Last July (2016), I came back to Vietnam and volunteered as a Model Class Facilitator for YOFO Saigon Camp (You’re Only Freshmen Once) of the VietAbroader non-profit organization. YOFO is an annual camp for Vietnamese students who are newly admitted to U.S Colleges. The camp is designed to familiarize the students to the new academic environment in the U.S by engaging the campers in team activities, model classes, and experience discussion with previous and present Vietnamese students studying in American colleges. As the name implies, the activities will closely follow the spirit of “You Only Live Once” in a positive way, meaning that the campers will have no choice but to actively participate and have a lot of fun. Particularly, in the YOFO 2016 3-day camp, the campers are put on a tight schedule of team activities and model classes taught by facilitators who are the present Vietnamese students studying in the U.S. The campers will also get to ask and discuss any experiences with the facilitators. In the last 24 hours, the teams will get to enjoy a camp fire, compete in a Scavenger Hunt, and attend the YOFO graduation ceremony (aka U.S Study Abroad 101 course). Note that the team size is kept small (5-6 students) so that the campers can get most of their questions answered.
I was co-facilitate with another for a team of 5 students during the 3-day camp and co-taught the Cultural Anthropology seminar with 2 others. Our team had frequent meetings during July 2016 to build the curriculum and present in front of the Organization Team Director before actually teaching the class.