Milt Diehl is Global Volunteers' American team leader for Hungary service programs. He recently reflected on the "magic" that happens in English language classrooms when volunteers and students work together.Frequently on a service program, volunteers will come to me and report: “my schedule keeps getting changed all the time. They keep adding classes and the teachers are inviting me back to the same class many times because the students have asked for me to come back.”
Volunteers offer the students, who range in age from 10 years old to in their 60's and 70's, the opportunity to expand their personal development in a positive and beneficial way. Frequently adult students come to the free English language classes because they need to improve their language skills because of their work and are looking for a promotion (in their jobs) as they demonstrate increased English language proficiency.
The learning in a community is like casting a pebble into a pond. The “small rings of gentle waves” extend further into a community than one might first realize. It is not just what is taught in two weeks that is important but it is the impact of a continuous series of teams of volunteers who keep returning to a community and working with the residents. For those team leaders and volunteers who return to the same site many times it is possible for them to witness the progress over a period of time. Frequently the “local teachers of English” have already provided the students with the ability to communicate in English, but the student does not realize how much they have learned until they communicate with a native English speaking person for the first time and realize that yes, they understand what they are hearing, and the native English speaking person is understanding what I am saying. The confidence and motivation that students experience continues for a long period after the volunteers have returned to their homes.Not only do the Hungarian teachers want the volunteers to come to their classes, but frequently the students request the volunteers for their classrooms. At some schools, it's common for students to approach the volunteers and invite them to come to their classes. On one occasion, a student specifically obtained approval of a local teacher, who the volunteer knew, and then the student's mother herself likewise contacted the volunteer with class times and days. This is an example of how students, teachers and parents interact with the volunteers and want their children to interact with “native English speakers.”
As important as teaching English is to the students, there is something that's even more important. The service programs provide the volunteers and residents of the host community an opportunity to live together, work together, share information about each others cultures, families, and realize very quickly that even though we live in different locations on planet earth we as people are so much more alike than we are different. There are strong bonds that are established in such a short time that seamlessly crosses over age, gender, and culture which will last for years. People realize that they have so much in common that mutual confidence, trust, and respect for each other that relationships last for years.
In some communities, the volunteers are the first native English speakers to whom the Hungarian teachers of English have ever talked to. Frequently the local English teachers are reluctant at first to talk because they are afraid to make a mistake. Very quickly they realize we can communicate and that is when the real fun and learning starts. By the volunteers teaching the Hungarian teachers, the new information and knowledge is passed on to the students for years after these volunteers have departed for home. It's magic.
