MY EXPERIENCE DEVELOPING THE SOCIAL SERVICE

First, I want to say that I didn’t make a great effort looking for opportunities in which I could develop my social service. As a result, I looked for just 2 options that were either to teach English in a school or in the City Hall of my community. At the very beginning, it wasn’t easy to decide, but I guess I made the best decision that was to teach in a school that is to 15 minutes from my house. 

Second, I have to admit I never have wanted to become a teacher when it comes to the professional environment. Nevertheless, when it comes to social service there are not many options apart than teach, so I started teaching English in “Centro Escolar  José María Cáceres” in March and I was hoping to make it just in 6 months and I wasn’t expecting how it would finish at the end.

Third, my experience at the very beginning was awful given that I hadn’t experienced not only teaching, but also treating with people of different ages and behaviors. Consequently, I was disappointed because some grades didn’t care about my class and preferred to be talking or getting distracted doing other things. That was the moment in which I had to make a decision in which I had to make the effort to catch the attention of these students in order to maintain them paying attention and learning English and not getting distracted.  

Fourth, you could be asking what I did so as to solve it, and I decided it to try to improve my classes with different games and dynamics and tried to earn the respect of the students during the pass of the time. And I tell you that the most difficult period endured 3 months that was my adaptation to the students and the environment. On the other hand, the last 3 months were better because I had improved my classes and I had won even though a little bit the respect of the students.    

Fifth, I want to share with you the lessons and knowledge I won thanks to this experience and those are:

1. You have to be very well organized with your time and all the activities that you want to develop during the period of time you have stipulated so as to carry out the social service.
2. If you have to deliver the exams or the homeworks to the students do it personally due to if you don’t do it in this way it is possible that they don’t arrive to their owners.
3. You have to be patient if you don’t add the hours quickly given that when it comes to public institutions the suspensions of classes is really common caused by different reasons like: suspensions by rains, pedagogical pauses, local parties, etc.
4. I learned that there are different kinds of students with different learning processes.
5. You always find students that don’t care about the English class but pay special attention to the ones that are interesting and want to learn.