I’m going to tell you about the most challenging English Club in current existence. I have not directly spoken to every Peace Corps volunteer who organizes an English Club, but it seems that my English Club possesses unparalleled challenges. First, let me describe a “typical” English Club organized by a Peace Corps Volunteer. The club’s motivation could start either by the volunteer or by the request of the community.
The community members who participate in the English club would be youth or adults, or even a combination of both. Skill level can be all over the map. However, members do have some sort of grasp of the English language and have the motivation to strengthen their English skills. Even volunteers who do not teach English have English Clubs. For instance, two of my site-mates have English Clubs and they work in organizations.
Now, here goes a quick description of my English Club: zero grasp of the English language and more than 90% of its members are NOT interested in English. To be frank, I’m not sure what actually interests my English Club members. When I first arrived to site, my organization was hopeful and excited to start an English Club. World Vision partnered with the local government and opened a “Day Care Center” a few blocks away from our office. The term “Day Care Center” is used loosely.
This center functions as a crisis intervention center for vulnerable children in the community. The children are from abused homes, vulnerable families, or from the Roma community. Recently, the center got a license to actually host a small number of children full-time and live in the center temporarily. At this moment, we have 5 children who actually live in the center for the time being.
It goes without saying that my organization has the motivation to increase the skills of these children. This is where I come into play. They wanted me to organize an English Club for them and teach them English and I was ready for the challenge. The idea originated during the first few weeks I started at my organization in July 2016. I informed my organization that I have zero skills in teaching English, yet alone, teaching children. During college, I’ve participated in English conversational clubs with exchange students, but that is the extent of it. Thus, I have no professional skills in teaching English as a second language. It did not bother them, because, as an American, I was qualified enough.
Attempting to set up the English Club as a success, I “interviewed” the Day Care Center’s staff members. I uncovered several challenges during my discussions with the Day Care Center:
- They have six teachers on the payroll, but only two at a time teach together on a given day. The teacher’s schedule rotates and it is not fixed; therefore, setting up the English Club on a given day would mean different teachers each time. At first, I thought having consistency is key to foster the children’s learning.
- None of the teachers speak English. Thus, there would be no translator to co-teach the sessions. However, we mitigated this challenge by having the child psychologist essentially act as my co-teacher and translator. At this time, the child psychologist is the only English speaking staff member at the Day Care Center. This also poses another challenge because most of her work is in the field, therefore, determining the days she is in the center will also be difficult.
- The children’s attendance at the day care center is not consistent. Therefore, it would be impossible to have the lessons build-up on each other since I could not anticipate in advance which child will be attending.
- Some of the children are completely illiterate; therefore, using Georgian as a base language would even be difficult.
- The biggest challenge of all is that almost all of the children are completely uninterested. It has become apparent that keeping them engaged in any activity for an extended period of time is a chore.
- The second biggest challenge is that most of the children have some sort of behavioral problems since they have no structure or regular discipline in their daily lives.
Nevertheless, I persisted in setting up this English Club with my highly motivated organization. With the stated challenges above, I think it is easy to conclude that my English Club has not been easy. Some days I feel like I am Erin Gruwell (performed by Hillary Swank) in Freedom Writers (2007). Instead of at-risk teenagers in an underprivileged neighborhood, I have vulnerable, street children. Also, I am not a trained teacher by profession.
Curious on what an average English Club session looks like? I enter the Day Care Center filled with hugs and kisses. Then the children return to running around wildly in the center. It takes 20 minutes for Tamta and I to calm the children down and have them sit in chairs. Once they realize they might actually have to pay attention and learn something, at least one child misbehaves. The misconduct starts about 5 minutes into the lesson.
My first lesson included one child jokingly choking another one. By the time we were able to stop that form of bullying, we noticed two other kids were slapping each other. My second lesson included a nine-year-old constantly disrupting my lesson by stealing the markers out of my hand. On my third lesson, one child threw scissors across the room. I’ve also seen crying and yelling. My personal favorite is when they simply are like, “nope, not for me,” and they walk out.
The cool kids walk out around the 10-minute mark and then most of the kids follow. I’m left with a few kids sitting in a chair waiting to see what I would do. At that point, the lesson is deemed useless. Thus, the lesson abruptly concludes within 20 minutes.
However, there is one kid who is always the most excited to see me and gives me extra hugs and kisses. His name is Rati and he literally makes my day. He is the only one who pays extra attention and stays throughout the entire lesson.
Rati gives me hope that maybe I am teaching something to one of the kids, even though it is not English. I’m hoping that at leat my presence highlights the world’s diversity. That there is something beyond their current worldview. I could confidently say that he now knows that the United States has different states and one of them is California. He knows that people in America speak English. He also has seen different pictures of American food and famous attractions.
I also want to say that Rati is such a bright star. He is one of the children that currently lives in the Day Care Center full-time for the time being. Despite his rough childhood, he always full of love and positivity. For the longest time, I thought he was 9 years old because of his stature. I recently found out that he is actually 12 years old. I hope that despite his malnourished diet that maybe, just maybe, he will still grow happy and healthy.