11-19-19 - Let the volunteering commence
/Day 156. Kyle and Leanne joint blog. Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.
We all create our lesson plans during the morning for the afternoon teaching session. We prep and plan like crazy searching Google for ESL worksheets at varying levels and sifting through stacks of old recycled papers for interesting lesson ideas. This first lesson is challenging because we really don’t have a sense of what level of English the different grades have learned. We scramble to create and perfect our lesson plans amassing and assembling photocopies right up until our 1:15pm departure.
Excited yet nervous for our first teaching day, we are driven to Manakaya, the small village where we will teach at the local school. We have prepped, copied and organized. Now we just need students. We are all clearly nervous in the car; we hardly exchange a word. Our training spooked us a little perhaps.
When we arrive to the school, kids are running around and somewhat curious over the new American teaching team now here. They haven’t had this after school structured class since summer’s end so most are thrilled to start up again with learning English.
We divide into our respective rooms and get started. Yes, we are all assigned our own classes as we share one coordinator —Gita — for any translation or help needed. It’s an exhausting yet exhilarating afternoon for all as we learn quickly that their English level is limited. We have work to do with building vocabulary, teaching conversations and sentence structure.
There is a built-in break at 3pm and as soon as the break starts, the kids tag Leanne “IT” and the whole school erupts into full blown running games of monster tag, soccer and Duck, Duck, Goose. Two kids challenge John and Leanne in Chess to see if we can match wits (they were clearly quite skilled!)
After break, we complete our lessons, now having the hang of it. Kyle and Corey’s 6th grade class have 5 girls and 5 boys. During class, three of the boys randomly get up and leave the class. Kyle follows them outside and they have gone into Leanne and Ashley’s classroom, taken a desk and are running down the outside hallway with it. Perplexed, Kyle can only assume that either they are planning on selling the desk on eBay or they might be the disruptive students the trainer referenced. By the end of the session, the jury is still out on the whether these three boys have merited the full blown troublemaker label.
At the end of the session, most of the children came up to us as teachers to give us a special “sign of respect” handshake where they take our hand, place it on their head, and touch their hearts. To say we melted like chocolate would be an understatement. To experience it once was special, but with dozens of children, it became magical, making us even more excited to return. Heart-warming!
In the car ride home, our teaching clan laughed and we traded war stories of how we all survived our first day. We were so relieved as all our initial nerves subsided. What a special experience to serve in this capacity. The teens all mentioned something to the effect of, “we definitely appreciate how hard it is to teach now.”
All seven of us go into town and return to the Oops! restaurant to celebrate our first successful day of service and Justin shares his fun facts about Indonesia.
