Getting Into The Swing Of Volunteering!| 4 min read
It’s day two of my volunteer placement and I’m excited to get into the full swing of things. I started off the morning by observing some English classes taught by one of the other volunteers here. Even though I have done my TEFL training and have had lot of experience teaching, I have been a little anxious about getting into the teaching part so it was great to sit in on some classes.
I had absolutely nothing to worry about; the students were great – really lively and so eager to learn English, the class seemed to be over in seconds!
The first class I observed was the Sunflower class, the volunteer teacher introduced me to the students and my heart melted at how friendly and excitable they all were. Each child introduced themselves and said their name and age before we sat down to read a book. I was asked to read the book in English and then the other volunteer translated into Chinese to ensure they understood.
After a short break I observed another class – this time the Panda class who were younger than the first class, perhaps 4-6 years old. There were 6 students in this class and they were all able to introduce themselves to me. The teacher had been teaching the students a song about the letters of the alphabet and as soon as she said the letter ‘a’ the kids began singing “a, a is for apple, b. is for bat…..” They got even more excited when the music was played and they were able to sing along!
As the children are either blind or visually impaired it’s down to the teacher to be more creative when teaching but I son realized that there was so much fun to be had teaching these kids English and it was no different from any other kindergarten class I had taught!
At midday we went over to the canteen for lunch, where the cooks make everything homemade on site. I recon they must have known I was coming as curry was on the menu!
After lunch I spent some time chatting with some of the older kids, Sam and Christina. They are two of the oldest here at the foster home and they have been given jobs on site. Sam helps out on the farm and for the last few days he had been peeling some of the left over corn. He is really friendly and I enjoyed talking to him about living in Beijing! Christina works in the office and she was enrolled in the position as translator for English to Chinese Braille. Not shy to the world of work, prior to this she was a radio show presenter at in the foster home.
I spent the rest of the day helping out another volunteer write newsletters. Each child has their very own newsletter, which is sent out to their sponsors. It was great to help as it allowed me to learn more about the children, what they like, how they have been progressing and how they behave in class! (I’m sure the latter will prove useful when it comes to my English class!) It was back to the canteen for dinner and by this point I was ready to get into bed, it was definitely an action packed day, but really fun non the less. I’m looking forward to see what tomorrow brings!
