China Summer NOW!
Of course China summer is not running during the winter, so we are pleased to share thoughts and stories from 2010 volunteers with you! We hope these quotes and stories help you to get a picture of what the program is like.
Ivan's Tale 2010
Ah yes, that kid… in the corner who looks uninterested and does not care about my class. He’s probably going to be trouble and a bad kid,” I thought to myself as I gave my lesson on Thanksgiving and being thankful. I finished up my guided practice and it was finally time for them to tell me what they were thankful for. Now that kid in the corner, I wanted to make sure he was at least learning something so I wanted to check it out. As I approached him, he had his notes from my PowerPoint, but for the activity, he had a blank piece of paper looking more and more nervous as I was walked closer.
He was unsure where to start with the activity and after a long conversation utilizing the skills I learned in orientation about scaffolding, he told me “I am thankful for my mother.” This was a huge milestone for the both of us as we completed the first step of the exercise, but now I wanted to him to tell me why. Again, after a lot of questions, he said basic sentences, things like she made him happy when he was sad and cooked good food and but he had a lot of trouble writing it, mainly because he was unsure of the spelling. But we worked together and we created a short letter which I had him read to me. He seemed proud of himself and as I was leaving class he came up to me and said with a very clear voice “Teacher Ivan, I wanted to thank you for help me today,” with a big smile on his face as he headed out the door.
Pleasantly surprised, that is when it had hit me that in most situations, there are not really any bad kids, maybe struggling students but that could be because they have a hard time understanding the material. For any prospective volunteers, keep in mind that it is up to us to make sure our students learn, or else we would not be called WorldTEACHers.