El Fin?

This week at NBBC there was a surplus of "teachers" compared to the number of students and this week, which was my fourth, contained yet another new dynamic. Instead of one-on-one teaching or being paired with one other volunteer, this week I was partnered with two other volunteers as well as J, the student I have been working with for the past several weeks. I was excited to have more than one teaching style to rely on while helping J learn the English language and I think J was equally as anxious to begin as well.
As the four of us began to interact it was apparent what role we were each going to perform. The other female volunteer felt the most comfortable with initiating the lesson plans, so she took the reins and began the chapter with J in Spanish. Throughout the two hours she did a great job with being creative with the lesson plans and she was able to think of new ways to deliever the material to J, which seemingly helped him to retain the information better while testing his knowledge over the subject matter.
 I took on the reinforcer role, which meant that I was there to help the other volunteers with explaining the exercises and giving J the confidence to answer the questions in English without the fear of making mistakes. I felt that I was most needed for moral support and clarifying explanations if something in particular needed a different approach.
The third volunteer took on a more subtle role, which consisted of casual conversation, which seemed to ease J's nerves and made him smile and laugh. J even began opening up to this volunteer about his home of Michoacan, Mexico, explaining that the city is surrounded by forests and mountains and the inner city is full of tall buildings and markets.
The three of us seemed to make up the driver, passanger and back seat driver of a car, with each one of us having a different perspective and different role that made the night a collaborative success. I will admit that taking the "passanger" seat was a bit hard for me at first, mainly because I wanted to take a more active and hands-on role in the process, so regardless to say, sitting back and observing was a challenge for me. After a few mintues I became more comfortable with being an auxillary teacher because I realized that this experience is not for me to solely bask in, but instead, this experience is for J and whatever system works best, whether with me as the driver or not, is what needed to be done.
Overall, my experience was a completely different one than I expected to receive, but I was satisfied with the progress J made and that I had the opportunity to work with two other school volunteers as well. Being such a large teaching group made the time pass quickly, which means that we all must have been having fun.
I will miss the students from NBBC and I hope that they continue their own personal journeys at the church and that they remain committed to the ESL program and even perhaps grow in numbers. My experience has been a very fullfilling one and I have more respect for educators because teaching does not just take patience, but rather, there is a quality of understanding that must be present. I found this spoken of understanding in the form of culture, values and beliefs while interacting with J and that is something that I was surprised to have learned.

3rd Time's the Charm

It's silly to say, but I think the third time's the charm. Tonight was my third trip to NBB church for the ESL class and I feel that tonight was a successful one. I was delighted to see my previous student had once again made it to class, which was no surprise since he is committed to returning to each Tuesday night session. His attendance is superb, while mine seemed to be lacking due to work, school and stress of winter quarter. So why was this meeting different than the two previous classes? I, along with J, my partner, were both more alert and seemingly more energized than normal, which was a fantastic abnormality. Tonight was fluid, casual and comfortable; I almost felt as if J was a long-lost friend who had gone away to summer camp and I had not been able to see him for weeks.
Our lesson revolved around the theme of ongoing and future actions. For example, "We are going to the store", "I am going to visit my aunt today", "She is going to go to the concert tomorrow" were some of the sentences in the book; the construction of sentences like these seemed to be difficult for J at first, but he learned the pattern of the sentence structure and was able to comprehend the chapter quickly. I was, however, underestimating the finer details of the chapter. J struggled with understanding the relationship between "your" and "my" in the question compared to the response, which was a minor detail to me, but to a non-native speaker proved to be complicated. When the question read, "When are you going to visit your grandmother?", J got caught on how to answer the question, because of the word "your". After explaining that "your" translates to "tu" in spanish and that the answer would be "my", aka "mi" in spanish, I noticed that J remained baffled. I don't blame him in the slightest for finding difficulity in such an intricate part of the english language and I was determined to make sure he was not disheartened by the fact that some rules are harder to grasp than others.
Before J could resort to frustration, I suggested a small break from the material. During the brief "descanso", he noticed some papers I had been given by my ESL professor and he initiated conversation regarding these "papeles". We talked about my classes and about my college, which seemed to interest him quite a bit. I must say that during our casual discussion of my affinity for art classes and his interest in soccer I forgot I was speaking spanish, whether broken-spanish or not. I was more than impressed by the flow of conversation, I was proud of myself and of him for making me feel comfortable with my Americanized dialect.
As I mentioned before, tonight felt different, more engaging and more personal. Perhaps the most shocking and inspiring aspect of the night was not something I taught, but something I had learned. When the class was over and the prayer was finished, the volunteer director had approached J and I and he informed me that J had been walking 2 miles from his house every Tuesday night in order to attend class. He had also been walking 2 miles back from class to his house every Tuesday night when class ended around 9pm. I immediately felt ungrateful because even with sufficient transportation I had not attended all the classes, in fact I had missed two classes already because I was running behind on work, school and life. Needless to say I envied J's dedication.
Lastly, at the end of the ESL class the closing prayer was shared with us by the pastor of the church. In his prayer I recognized only a few words in succession, but the words I did happen to catch were "Gracias padre por nuestros hermanos Americanos". The pastor of the church had included us, the volunteers, in his prayer, which is an honor in itself. We were not the American volunteers or the American students, we were much more than that, we were the American brothers. My gratitude was extended in silence, but on the inside I wanted to hug every committed member of the class for their welcoming acceptance.

Day 2: A New Dynamic

Week two was a calmer, less anxious experience for me. I arrived early to the church and waited in my car while the others trickled into the parking lot. I was surprised to see that not all the students from day one were present at the de-briefing; I liked our group and seeing the separation was a little saddening. However, I realized that some students opted to only take this ESL class, including me, for only one credit hour, which means that not all meetings are mandatory. I immediately felt my mood shift when it hit me that this experience is only a quarter long and that most of the students will not return after the grading period in order to pursue a voluntary presence here.

I entered the church excited nonetheless and as the other students and I took our seats, I noticed that the body of spanish-speaking students had changed as well. This night I noticed some familiar faces, such as my previous partner, as well as a new, fresh face of a young woman in a stylish orange jacket. She looked so well-dressed, I felt a little too casual doning my sweatpants and oversized coat.

The students and volunteers were partnered up as usual and I was elated to be paired with the same student again from last week. However, the dynamic was drastically altered. Instead of teaching with another Service Learning student from my class, I was flying solo on this one. Without another volunteer, I was the main source of learning for the student and I was somewhat nervous to take on such an important role.

We went on to cover ten pages in the textbook in the two hours we were there, which doesn't seem like a lot of work, but in reality the lessons are dense and I made sure to go slowly to give him the opportunity to ask questions about word meanings, grammar, spelling and translation. The book assignments were similar to last weeks; reading passages, answering questions about the reading and choosing the correct words to complete a sentence were the main styles of learning in the book. I took a different approach, hoping to switch up the routine that he had been doing on a weekly basis since May of last year.

I decided to do some listening exercises, because being able to hold a conversation is the most significant part in learning a new language. I would say an English sentence such as, "Can you go to store with me?", and he would write the sentence in English as I said it. Next, I would say give a response to the question such as, "No, no I can't go to the store with you because I have to study.", in which he wrote down and after he would read what he wrote and we would converse using these sentences. From this basic sentence structure we were able to go through several examples of the use of "can" and "cannot". He seemed to retain the information better doing this technique and I noticed that he was much more attentive when he was writing and engaging in the language, rather than just reading from a page.

Overall, my experience was equally satisfactory as the first visit and I am looking forward to going back. I have realized that having another person in the group to teach English is beneficial in keeping the lessons fresh and unique as well as keeping the flow of teaching natural and casual.

Teaching While Learning

The doors were locked and the weather was the coldest it had been all year, or so it seemed. I stood and chated with a few classmates I had only meet hours prior but not even the winter wind could wipe the noticable excitement from my frozen face. Like the others, my nerves decided to tag along and I began to fear the unknown. Will the students like me? Or better yet will they understand me? Will I be a decent teacher? Is my Spanish good enough for this type of responisibility? My thoughts were scattered but as soon as the church door opened all that remained was pure excited curiosity. My service learning had begun.

The other students and I tried convincingly to wait patiently while the spanish-speaking students entered the cafeteria after dropping their children off with other caretakers. I shook hands with my assigned student and my partner and we were able to introduce ourselves to him as well as each other for the first time. The man, who was a Mexican-native, was 33 years old and a proud father of two girls. He had a sense of humor that even a language barrier could not destinguish. I don't think he went more than five mintues without smiling, he was an optimistic learner and he wasn't afraid to ask questions, which I found to be very brave and attentive.

My partner and I were also paired up with a church volunteer, who spoke no spanish, but who was eager to help teach English as a second language. Unfortunately, I did notice a gap of communication and understanding between the church volunteer and the spanish-speaking student. I saw the utter confusion written across the student's face and my partner and I stepped in to help translate and answer the questions that arose during the time period. My partner was especially keen on filling silent time with interpretation and different exercises, which seemed to benefit the overwhelmed student.

By this time my emotions had shifted, I went from anxious to engaged and inspired almost instantly. I was surprised by the spanish-speaker's high level of reading English and by his attempt to understand the difficult words. He carried around a green notebook with him, in which he wrote down the harder words in order to comprehend them better. Words like "perspire", "blush" and "thirsty". I was happy to see that "my" student was going the extra mile to learn English and I wish that more English speakers would put forth an ounce of the effort that the students did during those two hours in the church cafeteria.

Lastly, I left feeling a sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment. I had achieved more in those two hours than I had done in an entire week's work. There is still a plethora of things I would like to share, but I will keep it relatively short. Next time I would like to get to know the other students more too and perhaps slow down and take breaks during each chapter, because I know firsthand that learning a new language is difficult and feeling left behind is never a good feeling.Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my first service learning experience and I now regret not taking the service learning class for more than one credit.