CardsCare Abroad Finds Villajuan in Vietnam
June 03, 2013 | General, Academic Services
June 3, 2013
Greetings from Vietnam!
Our first week of camp has been completed! We were told by our American directors that the first week is always the hardest because you have to get acclimated to the humidity (working all day without any air conditioning), the lesson planning/teaching the kids with the language barrier since they don't understand English, and the food that most Americans may not be used to eating. All these obstacles can easily be overcome with time. The student-athletes must also learn how to communicate and learnt to work with the Vietnamese coaches. We were told to be patient with them as sometimes they may not always understand what we are saying.
A typical day for us consists of a pretty regimented schedule. We must all wake up in time for breakfast at a nearby restaurant from our hotel at 6:30am. For breakfast, you have two options: noodles or eggs. With either choice, you can also eat bread with peanut butter and coffee. Once we are finished eating, we leave at 7:10am to head to school where we will start our day with the 8th graders at 7:30am. We alternate between academic classes, sports and life skills until 11:30am. Each coach teams up with other coaches in teaching each class. Amongst sports, the kids learn baseball, basketball, soccer and volleyball. For academics, the kids learn English, Physics, Health and Math. All the American coaches had a difficulty at first with figuring out how to teach each class when we need someone to translate each sentence for us.
Once our morning session is complete, we head back to the hotel to eat lunch and recuperate for a little bit. We don't have much time as we must be back to teach 7th graders from 1:30-5:30pm. The academic classes and sports are the same as the morning session.
Once the afternoon session is complete, we head back to the hotel to eat dinner at 6pm. After dinner, we meet at 7pm with our coaching groups so that we can lesson plan for the following day. At about 8pm, we are free for the rest of the night!
Each day is progressively getting better and goes by faster. It makes it worthwhile when the kids always come to school with a big smile on their face and ready to start the day. This trip is only becoming more and more adventurous!
Coach for College is a service learning program that brings together US student-athletes and Vietnamese university students to teach academics, sports and life skills at summer camps to children in rural Vietnam. Each participant co-teaches life skills classes throughout the camp to her team of kids as well as one sport and one academic subject to the teams. Each site offer sports-learning camps during the summer that help improve psychological well-being, educational attainment and job-related productivity for disadvantaged youth in developing countries, currently Vietnam. The program uses sports to bridge divides between countries, cultures and athletic rivals.
