My first year as a CBL Intern and my first ever blog- post!
One of the best things that CBL has helped me and further develop is my new interest in my life: volunteering at the Worcester Public Schools Adult Learning Center. Volunteering at WPS- Adult Learning Center this past fall semester and now continuing to volunteer during my spring semester is the best thing I could’ve done. I never in a billion years thought I would have been interested in going into the education world after college.
I remember my first day there, dropped off at 24 Chatham St. around 5:45 pm. I was early for once. I waited for Kashana, the night educator in charge, to tell me what I would be doing for the night. I sat on the bench, thinking to myself what I would be doing here because the only thing I knew beforehand was that I was helping out with technology classes, which was partially true. Now, I’m teaching those basic technology skills to 2 different beginner English classes. There’s times where I come up with new lessons for the classes, too. What can I say, I am a whole teacher now without being licensed and I love that!
A lot of the adults/students come from different cultural backgrounds – the majority of them are from South America, México, and the Caribbean. Others are Brazilian, Albanian, and from Sudan. At the beginning I was worried about interacting with these adults from various backgrounds and found it to be challenging for me because I didn’t know if I was going to be good at communicating well with all of them. Over time. that stopped being an issue because the students, myself, and the teachers worked together to help each other out. Every time I step foot into the classroom I just see smiles and laughs which brings me happiness and joy in the work I do with them because, not only are they learning, but I am as well. I remember I had these assumptions/ideas about people who teach because I didn’t feel I had the qualified skills that they do. Patience was one of them. I’m a person that easily gives up on things when I see them not working how they should be and blame it on myself which was something I didn’t realize I did in my life until I started volunteering there.
I am constantly growing as a person and gaining new skills that being a part of WPS Adult Learning Center has helped me without me knowing and I am forever glad of the community that I am a part of with them. Education, teaching, and being the one doing that is something that never crossed my mind in doing and now look at me. Even though I am not 100% sure of being a teacher, I am one step closer in knowing the path I want to go in life than before.
