Volunteering As A Team
Have you ever thought of sharing your skills by volunteering to teach a class? The Salvation Army is always looking for volunteers to help teach classes, or even to start your own class in something special to you. Our instructors aren’t required to have any teaching experience, just a passion and understanding of their subject.
If the prospect of volunteering each week and teaching a class on your own seems a little daunting, especially if you have no experience, co-teaching solves this problem.
Co-teaching a class helps remove stress and anxiety of having one person be responsible for all the work. It even helps relieve stage fright by creating another point of focus in the classroom. This method of instruction also enriches the learning experience by incorporating different ideas, skill levels and approaches, giving students a more rounded view of the subject.
Read about the experiences of two ESL co-teachers in Oceanside, Irl Stalcup and Diane Young.
Irl Stalcup
Irl started volunteering after
he retired because he wanted to interact with people in a fun and useful way. He felt uniquely suited to instruct a class with 13 years of experience teaching kids under his belt.
Co-teaching adults English is a whole new experience for him, Irl says, despite his background as a teacher. While they receive a lot of support from The Salvation Army Volunteer Center, he is grateful to have his co-teacher Diane, whom he credits with bringing creativity and a different perspective into their class. He also enjoys splitting the work between them.
“Karen Roth [from the Volunteer Center] is amazing and is always ready to offer us tips, but we still have to nd our own materials. It’s easy, because we nd all our stuff on the internet but it still takes time. Having
someone to share the workload with helps make the class more fun instead of a chore,”
Irl says, “One time Diane brought in a blender and we made smoothies, learning vocabulary through the ingredients and practicing speech through following instructions. I had never seen anything like it and would never have thought of something like that myself.”
Diane Young
Diane, a retired special needs teacher, was looking for a volunteer opportunity working directly with people when she discovered the ESL class in Oceanside. While she was used to having classroom aides, she had never been part of a “team-teaching” experience.
Diane is grateful her co-teacher, Irl, was so easy to work with. She feels that having a co-teacher is bene cial, especially for the students because they get double the effort.
“To me, the basics were really important, like letter sounds and vowels, you know, learning how to read and the rules of our language,” Diane says. “But Irl brought in real world scenarios, which is equally important. Its a lot of work because everyone is at different levels, but there is a lot on teaching ESL out there, and if you enjoy what you are doing, it doesn’t feel like work.”
Diane feels that volunteering, especially with people of a different culture, is incredibly important right now given the state of the world.
“With everything going on, all the hate and misunderstanding, volunteering can go a long way to helping us learn about and understand each other,” she says.