In early June fifty middle school students, seven Ohio State undergraduate students, and one graduate student came together for the first Global Citizen Summer Camp. With the leadership of Dr. Janice Aski, Professor of Italian and the creator and mastermind of this project, children from grades 6 to 8 throughout Columbus and the surrounding areas spent a week learning about languages, cultures, and the importance of intercultural competency.
The goal of the camp was to develop the children’s understanding of how and why people in the world differ and how to interact and move through the world with respect, openness and curiosity. Aski, who specializes in world anguage pedagogy, believes that it is imperative for young students to learn about other cultures and to learn how not to stereotype people and how to see individuals for who they are and treat them with kindness and respect. She also stresses that familiarity with a world language has been proven to be critical to success in any field or career. “It is wonderful for us to be able to participate in our community like this,” says Aski.
In the morning the children experienced full-immersion language as undergraduates taught lessons in French, Italian, Portuguese, and German in small groups of 7-8 students. The language lessons were followed by a culture lesson taught in English, also by the undergraduate instructors. Kendra Dickinson, Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics, took over as the graduate leader in the afternoons with instruction and activities on global issues, international games, and reflection on what it means to be a global citizen.
The children embraced the activities in the camp. They were full of energy and quickly formed relationships amongst themselves and with instructors. Janda Indeep, one of the French instructors, felt that this age group was fun to teach and very appropriate for the content of the camp, “They’re still young and energetic, but they’re starting to come into their own personalities,” says Indeep. Elena Akers, the German instructor, loved how quickly the kids picked up on new content, “I taught them the Fliegerlied, a popular German song and dance, and then saw them continuing to do it during lunch later in the day, which was quite funny!”
The camp was also an amazing experience for the undergraduate students involved. They started preparing back in January by taking CLLC 2301.01S – Global Citizen Summer Camp Preparation, a spring semester course taught by Aski. The students learned the theories, skills, and techniques involved in teaching full-immersion world languages and cultures and worked on the lesson plans that they would use during the camp. The experience allowed the students to fulfill a GE service learning requirement, to apply their world language knowledge, and to challenge themselves by being on the other side of the classroom.
Indeep has been learning French since middle school, she loves the language and she wanted to apply it in a new a fun way. “It seemed like a good opportunity to try something I never have before in a relatively low-pressure environment,” says Indeep. Ryane Sergent, an Italian instructor, was excited to learn about world language pedagogy from Aski, with whom she had taken classes before. She enjoyed the joy and satisfaction of sharing her passion for language and Italian with the students. Akers had always been interested in teaching, and she jumped at the chance when Aski presented this opportunity in her German class last fall. “Dr. Aski introduced a lot of ideas about intercultural competence and second-language acquisition that I had never thought of before,” says Akers. She loved the class discussions they had with the other camp instructions, where they discussed the meaning of culture and compared the languages and cultures they studied.
One of Aski’s goals is to make this experience as accessible as possible. In the spring she started a campaign via Buckeye Funder (a platform similar to GoFundMe), which raised money towards scholarships, snacks, and the future of the program. These funds covered the participation cost of students who applied for a scholarship. Aski is looking forward to building upon the success of the camp this year, and repeating it next summer.
