Walk before you run

This morning was I was reminded of the shortcomings of any volunteering experience: unreliability. Volunteer programs will never receive the same type of priority as ones that are financially backed, it's just true. Unfortunately for the community, this means that sometimes volunteers adopt a less than fervent attitude towards what they are doing. In other words, it's easy to back out of.

Long story short we were short a teacher this morning, so I after some quick brainstorming my supervisor came up to me and asked, "Are you ready to take on an entire class .. alone?"

"Of course."

And so there I was walking into the Beginner Level English as a Second Language Class for the first time. Only a handful of students, coming from Puerto Rico, Israel, and different parts of Africa, who could barely tell me their own name in English. After struggling for about 20 minutes to even communicate with these students, let alone find out 'what they learned last class' - I remembered something from my freshman year of college.

Entering one of the most prestigious graphic design programs in the country, I was seriously psyched to get my hands on the latest graphic art software. But our professors - which were artistic giants in the world of graphic design - insisted that we only produce images manually ... without using vector software ... FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.

For an entire year I doodled, painted, sketched and sculpted anything and everything I saw. When my class had finally made it to our second term I asked my prof why he was so persistant about manual craft, and he responded, "because you must learn to walk, before you can run." It seemed so elementary at the time, but standing before those thoroughly confused faces I knew I had to get back to basics.

Let's introduce ourselves. My name is Kim. I am from Harrisburg. My favorite food is pickles.

And we went around the room until I knew everyone's name, everyone's hometown, and everyone's favorite food, song, pet, color, or film. (One of them is actually from Casablanca!) This took an entire hour.

During their 15 minute break, I skimmed through several books in the back of the classroom, still not knowing what they had covered until now or what their abilities were. I found pictures. Ah, pictures. What a blessing. We took the rest of the class period to look at the picture, identify what was in the picture, and describe the picture with adjectives such as colors or textures. I really let loose and got animated with them, which I was afraid to do at first. I always feel like I am slightly offending someone when I stoop to the level of a birthday party clown in order to get them to try, but I just have to remember the times when I sat there with my French tutor on a Saturday morning during summer session babbling like an idiot. We have both been there and it is astronomically difficult. Easing the tension with a little bit of comic relief makes for an encouraging atmosphere.

By the end of class all of them were begging me to be their teacher.

I have no idea if I actually taught them any vocabulary or English skills, but I definitely showed them that they can afford to make mistakes and they should not be afraid to take that chance. Ultimately, nobody can run before they can walk.