VOLUNTEEN - Teaching English
Proposal Form
Name(s) of Participant(s): Katherine Rifiotis
Year Group: 12 Omega Date: 28/Agust/2013
• Activity/project name: Volunteen
• What are your goals for this project/activity? Plan and run English lessons, as a second language, help some students with their english so that they are better prepared to take the entrance test at another school.
• What new skills or skill levels do you hope to develop? Being able to teach grammatical and linguistic features of the English language. Be able to understand and create a teacher-student relationship. Develop patience, with my students and different manners of explanation. Be able to multitask during lessons and work under improvisation, since not everything turns out as planned. Improve my group work skills, since my partners are not people whom I usually work with.
• How will you be involved? Throughout the week I will be planning the lesson with my colleges and teachers who offered to help us. Nearly every Saturday there will be a lesson ran by my friends and I, at the public school. I will be directly involved with the students in a two hours lesson from 10h00 to 12h00.
• What tasks will be undertaken? Planning the lessons during the week, which involves meetings with PSL teachers and with my group. Making a 2 hours long lesson, passing out content and activities, and create homework that will be both educational and enjoyable.
• Where will it occur? At the public school in the city of São Paulo, Escola Olavo Pezzotti, in the neighborhood Pinheiros.
• When will you participate? Almost every Saturday, they date to; 17/08, 24/08, 31/08, 21/09, 28/09, 2/10, 19/10, 26/10, 2/11, 9/11, 23/11, 30/11
• How much time will you need for completion? 4 months
• What challenges might you encounter? Organization to get the lessons well planned, difficulties controlling a class, lack of interest of the students, other activities from school to sports which might challenge my timetable, lack of supplies/support from the school, difficulties
• What resources will you need (e.g., transportation, materials, technology, etc.)? Dictionaries in English, translators from Portuguese to English, chalk/erasers for the board, notebooks, pens/pencils, glue/scissors
• How will you attain/get support in attaining those resources? I will have to lend my personal dictionaries and the class materials will be bought by the teacher who is coordinating the project (Mr. Barboza) with the money lender by the student guild.
• Who or what will benefit from your actions? How? The students from the school will be benefited form this project with the opportunity of gaining the skills for a second language. The public school and ints community will also be benefited since it will have students concentrated on their studies whether than waste their weekends off and sleep-in. My colleges and I will also be extremely benefited by this experience. Learning what the other side (teacher) of our everyday at school is like.
• What ethical consequences might result from your actions? There are ethical implications in teaching, since it is at the same time creating a relationship with the student which in my specific case, are people close enough to my age. Managing this personal and yet professional relationship may imply some ethical consequences, such as there cannot be swearing at any class or the environment from my part; I will have to mind my clothing for it to be both appropriate in terms of covering flesh and yet simple, since the clothing is a reflection of social class. Some other implications might arise during the project, these will be evident in my reflection.
• Which CAS areas will be addressed? Creativity and Service
• Which Learning Outcomes will be reflected?During this project I will definetely have to plan and initiate activities, which are the lessons themselves and the homework they will need to complete over the course. I will need to show perseverance and commitment, since almost every saturday of this semester I will dedicate my time to teaching. In order to create the lessons and run them I will be working with my colleges (Martina and Pedro Corulla), as well as with my students since knowledge is achieved as a whole. This is something completely new for my so I will need to develop new skills and undertake new challenges since I have never done anything similar before. Since this will be a new experience I am hoping to develop new skills throughout this project. And as mentioned before there are various ethical implications which will be present in this project.
• Please briefly describe your project/activity: Teaching English as a second lessons to kids at a public school, part of the regional community.
Year Group: 12 Omega Date: 28/Agust/2013
• Activity/project name: Volunteen
• What are your goals for this project/activity? Plan and run English lessons, as a second language, help some students with their english so that they are better prepared to take the entrance test at another school.
• What new skills or skill levels do you hope to develop? Being able to teach grammatical and linguistic features of the English language. Be able to understand and create a teacher-student relationship. Develop patience, with my students and different manners of explanation. Be able to multitask during lessons and work under improvisation, since not everything turns out as planned. Improve my group work skills, since my partners are not people whom I usually work with.
• How will you be involved? Throughout the week I will be planning the lesson with my colleges and teachers who offered to help us. Nearly every Saturday there will be a lesson ran by my friends and I, at the public school. I will be directly involved with the students in a two hours lesson from 10h00 to 12h00.
• What tasks will be undertaken? Planning the lessons during the week, which involves meetings with PSL teachers and with my group. Making a 2 hours long lesson, passing out content and activities, and create homework that will be both educational and enjoyable.
• Where will it occur? At the public school in the city of São Paulo, Escola Olavo Pezzotti, in the neighborhood Pinheiros.
• When will you participate? Almost every Saturday, they date to; 17/08, 24/08, 31/08, 21/09, 28/09, 2/10, 19/10, 26/10, 2/11, 9/11, 23/11, 30/11
• How much time will you need for completion? 4 months
• What challenges might you encounter? Organization to get the lessons well planned, difficulties controlling a class, lack of interest of the students, other activities from school to sports which might challenge my timetable, lack of supplies/support from the school, difficulties
• What resources will you need (e.g., transportation, materials, technology, etc.)? Dictionaries in English, translators from Portuguese to English, chalk/erasers for the board, notebooks, pens/pencils, glue/scissors
• How will you attain/get support in attaining those resources? I will have to lend my personal dictionaries and the class materials will be bought by the teacher who is coordinating the project (Mr. Barboza) with the money lender by the student guild.
• Who or what will benefit from your actions? How? The students from the school will be benefited form this project with the opportunity of gaining the skills for a second language. The public school and ints community will also be benefited since it will have students concentrated on their studies whether than waste their weekends off and sleep-in. My colleges and I will also be extremely benefited by this experience. Learning what the other side (teacher) of our everyday at school is like.
• What ethical consequences might result from your actions? There are ethical implications in teaching, since it is at the same time creating a relationship with the student which in my specific case, are people close enough to my age. Managing this personal and yet professional relationship may imply some ethical consequences, such as there cannot be swearing at any class or the environment from my part; I will have to mind my clothing for it to be both appropriate in terms of covering flesh and yet simple, since the clothing is a reflection of social class. Some other implications might arise during the project, these will be evident in my reflection.
• Which CAS areas will be addressed? Creativity and Service
• Which Learning Outcomes will be reflected?During this project I will definetely have to plan and initiate activities, which are the lessons themselves and the homework they will need to complete over the course. I will need to show perseverance and commitment, since almost every saturday of this semester I will dedicate my time to teaching. In order to create the lessons and run them I will be working with my colleges (Martina and Pedro Corulla), as well as with my students since knowledge is achieved as a whole. This is something completely new for my so I will need to develop new skills and undertake new challenges since I have never done anything similar before. Since this will be a new experience I am hoping to develop new skills throughout this project. And as mentioned before there are various ethical implications which will be present in this project.
• Please briefly describe your project/activity: Teaching English as a second lessons to kids at a public school, part of the regional community.
Example of Class plan
Volunteen
- Plan and initiate activities
- Undertake new challenges
- Work collaboratively with others
- Consider ethical implications
- Develop new skills
- Show perseverance and commitment
- Increase awareness of strengths and weaknesses
Volunteen Reflection
During this project, Volunteen, the initial goal was to prepare and run English lessons (ESL) in a public school, geographically within the school community, nearly every Saturday. The goal was to provide the opportunity of learning a second language to the students who were willing to take it, and then allow for the acquisition of greater knowledge, such as vocabulary, and skills reading writing and speaking. In order to achieve this goal together with my class partners, Pedro Corulla and Martina Mizraje, we put together a diagnosis test on the first day, so that we had an understanding of their level of English, and over all learning skills. Based on how easily they performed it and how successfully, we created our lessons and class activities. We realized that their experience with the language had been negative with previous teachers, which meant that we needed to make the lesson have different dynamics than the conventional ones. Because we are students (close in age to the people we were teaching), it was easier for us to plan out what topics and vocabulary would be useful to them. We made the decision, for example not to teach verbs during the first couple of lessons, because they are exhaustive and would probably make the students loose interest. To prepare the lessons, we would meet at least twice a week, and one of them with the school ESL (English as Second Language) teacher in order to guide us and keep us motivated to face this challenge. It would also be the case, where we had to prepare some activities on our own time at home, few days before the class. The topics ran more or less in a freestyle manner, I think this would be something we should have changed in our planning of this project. For example, since day one establish some goals, such: we want you to be able to have a simple conversation about you, be able to describe your daily life. With this fixed objectives, we would have focused a lot better all the lessons, and maybe even a larger number of students.
I definitely found myself out of my comfort zone. Firstly because I was on the other side of the classroom, I now had the teacher's position, one which according to my Portuguese teacher, is one of 'enchantment' which can alter the interest of a student and consequently its future. Having to pan lessons, was a completely different experience, and lecture was something completely different from everything I had previously experienced. Being constantly ask questions, and attempting to make the students understand linguistic concepts in a concise and clear manner, was definitely a challenge. It would often be the case, where I would be striving to find different manners to explain the exact same thing again, but the feeling I had when, I could see through their expression of my students that they were taking in information, it was the most amusing feeling.
To see their dedication in being there Saturday morning ready to learn, made me reflect on my attitudes and my classmates' attitudes in regards to learning and respect for the teacher. Being challenged this way allowed for the discovery of personal strengths. For example, dealing with inappropriate behavior, I immediately remembered the unfair manner in which many teachers tells my class of as an entire group, when the troublesome students were messing about. I would often approach them, walk around the class, and ask frequent questions to keep them engaged and keep them from talking.
The main difficulty my friends and I encountered when teaching was the amount of students who were not coming to the lessons. The first couple of lessons it seemed to be very popular and we had to spilt the classes into levels and age group in order to provide better attention. Although soon we were having lessons of 4 or 3 students. I talked about this disappoint fact with my father, and he explained a very simple and gradual change in peoples motivation and perseverance. The way he explained was through a series of gradual natural selection, of students who either lost interest or were not determined and committed to sacrifice hours of rest/fun to learn. So gradually I would only have the students which were extremely motivated and determined, since the rest who gave up had not that motivation to carry on with this project. To understand this concept better he gave me an analogy on the gradual change in number of girls and volleyball players in my team, he told me to think about my early years in court and remember the number of girls, then compare it to the present number of players my team had. Then I could see the trend that throughout time, people make choices which is determined by their priorities, and people prioritize what they are most interest about, what their passions are. Even though I had understood that about others and about myself, I could not just leave it out to their personal choices and interest, I new that I could influence they decision to continue coming to class if I constantly mentioned the students missing and ask the ones who were there to attempt to motivate them to attend the lessons.
On of the greatest moments of this project was when one of the most motivated student I had, Renata, told be she did a lot better on her English test in school. She told me how she remembered most of the vocabulary in class and how that was useful for her. I was seriously delighted, it is one thing to present information to students, and teach, but another is to know that what I am teaching is being useful and make a change in my students' academic life. This conversation really boosted my motivation and it brought me back to my original reason to why I had decided to commit to the project. To make a difference in other people's lives through sharing knowledge which my family was luckily enough able to provide me with. It really got me thinking about how I would measure success and failure of this project, and I realized it was not the number of students I had by the end of the course, but if I managed to improve the skills and passion for this foreign language and boost their confidence in school. It also did not matter how many I would be able to make a difference to, but if I managed to change the life of a single individual it would be just as satisfying.
I do not believe my perspective and values changed, but one value was enhanced. We had a certain issue with the type of clothing used by us 'teachers' in general; it would often be the case where we would overdress, with the clothes, which belong to high prestige brands. Such brands were definitely not appropriate to be used in that context, were the community of the school we were teaching in came from a different financial background. It would be something considered common sense, but when you are constantly within the same community, clothes are the same. But when you are in a different community/context the idea of social class is conveyed by the way one dresses. Meaning that we had to dress with more simplicity, and it really enhanced my values regarding humbleness.
When working in groups it is often the case where people respond well there is productivity and I often quickly pick-up on my weaknesses and other’s strengths so that the project can really flow in a productive direction. In this project it was not different, I know that my handwriting is extremely hard to understand, and so it was quickly decided that Martina would be the one writing on the board, and Pedro because of his patience would always go around dealing with individual questions and doubts. Due to my strong voice and dynamic ways of keeping the class attention, I was usually the one lecturing. This patching of weaknesses with others’ strengths allowed for effective teaching. Here is were the importance of leadership is evident, as my conversation with the Uggi guide, Tadeu in Paraty, he defined a leader as being perceptive enough to chose the best people for each role of a project and not necessarily the one who does everything better than anyone else. In this case I worked as the leader of this group, because recognizing what was needed and assigning each person of the group to work accordingly to their strength, we were more successful, and group work was smoother.
- Plan and initiate activities
- Undertake new challenges
- Work collaboratively with others
- Consider ethical implications
- Develop new skills
- Show perseverance and commitment
- Increase awareness of strengths and weaknesses
Volunteen Reflection
During this project, Volunteen, the initial goal was to prepare and run English lessons (ESL) in a public school, geographically within the school community, nearly every Saturday. The goal was to provide the opportunity of learning a second language to the students who were willing to take it, and then allow for the acquisition of greater knowledge, such as vocabulary, and skills reading writing and speaking. In order to achieve this goal together with my class partners, Pedro Corulla and Martina Mizraje, we put together a diagnosis test on the first day, so that we had an understanding of their level of English, and over all learning skills. Based on how easily they performed it and how successfully, we created our lessons and class activities. We realized that their experience with the language had been negative with previous teachers, which meant that we needed to make the lesson have different dynamics than the conventional ones. Because we are students (close in age to the people we were teaching), it was easier for us to plan out what topics and vocabulary would be useful to them. We made the decision, for example not to teach verbs during the first couple of lessons, because they are exhaustive and would probably make the students loose interest. To prepare the lessons, we would meet at least twice a week, and one of them with the school ESL (English as Second Language) teacher in order to guide us and keep us motivated to face this challenge. It would also be the case, where we had to prepare some activities on our own time at home, few days before the class. The topics ran more or less in a freestyle manner, I think this would be something we should have changed in our planning of this project. For example, since day one establish some goals, such: we want you to be able to have a simple conversation about you, be able to describe your daily life. With this fixed objectives, we would have focused a lot better all the lessons, and maybe even a larger number of students.
I definitely found myself out of my comfort zone. Firstly because I was on the other side of the classroom, I now had the teacher's position, one which according to my Portuguese teacher, is one of 'enchantment' which can alter the interest of a student and consequently its future. Having to pan lessons, was a completely different experience, and lecture was something completely different from everything I had previously experienced. Being constantly ask questions, and attempting to make the students understand linguistic concepts in a concise and clear manner, was definitely a challenge. It would often be the case, where I would be striving to find different manners to explain the exact same thing again, but the feeling I had when, I could see through their expression of my students that they were taking in information, it was the most amusing feeling.
To see their dedication in being there Saturday morning ready to learn, made me reflect on my attitudes and my classmates' attitudes in regards to learning and respect for the teacher. Being challenged this way allowed for the discovery of personal strengths. For example, dealing with inappropriate behavior, I immediately remembered the unfair manner in which many teachers tells my class of as an entire group, when the troublesome students were messing about. I would often approach them, walk around the class, and ask frequent questions to keep them engaged and keep them from talking.
The main difficulty my friends and I encountered when teaching was the amount of students who were not coming to the lessons. The first couple of lessons it seemed to be very popular and we had to spilt the classes into levels and age group in order to provide better attention. Although soon we were having lessons of 4 or 3 students. I talked about this disappoint fact with my father, and he explained a very simple and gradual change in peoples motivation and perseverance. The way he explained was through a series of gradual natural selection, of students who either lost interest or were not determined and committed to sacrifice hours of rest/fun to learn. So gradually I would only have the students which were extremely motivated and determined, since the rest who gave up had not that motivation to carry on with this project. To understand this concept better he gave me an analogy on the gradual change in number of girls and volleyball players in my team, he told me to think about my early years in court and remember the number of girls, then compare it to the present number of players my team had. Then I could see the trend that throughout time, people make choices which is determined by their priorities, and people prioritize what they are most interest about, what their passions are. Even though I had understood that about others and about myself, I could not just leave it out to their personal choices and interest, I new that I could influence they decision to continue coming to class if I constantly mentioned the students missing and ask the ones who were there to attempt to motivate them to attend the lessons.
On of the greatest moments of this project was when one of the most motivated student I had, Renata, told be she did a lot better on her English test in school. She told me how she remembered most of the vocabulary in class and how that was useful for her. I was seriously delighted, it is one thing to present information to students, and teach, but another is to know that what I am teaching is being useful and make a change in my students' academic life. This conversation really boosted my motivation and it brought me back to my original reason to why I had decided to commit to the project. To make a difference in other people's lives through sharing knowledge which my family was luckily enough able to provide me with. It really got me thinking about how I would measure success and failure of this project, and I realized it was not the number of students I had by the end of the course, but if I managed to improve the skills and passion for this foreign language and boost their confidence in school. It also did not matter how many I would be able to make a difference to, but if I managed to change the life of a single individual it would be just as satisfying.
I do not believe my perspective and values changed, but one value was enhanced. We had a certain issue with the type of clothing used by us 'teachers' in general; it would often be the case where we would overdress, with the clothes, which belong to high prestige brands. Such brands were definitely not appropriate to be used in that context, were the community of the school we were teaching in came from a different financial background. It would be something considered common sense, but when you are constantly within the same community, clothes are the same. But when you are in a different community/context the idea of social class is conveyed by the way one dresses. Meaning that we had to dress with more simplicity, and it really enhanced my values regarding humbleness.
When working in groups it is often the case where people respond well there is productivity and I often quickly pick-up on my weaknesses and other’s strengths so that the project can really flow in a productive direction. In this project it was not different, I know that my handwriting is extremely hard to understand, and so it was quickly decided that Martina would be the one writing on the board, and Pedro because of his patience would always go around dealing with individual questions and doubts. Due to my strong voice and dynamic ways of keeping the class attention, I was usually the one lecturing. This patching of weaknesses with others’ strengths allowed for effective teaching. Here is were the importance of leadership is evident, as my conversation with the Uggi guide, Tadeu in Paraty, he defined a leader as being perceptive enough to chose the best people for each role of a project and not necessarily the one who does everything better than anyone else. In this case I worked as the leader of this group, because recognizing what was needed and assigning each person of the group to work accordingly to their strength, we were more successful, and group work was smoother.