Chess and Japanese instead of PC

Lesia Karpa, the director of children’s language camp “Renaissance/Dreamschool” had only seven years ago a good job at a prestigious company in Wall Street (US). Her career path was quite complicated. Lesia, a girl from an ordinary Kyiv family with medium incomes, managed to obtain good education in the US and learn seven languages owing solely to her enthusiasm and persistence and practically without any financial support from her parents. According to Lesia, everything was going on quite successfully in the United States: she has studied and worked there for eight years. But in spite of rapid career growth she dreamt to open her own school in Ukraine. In 2000-02, while working at Goldman Sachs Company she put by the initial capital and in 2006 she organized a summer language camp for children. Here children are taught languages by professional teachers who are native speakers. The camp’s program is constantly expanding and is supplemented with new interesting events. Looking back at the path she’s gone, Lesia admits with a smile that she will never exchange the work with children for any Wall Street.

Lesia, tell us, please, how everything started seven years ago? Why did you suddenly come up with a desire to establish a children’s camp in Ukraine?

“Everything started with an idea which was at the time interesting, but quite unusual and not so easy to accomplish: to create a series of thematic camps for children to learn and play. During my baccalaureate studies at the American college we could make up ourselves the program of quality complex education under guidance of wonderful teachers. And this produced wonderful results! In early 1990s I could feel from own experience, when pioneers lost their meaning, and no new methods of teaching emerged, nobody was working with children: they did not know how. Of course, the main task was to shape a complex program of physical and spiritual development of a child during summer vacations, gather a team of masterful teachers, coaches for sports events. Now students from advanced schools of the capital, Moscow, Kharkiv, Odesa, and even from the Czech Republic want to come to our school. And children often come in groups or whole schools.”

Is positioning your camp as a linguistic one a tribute to fashion?

“These days it seems that our children cannot be surprised. Practically from the beginning we declared that among the languages taught there will be English taught by native speakers.

“And I thought that few if any offer a course of Japanese, both for beginners and advanced level. This course is present on our schedule for seven years now. And you know, kids perceive Japanese as a kind of game and they very well master the material, even little children aged six or seven. Besides, the Japanese is useful for the development of the left cerebral hemisphere and general background. Practice proves that even a short-time learning of a language that belongs, let’s say, to ‘image-creating’ group (for writing a beautiful hieroglyph envisages present aesthetic skills or their development) produces very good results. It often happens so that after returning from the camp the children ask their parents to continue the studies of Japanese, for example.

“Our lessons are traditionally held not in classrooms, but in arbors in the clean Carpathian air.”

What attracts children, above all?

“The philosophy of our camp is simple: in a joyful atmosphere we charge the children intellectually, present them with new friends and impressions that totally differ from their life in a city apartment, we give an impetus to the child to further develop and try hand in every direction. This is like a smorgasbord – you play and learn.

“Our scale is not large, 30-35 children aged over six in a session. We know every child, s/he becomes a part of a great family. It often happens so that after the first visit children keep coming to the camp every summer till they leave school. They continue to correspond with us via e-mail and social network Facebook.

“The program is based on making the child busy from morning till night, till the last theater play or lecture. Language is camp’s core, for language is the key to culture.”

As far as I know, you also have a school of chess and draughts, and animation lessons. How do you manage to squeeze them into your tight schedule?

“The most important thing is to arrange the time properly, then there won’t be difficulties with the lessons. The studying time of our children is scheduled to the last minute. Chess and draughts master classes delivered by a professional are lessons from masters of sports in chess. We also hold an all-camp tournament in chess and draughts. It seems to me, since children spend lots of time in Vkontakte and other virtual spaces, in summer it would be useful to try tactile developing games. We have lots of developing games: in economics, physics, math, and logic. The master classes of amazing tests, a society of experimental home physics ‘Entertaining Science,’ a modern crafts studio (for girls) with master classes on modern decor, decoupage, craquelure, quilling, traditional and pattern painting.

“Our school also includes teaching of fundamental and basic techniques of animation. Our professional instructors hold interesting tours which include not only the ascent to mountains, but also informative lectures about their residents, the trees, the world of animals and insects. Children can see with their own eyes the glades of butterflies or mountain goats, crystal brooks with real mineral water and wonderful landscapes one can see from the beech forest glades.”

Do children acquire some “life skills” in the camp?

“This is a separate topic. The obligatory cleaning is done by staff workers. But we are trying to make children learn to take care of their belongings, held responsibility for their space, therefore we organize best room competitions and award prizes.”

How do you select the employees? Who are your teachers and mentors?

“Our teachers are graduates of prestigious foreign programs, Kyiv Mohyla Academy, gymnasiums, and universities of Ukraine, as well as American and British professional teachers. Mentors are curators from private schools and gymnasiums. We would like the number of such schools to increase in Ukraine, so that they were accessible to the middle class as well, therefore