Kari's Magical World of English Teaching

At the outset of our trip to Peru, we knew that Chad was going to be taking Spanish classes, but I wasn´t sure what I was going to do. I wanted to volunteer using my Spanish but not sure in what capacity. My second day in town, I found an organization called Traveller Not Tourist. It was created by a young couple from England and Peru who wanted to help the many people living in poverty in Peru. Since tourism is such a big industry in Arequipa, they decided to give people in the community more options for their future by teaching them English. In 2008 they built a free English school in Flora Tristan, which is a low income community located about 1 hour outside of Arequipa by bus.

My new volunteer position with Traveller Not Tourist (TNT) was to teach English to kids aged 9 to 14. I was very hesitant to accept because I had absolutely no experience working with kids. However, one of the reasons I like to travel is to challenge myself to grow in new ways, and I knew this would definitely be an opportunity for growing and stretching myself.

Here's a picture of me outside of the school:

My routine was pretty much the same every day during my stay in Arequipa. I met a couple of the other volunteers for lunch and then took a local bus to Flora Tristan at 1:30. Taking the public buses was usually an adventure-- they were always super packed since it was lunchtime (people go home for lunch) and one time I lost count at fifty people on a bus about half the size of US school or city buses! We usually arrived around 2:30 which gave us time to clean and prepare for class.

Classes were from 3:30 to 4:30. The students were fun and always greeted us with "Hola, Teacher!" This school is free and open to anyone in the community who wants to learn English. Since it's optional, all of the students actually want to be there, which was a welcome change from some of my students back home. There are currently four different classes at the school- one with three to five year olds, another with students aged 6 to 8, mine with students aged 9 to 14 and another with older students from ages 15 and up (the oldest student was about 30 years old). The school has been growing over the last year with the construction of a new building and also an increase in the number of volunteers.

After class we all (students and teachers) headed to the "cancha" for soccer, volleyball, jumprope or other games we made up. Here's playtime at the cancha one day a day when there were very few students there.
As the sun set each evening we headed for the bus. The sunsets were beautiful:

We took the bus back home around 6:00. Here's a picture of us headed for the bus as the sun set:
It was always a pretty sight to walk to the bus as the light of the setting sun reflected on Volcano Misti. In this picture you can see a bit of the town. It's very dusty since there's no pavement and also there's no running water to the houses. People go to the public water spigots once a week (when the water flows) and fill up big drums of water for the week. I have such a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of not having water at home.

In spite of the poverty there, kids are kids. It was entertaining to be at the school. Teaching at the school really kept me on my toes. There wasn't a syllabus and there was no book. In addition, attendance wasn't regular... some days there were fourteen students and others there were three. Oh, and many days there were new beginner students sitting next to their friends who'd been taking classes since March. It was challenging, that's for sure, and I never knew what to expect.

As I mentioned, the school has grown significantly over the last year with the completion of this building, so they've never had to address curriculum or competency levels, which was not easy for me and the other volunteers who didn't know where to start when we arrived. We took it upon ourselves to write a new handbook for new volunteers with the history of the school and a description of each class. Aside from all of its difficulties, it was fun every day to go to the school to see who would be there and what would happen.

I had a couple of favorite students (yes, the rumors are true - teachers do have favorites sometimes!): Janella, Maria Isabel and Carlos. Janella's first day was during my second week at the school. She was really shy in class but tried hard to learn. Maria Isabel's a really kind girl and an attentive student. Carlos loves to laugh and loved to shout out the answers first in class.


Here's Maria Isabel:

This is Marta, one of my other favorite students. Her first day was my third. She's really, really sweet and was eager to learn English. We had lots of fun together working on her pronunciation.

This is Pilar. She was the most consistant student and has been going to the school since March. Let her tell you something about herself...

Pilar from Chad Carson on Vimeo.

Here are a couple of my other students- Daisy was new to the school like me and regularly came to class ready to learn. Carlos is kneeling. Oscar (on my right) has developmental issues and can't write, but he was always the first one to arrive each day and greet us with a smile and ask, "How are you?"

After two weeks of having to write out the alphabet every time we had to spell something, I was inspired to paint the alphabet on the wall of the classroom with a couple of my students. When I left it wasn't quite completed but that's where the new volunteers take over.

The volunteers are always changing at the school. I worked with an awesome group who was super friendly. It was so fun to get to know people from all over the world with similar interests (traveling and volunteering). Dani and Victoria are from Australia. Marisa and Maia are from Holland. Julia's from Scotland, and later Kath came from England and Jim and Karen came from the US. The number of volunteers at the school varied all of the time. A couple of days after I got there Marisa and Maia left, and a couple of days before I left group of six new volunteers arrived to take over for those of us who were leaving.

Here's Dani, Victoria, me and Julia taking a break from volleyball and soccer on the cancha. It was cool to work together on a worthwhile project. Also, they had been traveling a bunch before volunteering in Arequipa... Dani in Buenos Aires and Bolivia, Victoria in Uruguay, and Julia in British Columbia. It was great to hear about their experiences and get advice. They were all continuing on with their travels after volunteering, and hopefully in future travels we can meet up again someday.

Here's Jim, my teaching buddy from Baltimore in front of our classroom. We taught our class together, which was awesome having someone to help with the group when the class was large.

Here's Karen (from NYC) in front of the really pretty mural that other volunteers painted. It was at the end of the day so you can see the beautiful view of the sun setting on the mountains.

One day the students picked some flowers for us, even for teacher Jim.

All in all, I really enjoyed my volunteering experience in Arequipa. It didn't turn out to be what I was expecting- good practice using and improving my Spanish. I spoke mostly English since I was teaching English to my students and the other volunteers didn't speak much Spanish. I did, however, get to use my teaching background to develop a criteria to place new students in the class fitting for their level. I also improved as a teacher since I had to come up with new games and activities for young students. More than anything, though, I overcame my anxiety of working with children. Most importantly, in this entire process I grew as a person.