Final Program Night

On Thursday we each had 4 lessons with our students. A good part of each lesson pertained to what the students would present for the "final program." This event is usually on Friday night, the last night of camp, but this year at this camp we did on Thursday because two volunteers all the way from Hawaii had to begin their return to Hawaii early on Friday morning.

My students' first idea -- all right I'll admit I led them a bit -- was to do a Top 10 list for this camp, a la David Letterman. Their Top 10 list went like this:

10-Milk shakes at the cukarnia
9 -- TV in each bedroom
8 -- English lessons without judging or assignment of a grade
7 --English lessons in shops
6--Shopping in general
5--Wi-Fi
4-- Halloween in July
3--Going home to my mom's cooking
2-- No parents
1--Free evenings to spend with friends

Now about the No parents part. There are Polish staff here to supervise the students; we volunteers thankfully have no role in that. The staff take turns walking the halls all night assuring that nothing amiss is happening.

After getting this prepared, they wanted to offer a song too. It took a whole class for them to negotiate with one it would be.

We finished up with reprise of Summer Fun and Food Jingo.

In the afternoon I walked down to the grocery store and walked the aisles finding 35 objects ranging from grapefruit to light bulbs to baby food. I created a list of 7 objects for each student.

The evening final program began at 8 PM . We were graciously thanked by the camp director. Then each student group presented a Reymontowka T-shirt to their teacher. Then we were on to the programs. 

One of my colleagues was slightly nervous about what his group was going to do, for they had kept it secret from him, asking him only to draw an American flag.They were the first group to present.

 They had created a large poster with both countries' flags and then drawings of all the different activities they had done in class. One student did a verbal report of class activities and then ended with, "We will be here next year, We hope you will be here, too." What a wonderful thing to say about their teacher.

My students did great, and the song they finally selected was well known to all students -- this song is in English, but not known/popular in the United States -- so all the campers jumped right in to sing with them.

Following all the presentations it was time to light the fire and roast the kielbasa.

The students had all received Reymontowka t-shirts too and were busy getting everyone to autograph their shirt. A guitar appeared and we enjoyed singing and hearing traditional Polish folk songs sung around bonfires. The students had a great time taking photo. It was just a great night!