought had worked well in her previous camps and also this allowed us to take note of any activities not listed in the tutor manual.
Our camp director in Foligno had extremely limited English so the only way we could communicate with her was through the return tutor translating everything. The helpers in the camp were also useful for translating to the camp director. Apart from the language barrier she gave us everything we asked for and was happy to go along with anything we wanted to do.
In this camp I taught a level 2 class. They were very lively and hated doing the assigned worksheets that ACLE provides. This left me with a bit more work to do in planning lessons that they found interesting but a lot of arts and crafts seemed to be a big winner with this group. The children all had a good time at camp and the parents were all really happy with how the camp went.
The family I stayed with this week were lovely. I had my own guest house in their back garden which was great for a bit of peace and quiet, however, the internet from the family home wouldn't stretch that far so if I needed to use the internet at all I needed to go and sit in a chair outside the family's patio doors. The family were very accommodating to dietary requirements, they even got me to try quite unusual foods like rabbit and wild boar.
At the end of the week they threw myself and Hilary a dinner party in their garden. They invited Hilary's host family and the camp director and some of the assistants from the camp. It was a great time to relax and enjoy some good food and chat with Hilary about non work related topics.

Camp 2 - BORGONUOVO
Myself and Hilary were placed together for the second camp as well. We were in a smaller town where we could walk to camp every day and at lunch time we were allowed to go to a local bar to get pizza which was much more relaxing than eating a packed lunch with the campers. This camp was much larger than the first with 8 r so tutors, 4 of which were return tutors. This school was much more modernised than the last school so we had a large sports hall for whole camp activities which was nice and the classrooms opened up so we could use the outside space easily. The children at this camp (level 3) seemed to enjoy the ACLE materials a lot more than the first class which was a welcome relief for me as I didn't need to do much independent planning. The camp director was lovely and had great English. She was really cool and even took all the tutors and assistants to a fair on the last night, rave and all.
The family I stayed with lived in an apartment right above the gelato shop (how fab) and basically gave me a free reign to do anything I wanted when I was with them. When I first arrived in Borgonuovo, the dad picked me up and walked me to the house and informed me that the mum and daughters were at the seaside and wouldn't be back until the following evening. He was really nice though and took me to a supermarket to buy food that I liked to eat. The mum couldn't really speak any English and the daughters knowledge was limited also but it wasn't really an issue as the only time I really spent with them was dinner time. This is quite uncommon though as usually families like to plan activities in the evenings.

Camp 3 - Bergamo
This was my final camp and it was by far the largest. The camps have been running there for a really long time so the camp director was really skilled and knowledgeable about how the camp should be run. I had a level 2 class again for this camp but their level of English was much better than with my first class. They could easily follow along with what I said but would sometimes be lazy and wait for a helper to translate the activities rather than think about the task in English. I had a bit of a problem with behaviour in this group and parents who refused to believe that their child could possibly bully another child but instances like these are few and far between.
The family I stayed with this week were really the best. They were quite well off but really family orientated and down to earth so when I arrived and said that it was my birthday they immediately got to work throwing me a pizza party and baking a cake with their whole family. I was really nice to get to chat to them, as they all had really good English skills. Bergamo is a beautiful city and I got to see a lot of it thanks to my host family and the camp director.

Overall the experience was really positive, I made so many new friends and learned so much about teaching in general. However, a thing to note is, if you can, don't have a helper in your class. The kids will know that they are Italian and will wait for them to translate everything you say. Even when you tell the helper not to translate they often will begin speaking to the children in Italian which can be really unhelpful, especially when introducing a new concept or vocab.

FIngers crossed ill be able to go back to Italy for another ACLE summer soon!