Posts tagged TESL
Life is calling. How far will you go?
“When a student sees a postcard sent from a faraway place and realizes it’s addressed to them, it sparks an enthusiasm for learning English that the textbooks don’t match. Even my least motivated students will call me aside to help them decipher new words and phrases.”
- Peace Corps Volunteer Matthew Borden, who is teaching students in his Indonesian community English with the help of postcards through a project he calls Postcards to Java
(Source: peacecorps.gov)
Peace Corps Volunteers, trainees, and staff were just a little excited to meet President Obama in Costa Rica last week!
If you know me in the slightest bit you know I love working with kids. I’ve been a nanny and a summer camp counselor for most of my life and absolutely love the feeling of getting to act like a child again and be ridiculously silly. For the past month, I’ve been working at an elementary school teaching 3rd and 4th graders English, and will be doing so throughout the rest of my service here in China.
The thing I’m loving the most about teaching these kids, besides getting to do the hokey pokey, sing songs, and do arts and crafts, is that they bring me a sense of familiarity. Here in China it’s hard to find many similarities between home (America) and my now, home away from home (Nan’Shan). But these little kids are the one thing that is similar and it’s refreshing. They love to ask questions, they love to help me with my Chinese, they love to dance and giggle and run around, they’re still so innocent and without a care in the world. Being around them brings me so much joy and I can’t wait to continue working with them, to play with them, and watch them grow.
This photo shows a scene from the first English-language play (The Odyssey) ever to be directed by a foreigner at Lanzhou University. The performers are English major students.
- Peace Corps Education Volunteer Katie Maclean
