Thursday, November 5, 2009

Volunteer Teaching

Since August, Meghan and I have been teaching English classes at the local community centre on a volunteer basis. Every second Thursday we get up early, which can be a bit of a hardship after an active Wednesday evening, and walk over to the community centre about a 10-15 minute walk from where we live.

The folks at the community centre are a little older than our usual fare of elementary students, but we have a pretty interesting time teaching them. They are very motivated to learn English which helps them a lot, but at the same time struggle with shyness in a way that our younger students do not. We still manage to have a fair bit of fun with them of course.



They often bring us snacks to munch on during the class, which is pretty nice, because let's face it, I love food. This particular spread was to have a bit of a going away party, as it was my last day of class before I left Korea. It was kind of sad... a little bit of a preparatory session for leaving my younger students who I see more often, and have grown more attached to. Our class consists of mostly ladies, and a few men who are a little less consistent in their attendance.



What the men lack in attendance though, they often make up for in gusto. One particular student, Scott -- on the far right in the above picture-- is a lifelong bachelor who takes great delight in making others laugh. Although I didn't realise that student paradigms continue into adult learning to this same level, he is definitely the class clown.

This video really wraps up his personality in a nutshell. Although its not quite evident from the short clip (I wasn't quick enough with my camera) what is happening here is that not only did he show us his pop-dancing skills, he also repeated it a second time so I could capture this potentially embarrassing moment on camera. What a guy!


No comments:

Post a Comment

Free Hit Counter