Connecting With The Community: Volunteering As An English Tutor
Wanting to have a richer Kiwi knowledge and experience, I decided to be a volunteer at UniCrew. Sze-En Watts, the co-ordinator of UniCrew, matched my interest in teaching with the role of a teaching assistant at English Language Partners Dunedin (ELPD). I got in touch with Jude Thomson, one of the teachers of ELPD. When I visited her class in the city, I was also introduced to Alison Tait, who shared the teaching with Jude. My role as a teaching assistant was to help students cope with the class activities, explaining what their teachers wanted them to do. The class of about 13 students was a different and refreshing educational environment to me. Students of diverse socio-cultural backgrounds and age range wanted to learn English for different purposes such as from daily or workplace conversation to preparing for further English classes. I volunteered for 2 hours every week at these classes. My past teaching experiences and multicultural upbringing enabled me to give exa