Teaching English to Children

One of the things I am privileged to do is to teach English to children at a local Pagoda. This Pogoda has orphans but also has a school for local children whose parents don't have a lot of money. The Pagoda teaches to fifth grade. They feed all the children lunch ensuring they get a reasonable meal each day. I go there on Saturday mornings and teach English from 7:30-9:15. I teach 2 classes, third grade and a combined fourth and fifth class. I have been doing this for a couple of months now and whilst it can be a little challenging it is a fabulous thing to watch some of the kids start to have an English conversation with me. They are innately shy and so it has taken quite some time but now they run to me to greet me, I play skipping and games with them. I get cuddles and high fives.However when you bring out the camera they certainly aren't shy.

I am not a qualified teacher but I have had experience with teaching adults. I want it to be fun so we do lots of games and coloring in and drawing. I’m lucky enough to have found a website that I pay a yearly subscription to that helps enormously with training aids.

The other week I decided to teach them about different types of clothing. I made cut out dolls and cut out lots of different clothing with tags so the children could dress and undress the dolls. They had a great time! Most of the time I have a short story about what we are teaching and they love hearing these.

They all want to help and often they will sort all my papers for me (sometimes not necessarily how I want them) but they love to help.

I have started teaching some of their teachers English as well. These ladies work here for not a lot of money and it is nice to do something for them. We meet twice a week after school. There are some of their friends coming as well and it’s turning into a bit of a social thing. The other day I asked them to write a story about their family. They blew me away with the effort they put it. They are learning so fast. It bought a bit of a tear to my eye.

 

This is certainly one of those things that you do that you get more out of it than you give :)