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Published: March 9th 2008
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Here we are, back in Vang Vieng, Laos, home of the famous "tubing-down-the-river" activity. This time, however, as well as bar hopping down the river, I had a more noble purpose - volunteering at the local school to teach English.
We have been here a week now. On the Saturday, I went along to the Organic Farm, which organizes all of the volunteers, and asked how I could help out. I'd been expecting that, as we only have a week, they'd place me in a classroom helping the regular teacher. However, when they found out that I was a teacher back home, they said that they'd split one of the classes and I would be the lead teacher for the week. They then mentioned that the top 9 or 10 kids would stay with the regular teacher for "advanced lessons" whilst the remaining 40 or 50 kids would come to me! 40 or 50?!! Eeeek! It's times like this when you really appreciate the California law requiring primary classrooms to have 20 or less students! They also failed to mention at first that the kids ranged in age from only four years old to 13. Quite a daunting task!
Now, a week later, I have successfully finished my time there. It was a lot of work compared to my usual travelling days (but I guess that goes without saying!), but worth it. It was actually an after-school voluntary class, so I was very impressed with the numbers of kids that showed up each day. My job was to review all of the vocabulary they have been learning by planning a series of games and activities. Luckily, I had 3 to 5 volunteers helping me out every day, so I could split the kids into smaller groups and do stations, kind of like ExCEL (for those of you teaching at Buellton!). The difference was, we had absolutely no resources, not even a whiteboard as we were outside on the grass. It was very strange at first as I am so used to having lots of fantastic teaching aides at my fingertips, but it also showed me that you can actually achieve quite a lot without many resources at all!
The kids were great - they have so little but seem so happy. Each day they'd greet us all with "sabaidee", hands pressed together, and after each class, they'd hug
us all and shout "see you tomorrow!", running after the tuk-tuk as it drove all of the volunteers back to town.
Yesterday, as I was not working, we went down the river again and it was as fun as ever. When the tuk tuk dropped us off at the start of the river, which happens to be by the organic farm, I noticed for the first time the sign on the bar there: "Drink for the children!". It struck me as funny, but I guess lots of fund- raising is done through events involving alcohol. Still, a wierd phrase in my book!!! However, if some of the proceeds of all those Beer Lao's and organic mojitos go to help the kids I taught for the week, hand me another - cheers!!!
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Mum
non-member comment
Mind you don't overdo it !!
Glad to see you've decided to do a bit of work at last, pity us poor souls who do it for 39 weeks of the year!! To be fair though it didn't sound an easy task out there, but a good experience all the same. Mum xx