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.