Day 3: Visiting Carlos Rosario Charter School

I woke up in the morning, sleepy but on the same hand determined to get to breakfast on time. So, I got ready, had breakfast and met up with the group of students who were going to the Carlos Rosario Charter School. One half of the students is doing it today and the other half will do it tomorrow. As is evident from the title of the post, I went there today. Just to give you a brief of the school, it's a school where they equip students as well as

adults with valuable skills so that they can get a job and enter the mainstream American society. Most of the students are emigrants to America who are having a hard time finding a job due to language barriers and/or lack of skills. This kind of school is called a Charter School and I really liked the concept of it because I can see how it can benefits adults in so many ways. They can learn, no matter how old they are and improve their lives by acquiring new skills. I was extremely lucky to have been given a chance to observe one of the English classes at the school. It should come as no surprise that all the students were older than me, their ages ranging from 18 to 60. It was really interesting to find that some students attended school and had a full-time job as well. In the class, I made myself at ease, joined a group of students and helped them with what they were doing. I also made useful obsevations about methods that the teacher was using to teach English. I thought the teacher was very effective in teaching as he was encouraging students and also engaging them in discussions. 

After the observation, we got to take some pictures with the principal and then we headed to American Councils for more sessions. The first session we had when we came was using memoirs as a tool in English teaching. It was really valuable to know how you could use student's personal experiences to get them talking about things and then writing about them. Students do best when what they are doing things that relate to them and so I think I would love to use memoirs in my classroom. In the next session, I learnt about effective classroom management strategies; how to get students energized, how to deal with disruptive students, how to arrange seating in a classroom, how to evaluate students' performances and how to encourage quiet students to start talking. As with all other sessions, this session was really useful; I particularly liked learning about dealing with disruptive students as it's a constant problem that teachers in my country face and so knowing ways to deal with it is pretty exciting for me. 

After the sessions, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant nearby. The food was so delicious. Unfortunately, I don't know the names of the dishes but I can definitely say that I loved them. There were two kinds of chicken dishes which I had with rice( I love chicken!!). Not only was the food good, but the excitement of all of the students was so great. 8 of us sat around one big table and we chatted and chatted and took selfies and what not! It was a delightul evening but not the last part of the day. After dinner, we had to meet with our groups( mine is Owls) and prepare a 15 minute English lesson to be delivered on Thursday or Friday. I didn't get a lot done but I'm happy that we'll be given more time tomorrow.

Day 2: Realization that this workshop is work, not just fun!!

Today marked the first big realization that this workshop is work and not all about fun. By the end of the day, I was dead tired and as soon as I got in my bed, my brain forced me to sleep even though I didn't want to. I woke up in the morning at 6:30 and didn't come to my room until 10:30 at night. However, this is not to say that the Workshop is boring. It is instead very fun, interactive and effective and the excitement that's in the air is just incredible.

First thing in the day was breakfast. I was left awed at the range of different options I had for breakfast; baked potatoes, pancakes with maple syrup, all kinds of fruit drinks and ofcourse tea and coffee, not to forget all the fruits as well as doughnuts, muffins,bread and butter, eggs and cereals. It was just too much to choose from. I ended up having pancakes, potatoes, banana and a drink, all my breakfast favorites!! Then, we walked to the American Councils building which is a short walk from the hotel. That's where we had all our sessions. Getting a taste of DC after about seven months felt like a totally new experience. I loved walking in that cool and breezy morning air and looking at all those colorful and not-so-tall buildings. I had my camera with me( which I managed to borrow from my high school after a lot of pleading) and so I was able to take some really nice pictures. I not only took the pictures of the city but also my fellow students as I know everybody likes their picture taken. 

Once we reached American councils, we started in full swing with the Workshop material. The day started with a lecture from the US State Department's Youth Programs Staff who told us about the different resources we could use for teaching English. They showed us their their website called Amrican english where we can find a lot of relevant material, acitivites and games, all related to teaching English. Whitney Mirts, one of the staff, also talked about how we could get help with our teaching projects in our own home countries from Regional English Language Officers(RELOs). It was really interesting to know about that. Later, we had a session on English Language Teaching basics, which was conducted by Kyle, who seems to be the head of the program. He taught us about experiential learning i.e making students learn stuff by having them experience it. As an example, he asked some people to come up front and taught them some basic spanish sentences with the help of signs and his own speaking in Spanish. Instead of telling the students that they were going to learn some Spanish sentences, he actually had the students get that experience which I believe was more effective. We had a couple other sessions on topics like lesson planning and encouraging communication in a classroom. Lesson planning, I beleive was really helpful for me as it really is an important part of teaching; before teachers teach something, they have to know how they're going to teach it. 

The sessions went on for quite a while. We had some bathroom and water breaks whiich was good. Also, one thing that I forgot to mention is that during lunch time, all of the students got to meet the volunteers who evaluate applications for this workshop and for the exchage programs as a whole. It was really nice talking to them and knowing why they were so interested in volunteering thier time to exchange programs. 

Guess what the funnest part of the day was... No wonder, it was the trips; trips to Thomas Jefferson Memorial and Lincoln Memorial and Dr King's Memorial and let's all never forget the White House. It was cold and it was night time which really added to the atmosphere. A volunteer named Tim gave us a brief intro behind the 3 personalites and I thought that was pretty useful. I no doubt took a lot of pictures as they were all great palces!!!

For dinner, I had rice and Indian style chicken from a nearby retaurant which was delicious. Plus, the amazing company of my exchange studmet friends really brightened things up. I atill can't forget all that Bollywood singing of the songs that we did during the bus rides. The day ended on a really high note and I am so very pumped for tomorrow( not to mention that I also think it's gonna be tiring).

First Day: Introductions and Meeting Fellow Exchange Students

So, today is the first day of the workshop that I have been looking forward to attend for about two months now. It's called the Workshop for Youth Leaders in Teaching English( WYLTE) and this is the third year that the workshop is being organized. It is a very selective workshop and that is evident from the fact that out of the total 433 exchange students that applied, only 32 got in. I can't express how delighted and excited I feel to be a participant of such a prestigious workshop. Teaching is my passion and attending this workshop will really help boost my teaching skills and take them to a whole new level.

As you may guess, the day started with flight to DC. I flew from Hadley International Airport which is about 1 and a half hour away from my host town, Brattleboro Vermont. It was not a super long flight but it was tiring. When I reached the airport, I was so excited to see the exchange students from different countries. I approached almost all of them, introduced myself to them and took a lot of selfies with them. After having lunch at the airport, we set out for Embassy Suites, the hotel that we are going to be staying in for the week. There, I met more students who had  arrived either earlier or later than I did. It may come as a shock that all the 32 participants of the Workshop represented 22 countries in total. That's pretty diverse; there are students from Ghana, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ulraine, Bangladesh, South Africa, Pakistan, Russia, Bosnia, Indonesia, Kuwait to name a few. I was extremely delighted to know that there is one other Pakistani participant besides me and that one of the mentors, Moiz Rehan is from Pakistan as well. 

At around supper time, all the students gathered in the hotel for dinner. I had a really fun time with all my friends. We sang songs, took pictures and talked about our experiences. Also, the chicken pizza that I got was delicious and so was the chocolate cake. Perhaps, the most exciting time was when the sessions started. In session 1, we were told the agenda for week and were also introduced to our mentors for the week. The most fun part was the ice-breaker activity. For this activity, we were given a sheet with a list of 34 questions; questions like your favorite pet or gift or food etc. The task was to get responses for those questions from the people in the room. The challenging part was that that one person could do one response and also, the person giving the response had to sign their name on the world map printed at the back of the sheet. This activity really got me going and I got so enthusiatic. After about 10 minutes, we had our winner who had all the 34 reponses in the least amount of time.  After this activity, the students were divided up in 4 groups: the owls, the tigers, the elephants and the crocodiles. Each group went to a different place to discuss a few things about the workshop. I was with the owls so I went with them. Our mentor had us do some more icebeakers which was very fun; for example we had to arrange oursrlves by height and by grandma's name and by our age in a limited time. We were really good at that. During the discussion, we talked about some of the things we really want to take from this workshop and some specific teaching strategies that we have found to be very effective. That was a fun and useful comversation and when we met with all the other geoups, each of the groups shared their goals. It was nice to see such a diversity of opinions. That marked the end of Day 1. There are lots of things coming up in the upcoming days and I am ready to make use of every learning opportunity I have during this week.