TNP leader teaches at Italian mountain camp

Cameron Byrne has recently returned to the Rock having spent two weeks working at a summer camp in Italy as part of an exchange through The Nautilus Project (TNP).  

The summer camp was held in a remote Italian mountain village, Fara San Martino, and the experience she says has confirmed her ambition to become a geography teacher. 

The opportunity arose after plans to bring an Italian camp called Rock and Go to Gibraltar fell through this year due to accommodation issues. Despite that setback, the Italian organisers still wanted TNP leaders to support their existing summer programmes and Ms Byrne’s name was put forward. 

“They asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said ‘100%’ as I want to go into teaching,” she said.  

The days at camp were demanding, with early morning starts and late-night finishes. 

“We wake up at seven, wake up the kids at 7.30,” she said.  

“In the morning was always sports, then they had a bit of free time. Then we had our English lessons and then we kind of did nighttime activities, just fun little things like karaoke, discos and stuff like that.” 

The programme was “pretty full on”. 

“We probably didn’t finish until, like, almost 1am every day, so seven to 1am every day,” she added. 

Leaders rotated their breaks depending on their main responsibilities. 

“Since I was more involved in the English lessons, whilst they were playing sports and other leaders were more focused in sports, I would take my break then,” she said. 

Although the camp included sport and outdoor activities, the main focus was English. Rather than traditional classroom-style lessons, the team used stories, games and music to keep children engaged. 

“Obviously, it was a summer camp. We didn’t want them to be, like, sat down reading a book or whatever. We wanted it to be more fun,” she said. 

Each day’s English session centred on a specially created book inspired by a local climber from Fara San Martino who had died the previous year while climbing a mountain. The story followed a journey, meeting different characters and exploring challenges and perspectives. 

“Every day, we’d read a chapter of this book, then we would do an activity based on the chapter, and then we would play games based on the activities as well,” she said. 

Lessons would always end on a musical note. 

“We would end it singing or learning to sing The Climb by Miley Cyrus. That was always our end of the English lesson.” 

To keep the focus on language rather than sporting performance, the leaders chose games that were new to most of the children. 

“Since the main focus was English, it wasn’t really how well they played sports,” she said. 

“We played more sports that were a bit niche and sports that they had probably never played before, handball one day, kickball and another game one of the leaders brought from Madrid.” 

The children were aged between eight and 12, with very mixed levels of English. And Ms Byrne, who does not speak Italian, became a deliberate challenge for them. 

“If they wanted to ask me something, they had to speak to me in English,” she said. “They had no leeway of, maybe, saying something to me in Italian or something like that.” 

The first few days were difficult as the children built up confidence, but she saw a clear improvement as the week went on. 

“The difference of English levels was a really large range,” she added, “but then as they started getting more confident with their English, then we started bringing in stuff about The Nautilus Project, about maybe coming to Gib to do some of the stuff, and they were all really excited about it.” 

One of the highlights for her was a hike through a gorge in the mountains, where she was able to combine her academic background with her work in environmental projects at home. 

“One of the days, we did a hike through this gorge in the mountain and along the way there was this river,” she said. 

“I study geography at university and so I brought in some of the stuff I learned with The Nautilus Project and some stuff from uni.” 

Before travelling up to the mountains to the camp, she had two days in Rome, visiting the Trevi Fountain and the Vatican, though she missed out on the Colosseum this time. 

In Fara San Martino itself, free time was limited. 

“I usually would just like walk along the river, walk along the gorge,” she said. 

“You couldn’t really do anything there, like, it was literally the middle of nowhere, but it was just stunning, so it was really good.” 

Back in Gibraltar this summer, she is volunteering occasionally with The Nautilus Project while working with the GSLA summer sports programme, again focusing on children and youth. 

She has one year left of her geography degree before planning to complete a PGCE and qualify as a secondary school teacher. 

“I want to teach secondary because I really want to focus on geography,” she said. 

Her experiences with The Nautilus Project have shaped how she wants to teach. 

“I’ve seen the way they hold their kids’ camps. It’s not like your typical ‘put a PowerPoint on’,” she said. 

“It’s helped me adapt the way that I teach. My teaching is very visual, very hands-on. I feel like, nowadays especially, a lot more kids are learning like that.”