Youth Teaching

Twice a week I teach English to young people (17-30 years old) at Maharagama youth centre. They're mostly from poor backgrounds and study things like electrician, bakery, beautician etc. What our prime job to do is to teach them spoken English, like everyday conversations. Most of them are good at writing and reading, but they are not the best at speaking. Lucy mentioned that in school they often get taught really complicated stuff like Shakespeare and so forth. So, basically we come in to (hopefully) teach them something they'll probably have use for in future life, both socially and work-wise. The more English you know, the easier you'll get a job (Edit: apparently most job interviews are, for some reason, in English here).

Before starting, I thought this would be a great challenge for me, as I don't think I'd be a good teacher, I simply don't have the patience. And the first couple of times, I did loose patience when they couldn't learn things as quickly as I wanted them to. Was there something wrong with my teaching methods? Have I misjudged their capabilities? Am I actually really bad at this? That was a horrible thought, because I don't like being bad at things.

Robbie in action

However, after a couple of weeks of teaching, with some tweaking of some of the phrases we were teaching them and advice from fellow volunteers, the students started to pick up a lot and really improving. Extremely rewarding, I can't believe I doubted myself, of course I can't be bad at things (jokes). Although, now a new challenge arose. Once the shyness was swept away from most of the students, we realised that their levels of English were extremely varied. Even if it felt a bit wrong, we divided the classes into advanced and normal, in order for the more advanced ones to get something out of this as well, and I think they appreciate this.

Our beautician class

So, the volunteer part that I was mostly doubting that I would manage to do well in has actually turned out to be the one I enjoy the most and I wish I could do it more often during the week! Don't get me wrong, I love the kids at the orphanages and seeing their smiles, but it takes longer for them to learn things, and there it's mostly about the playing around and doing fun games, which is very rewarding as well, but a different kind of reward. What really works for me with the youth teaching is how fast they pick up things, and how it seems like they actually enjoy a subject. If they did Shakespeare and advanced stuff, I can imagine English being one of those boring subjects you didn't look forward to in school. Now, hopefully, we have changed their opinion of it (at least a little bit), and I think I can now finally understand how some people love teaching.