Today we took our fieldtrip to Bright Stars College to teach English lessons for the afternoon and to share some ideas and experiences with the teachers there. The director of Saint Charles planned this trip for us and he has also volunteered us to serve there in the afternoon for the remainder of this week. I felt lucky to see another bi-lingual school in the area and was happy to oblige our directors desire to “share the Americans” with his affiliates. The Bright Stars College is a much smaller school than Saint Charles and this basic difference changed the dynamic of the leaning environment a lot. I wish that I could have taken more pictures of the inside of their recreation and kitchen facility as it is annexed from the rest of the school across the street is a beautiful old building. To spend time in this building alone was worth the trip and day of service as it was stunningly beautiful. I will post some photos later this week and you will see what I mean. The size of the student body affects the learning because often the levels are combined for lessons as there may be less than ten students in each age group. Bright Stars is a new school and their population is still young and growing. Also the school’s resources are in the development stages; we were able to help the teachers go through some new resources such as books, posters and flashcard sets that they had just received and not yet gone through. We helped them to identify what we felt were very useful and also to explain some things about the phonics learning tools that the teachers were not trained to use (like us, they did not learn much phonics in grade school; but they also didn’t receive the phonics training like we did at University). It was rewarding for us to be able to explain the usefulness of these tools for teaching phonics to the teachers at Bright Stars because we have not encountered any phonics based teaching methods at Saint Charles. We have been missing our phonics because it is such a large part of the curriculum that we have learned at NMU and use it so often at the schools in Michigan.
We will be attending parent night tomorrow evening at Bright Stars and will be given the opportunity to briefly discuss the meaning for our visit. More importantly I will be proud to emphasize the value that I place on the type of bi-lingual learning environment that Bright Stars is providing for its students. Our service out side of Saint Charles has also continued to grow each day as we are now attending three sections of evening school at the Hilton Language Academy. We will be volunteering almost every evening for the remainder of our trip as we have had open invitations to help out in both adult groups and the teenage course as well. Our participation in these classes has been valued by both the students attending as well as by the teachers who appreciate the extra support as we break up into small groups and help the students with discussions and practice. I am going to miss being surrounded with such enthusiasm for learning when I come home I think I will be inspired to start some kind of adult learning club for Spanish enthusiasts. There is just something about attending a course where everyone is working so happily to learn that makes me feel great about being a teacher.
