I was thinking how to spend my summer break from 8, April to 31, May, 2011 for the goodness of my community in Myanmar a few weeks before the final exam but I did not have money to go back to Myanmar. Suddenly, I remembered SWAP and applied it. By the help of the Internship officer, I did not meet many problems on the long process.
I contacted one Philippine Roman Catholic sister called Sister Ashwena from CLAY (Center of Learning alternative for Youth) in Kachin state and another teacher called Tr.Jacinta working for Teacher Training Center in St. Augustine Church in Yangon. I had worked with Sister Ashwena before when I was volunteering as a quarter youth leader in my hometown. I was cordially invited to participate in their centers. I prepared my schedule and lessons to teach and share very well before I went back.
I arrived at Yangon on 9th April and after coming out of the airport, a breeze of fresh air touched my face and reminded me to accomplish the challenging task as a volunteer teacher in two places. I continued to travel to Myitkyina, the capital city of Kachin State after two days. I rested at home for a few days and also prepared proper lectures to share with Catholic Youths who were in the one-week-camp in St. Patrick Church. It was located in Nansanyan town near China-border-city called Laiza. It took 4 hours to get there by motorbike. I went there on 15th April and shared about “Personal Development” as a resource person on next day. The topics were positive attitude, success, self-esteem, motivation and also effective learning techniques. They were taken from the book, “YOU CAN WIN” by Shiv Khera. I spent four hours in two days and brought a dozen of examples to encourage and inspire them socially and intellectually. On the last day, the students were full of tears to say goodbye to all the teachers. They were requesting us to come back next year. I hope there will be some resource persons like me next year as well. I could also donate two books to CLAY center.
After a few days, I got back Yangon on 28th, April and met Tr Jacinta to volunteer full-time in her Teacher Training Center. There were 23 students from different parts of Myanmar and they were taking English course to be able to take education courses which would be taught by local and foreign teachers in English medium. I started to work on 2nd, June and was assigned to teach for 3 hours in the morning and worked in the office in the afternoon. After one week, I was also urgently called to teach one hour class in Campion Institute which was in the same building. They needed to substitute one teacher for emergency situation. I taught an elementary level class for one hour everyday from 4 to 5 pm in the afternoon. There were also 25 students and they were so active in my class.About the text book, I used Grade-11 English Text book for TTC as Tr. Jacinta suggested. I was assigned to improve their speaking skill; therefore, I included many speaking activities with building vocabularies. My first teaching objective was to remove their shyness to fearlessly speak and as a second one to open their mind and to train those students to speak fluently English. The lecture was only in English medium.
After a few days, they could follow my lessons and the class was full of energetic and exciting students and the lessons were also fun. After explaining one topic, the students were divided into small groups to share opinions and have more chances. After the discussion, representatives from each group came up and presented the core ideas of the group discussion. Every Friday, there were quizzes or tests covering weekday’s lessons. After two weeks, they could even do very good presentations in the classroom. I also showed one movie about learning on the second week’s Friday, April. In addition, they happily participated in Role Play Activity. They said it was the best time of the class.
As activities to improve the speaking skill in a short time, there was another extra time for speaking in the afternoon. The students were divided in to group A and B on different days. A pair of students and I were talking about their interesting topics such as “Music, Daily Life, and Global Warming” face-to-face for about 20 minutes. It was a great opportunity for some students who did not get chances to speak in the class or were shy students. Before the class, a student came up and told a short story every morning. Some students even created their own stories.
In Campion Institute, I used Let’s Talk 1 text book. My objective of teaching, also the same with TTC, was to help the students improving speaking skill. During one hour period, I added one short game to alert them because it was the last period in the afternoon. And then I reviewed the previous lesson and connected it with the new lesson. In the middle of the time, I let them listen to the audio CD speaking by native speaker to be familiar with and be able to catch the words.
As a good advantage for me, my teaching was being monitored by Tr. Jacinta. She helped and suggested me to be a good teacher in next day than the previous day. The director of the TTC also came and observed my class one time. She gave me very good suggestions and practical ways that I could not learn in the university. This was what I wanted from this volunteer work.
Apart from teaching, I also helped the secretary in the office and made one booklet and invitation card for TTC Batch 3’s graduation ceremony. Working in the office improved my office-computer-skill. Generally, I worked from 8:30 am to 5:00pm but sometimes I had to go back late. It was also helping me to be able to work under pressure.
Finally, I thank SWAP, TTC and CLAY for their supports, cares and suggestions. Now I am totally changed and want to take challenge of the work. I hope I will get the same chance to volunteer for my community and needy students again. Specially, I would like to acknowledge Mr. Sion for his help. In addition, I could even donate 2,200 Baths to Kachin Youth English Conversation Club, Yangon by collecting money from Burmese students of my university.
