A bit more

Hey LCers

I have a little bit of time today, so I figured I´d write a little bit about what I do here not academically related (please forgive any typos, I´m writing on a Spanish computer that is spell checking me into Spanish...)

One of my big outside-of-school things is my volunteering. Every Friday I go to a local school and work as a classroom assistant teaching English. The program is called Ingles Abre Puertas (English Opens Doors) and is run by the Chilean government. I applied and was placed at a school near where I live. The school is in a poor part of the city and is funded by the Catholic Church. It´s still strange to be in the classroom and have the students praying at the start of class. Anyways, I work with fifth graders and eighth graders. There are about 40 students in each class with only one teacher. It´s vaguely organized chaos. My job is to be a native English voice and to give the teacher support. For the fifth graders this means I am in charge of half of the class. I take half the students and run a lesson for them. It´s a bit of a challenge. The kids are seriously rowdy but are eager to learn. It´s hard to give them all the attention they need. They constantly surprise me with how much they know or how fast they learn and they would do so well if they had some individual attention. I have the advantage of being really ¨cool¨ so they respect me. The eighth graders think they´re too cool for school but I think secretly want to learn.

Ok, my break is over, time to get back to class. Send me your questions etcetera to smiller@lclark.edu

Sara