Teacher’s day volunteering!

On the teacher’s day, I along with other students of my grade volunteered to take classes in younger grades, so that the teachers could take a break for that day. We dressed up as teachers and then proceeded to organize fun learning interactive activities in grade 7. We designed one activity to test the math skills of the students, we divided the class and then conducted a quiz, the other activity was designed to test creativity and sales techniques. We asked to students to design an advertisement for a vacation in Maldives. After this, we organized a khokho and kabbadi game for the students.

Through this activity, I was exposed to multiple situations where I had to manage young students, I also had to think creatively to come up with activities which would keep the students interested but also, provided them a learning experience. I identified that while creative thinking for games and activities was a strength of mine, but I realized, that management skills could be something I could work on. I felt good about my creativity as the students told us that they really enjoyed the activities, but at certain times I felt helpless as I could not manage and pay attention to every student at the same time. Maybe if I had better management skills, it would’ve been an even more fluent and enjoyable experience.

This activity was a new challenge for me as I am not used to taking care of children and don’t spend a lot of time around children as I do not have a lot of cousins either. The experience wasn’t as terrifying as I had expected it to be as I had already asked a few of my friends ( who had done this before ) about how I should prepare and behave with the students, which made it easy to overcome this challenge. Through this challenge, I also learnt teamwork and creative thinking, as I had to work with 2 of my other friends prior to the activity to plan out the schedule and activity of the kids. I also learnt how to be open to ideas, as we had a lot of different ideas for the activities and to be patient with younger students. These skills will help me when I will repeat this activity or go to NGO schools to teach children or plan activities for other events.

I am usually comfortable with working with others as long as they have the same thinking patterns as I do, but it was not the case this time, which developed me to be more open minded which will help me when I am planning other activities, I also felt good that I could be patient and listen, but I still have a long way to go.

There were various ethical issues that I had to keep in mind, I had to be careful that I was behaving patiently and appropriately with the students, I also had to make sure that I was making the most efficient use of their time as well as ours which made us plan fun – LEARNING activities, I also had to be open minded so that there were no major verbal disagreements among the people who were planning the activities and to pay proper attention and heed to the instructions of the organizers. These issues made me feel like I was turning into a more patient person.

Overall, I had a fun new experience, which tested my creativity and social skills.