My Experience as a Volunteer Teacher

   "Susan, I'll miss you, don't forget me," a girl wrote to me on the first page of a notebook. The notebook was a collection of the lyrics of her favorite songs. It was a present given by one of my students when I attended the 'Go-to-the-countryside' program last summer holiday. Every time I open the notebook, it brings back fond memories. 

Last summer vacation, for the purpose of serving society and meeting other social communities, nine of my classmates, including me, formed a group as a service team heading for GaoTan Middle School, which is in the remote mountain area of Guangdong Province.

We spent one week there, mainly teaching the students English, as planned. We had known ahead of time that their English was inferior to their counterparts' in the city. And what was worse, they didn't like learning English. So we came up with a logo and carefully chose four topics for our students. The logo was: I'm not shy, I can speak English loudly." The four topics were: my dream, my family, my hometown and what a wonderful world. We intended to inspire their interest of learning English and help them build the confidence of speaking English out loudly. We exerted ourselves to create a very active and relaxed atmosphere while teaching. In addition, the topics were suitable for us to communicate with them and build up a good relationship. 

At the beginning of each class, our students were asked to shout out the logo. And it was clear that they were very happy to shout in English. The content of our lessons was closely related to the four topics. We also covered moral education while teaching. In class, we showed great happiness for any progress made, such as a correct pronunciation, a right spelling, a brave answer, etc. 

Although the time we spent together was short, we and our students became good friends. When we had to leave them, they gave us lots of little gifts expressing their appreciation of our teaching. The lyrics notebook was the one I liked best.

The 'Go-to-the-countryside' program has been very hot among university students in recent years. Our team was just one in hundreds of teams across the country, and I myself am just one in thousands of volunteer teachers. There is a standard of judging teachers: the mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, the great teacher inspires. I am wondering what category of teachers I belong to. Maybe my future students will have the answer to that question.