My First Week at the English Cafe!

Hey everyone! This past week, I completed my first two weeks of volunteering at the English Café at Northwest Regional Library. I can definitely say that this style of volunteering is a completely new experience for me, but I’ve also learned a lot from it.

My transition into becoming a classroom assistant for the English classes has been a smooth yet interesting process. I spent my first week observing the structure of the classes while assisting the instructors with lessons and helping students. The library offers three levels of English courses: beginner, intermediate, and mixed classes, and so far I’ve assisted in all of them. My responsibilities are to facilitate signing students in, engage in the lessons and converse with the students, assist students with English/grammar questions they may have, and support the instructor with any other classroom needs and tasks.

I was initially anxious on my first day of being a teaching assistant, but the volunteers have been very encouraging and friendly towards me so far, and the students that participate are eager to learn and very supportive, which has made the transition into the program seamless.

So far I’ve been successful at managing the English Café into my schedule, as it is pretty light as of right now. In a few weeks, I’ll be working at a summer camp, which will block out more of my day, and I’ll have to navigate how to manage my time well. I’m honestly not too worried about managing my time. Once I do start at the summer camp, it’ll be a matter of making sure I conserve energy throughout the day to be able to perform well at the volunteering in the evening, which shouldn’t be an issue.

The most difficult part of this process is getting more comfortable with assisting the students and having confidence in my own knowledge of English. There have been some occasions where I’ve been asked English grammar questions that I’m not fully sure of, or I was unable to answer other questions asked immediately. Going forward, I plan on doing more research on some of the questions the students ask so I’m better equipped to answer others who have the same questions next time.

Aside from that, I’ve been enjoying my time and I’m ready to see what’s in store!