Reflection of volunteering

It's time I sat down and pen down my reflection.

Prior to the taking up the volunteering program with Openmind Projects, I knew short term volunteering may not be very helpful for the people there. While meeting and interacting with other people was one of the main plus point of volunteering, I draw your attention to the inconveniences caused.

During my volunteer period, we were told that the school can be flexible in terms of timetable. However, even after we propose our scheduled lesson time to the vice principal we encounter cases where we see some other teacher in the classroom, teaching his/her lessons. Well knowing that their lessons are to be taken more seriously than ours, we gave up our lessons on a few occasions. Some teachers were know what was going on when we stood outside the class for a short while and let us take over the lessons. In this scenario, I suppose both parties felt bad. One not being able to teach while the other seemed to be intruding. There can only be one subject taught at one time and if this issue is settled, it will happen again. Though we spoke to the vice principal a few times on this, there was not much change in the circumstances. We lost quite a few lessons with the kids and there is much inconvenience caused because of this administration issue.

So there is the cost (inconvenience caused) and the benefit (which the schools and students get from our lessons). Volunteering, to put it simply is a give-and-take thing. But if the 'take' is more than 'give', is it still worth it? I think it varies on a case-to-case basis and for this time it seemed to be the case. Yet it is where I realised that I cannot embrace the opportunity to do good and not the possibility of not doing much good. Hope I am not making it sound complicated.

Now onto my next point. I think we have been taking education for granted. Volunteering in a village school helped me to realise that. Yet no matter where you go, I think you can almost be sure that there are some clowns or students who are not interested in learning certain subjects. In Thailand where English is considered a foreign language, perhaps lessons should be made optional for students who really want to learn. On the other hand, I must say 'forcing' the students to learn also has its' benefits. I do think that all educational systems are established with the aim to equip people to go further in life and since they only live once, they should not live with a regret of not having learnt something at large. That being said, there are things beyond our control and government/education institutions must decide what is best.

Another thing I learnt was that there was quite a distinct difference between each of the levels with regards to ability in English. With teachers who is unable to speak much English teaching English, it is a cause for concern. But understanding where the class is at and right now, what it can do and what can be done was something I learnt on the way with my friends. So for Primary 3, teaching phrases might be too hard for them so I taught them some action verbs and words with regards to direction. With actions they could relate, see, understand and hopefully some of them will be retained in their memory. For primary 4 and 5 we taught them some vocab word and phrases. And for primary 6 we explored songs and did other activities to stretch them quite a bit. I cannot say that I got any better by teaching but I can only say I gain some teaching experience. I have God to thank again.