3 days, 2 nights

Last week, I set off on a 3-day camp with my fourth graders. All 160 of them. Luckily, camping in Hong Kong is not typically in tents, sleeping bags and the like. Our site: Lady MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung. Students stayed in "bungalows" equipped with hot showers, electric kettles, beds and linens, and campsite facilities range from tennis and squash courts to archery, rock climbing and karaoke.

While they got a chance to enjoy the facilites on the last day, our students spent most of their time engaged in team-building activities led by social workers from a local social service organization. It was an experience. While I had no official duties other than to serve as the school photographer, the days were tiring. For many of the students, it was the first time away from home ever and the combination of nerves and excitement resulted in a lot of tears, hyperactivity, and general madness.

As I watched a couple of the lead social workers (who were quite young) lose patience with our noisy students, I felt kind of sad. Sad because I could see the transformation in their tone and approach to the students. Sad because I could see how fast it happened. Sad because it reminded me of how I underwent the same transformation over the course of this past year. At the beginning, they (and I) spoke quietly. We appealed to reason -- 'If we aren't quiet, we won't be able to hear the instructions, so then we won't be able to play the game. Please be quiet. Are you ready yet? We're not quiet yet...' When they didn't listen, we tried again, slightly louder. When it still didn't work, we looked around helplessly, appealing to somebody, something to make them listen. Usually, it came in the form of a local teacher and this camp was no exception. The school teachers (myself included this time) stepped in to take the role of discipline enforcers. Essentially, we yelled, we threatened, we pulled students out. Following our examples then, it didn't take long before the social workers' calls echoed our sentiments. They yelled. They asked students to step out. They threatened by invoking us and our empty threats to send students home.

I don't blame them. I know what it's like to face these kids with no authority, no respect. And it's not all the kids. But when you've got 160 of them and you're trying to run a whole-group activity, it's not the majority of well-behaved ones that disrupt the game. I feel their pain and it's not that I could do any better. But it still makes me sad. Being fun and friendly and nice isn't enough to get respect from students.

So did the students enjoy themselves and learn stuff in the end? Yes, I think so. Were the social workers able to run the activities? Yes. Did the activities work? Sort of. They certainly worked better when the students were split into their small groups. Fostering team-building, mutual trust and cooperation is a heavy task, though, particularly when you expect it to happen overnight (or over two nights) but don't spend much effort on it the rest of the year. In a school culture where public humiliation is a common source of punishment and students thrive on telling on each other, where do we expect this trust to come from? I was amazed over the few days how many times students intentionally got each other into trouble when it wasn't necessary. Something as simple as finding someone's left-behind item and returning it to them had to be made into a big production of public shaming by handing it in to the discipline teacher. Why?? Why not cut the guy some slack and just give it back? I guess they haven't figured out they live in glass houses...