I have to say that we are getting busier by the day! Joanna and I have been helping whenever we can and as much as we can.

One of the many tasks that we did yesterday was that we had the opportunity to co-teach a Level 2 ESL class! Our facilitator was unable make it to the session, so Joanna and I took over the class. We received our “lesson plan” worksheets an hour before the session started – I thought of this experience like a TOC, since a lot of TOCs get called hours before they come in and the lesson plans/instructions are given to them on the day of; sometimes, a few minutes beforehand!

It was a wonderful way to meet with the seniors and to help them build more English vocabularies. We learned about the weather today! Along with teaching students vocabularies, we have also helped them practice their pronunciation and writing skills.

Some interesting teaching observations that I noticed from co-teaching the senior students is that even though they are adults, but they are still students. I still had to adjust and control my volume so students can hear me clearly. I still had to call names if students are talking over me while I deliver instructions  – even though it seemed like they were just learning English by reading out loud to themselves. I still had to capture everyone’s attention by giving students signals, such as “OK, everyone. Can we have your attention please.” or “Shh.. let’s respect each other’s opinion and space.” I still had to be careful of the time so that we don’t teach one thing for too long. Furthermore, most importantly, we still had to make the lesson engaging as possible. Joanna and I thought of many different ways to engage students’ learning. For instance, we created a dialogue for students to “perform” and act out conversations in realistic situations. We also sang songs by incorporating the vocabularies we learned earlier, but also branching off to other related topics.

Overall, it was certainly an interesting and eye-opening experience to teach adults! I had a wonderful time teaching the students. 😀

Our day 3 started off with a program meeting. Essentially, the program meeting is to get a chance to see what and how other members of the team is doing, mostly on preparing the conference. This was also the opportunity to introduce us Teacher Candidates to the rest of the Learning Exchange event coordinators.

In the afternoon, we continued to make button blankets from yesterday. While we were making button blankets, we have been meeting patrons during our drop-in session. I have to say… it was very interesting chatting with them. What did we chat about? All sorts of things. I never knew how knowledgeable those patrons are, but depending on the topic of interest of course.

For instance, I participated in the math club for the part of the afternoon on the ground floor drop-in area. The president of the math club, one of many patrons. He showed us a variety of math-related educational websites, pictures, and video clips; many that I have yet to explore myself! I could see how enthusiastic the members are in the math club. As an another example, one of the videos we were watching was a TED Talk by a high school science (aerospace program) teacher in Texas named Colin R. Lang. I’ve learned that Mr. Lang has taught students project-based education/learning, where he inspired hundreds of students to participate in building rockets by making connections to the real world using the principles of mathematics and science. It was certainly eye-opening TED Talk, especially in the field of education! Without the math club at LE, I would not have known about this amazing way of teaching and learning, and how important math is to us.

We will be continuing to visit the Drop-ins whenever we can!

Our day is becoming busier! We were helping with the conference for majority of our times. Our day started off with safety procedure of the building – i.e. where the emergency exits are, how to use the keys to the building, how to interact with patrons (and learners) while respecting their and our space, and other areas that we needed to be aware of. The meeting was very useful to us.

After lunch, we started making the button blankets for the conference on “Threading Our Stories”. The purpose of the button blanket creative lounge activity is to allow everyone in our DTES community to interweave our lives in a form of the Musqueam blanket.

While making the button blanket, I was pulled into an ESL class teaching senior students with Level 0 English-writing and reading activity. I taught the senior students for roughly 15-20 minutes before the Facilitator came in on pronunciation and spelling. After that, I got a chance to observe the Facilitator teach the students, which was wonderful. I have learned a lot from teaching and observing the class. I have to say that teaching senior students are very different than teaching younger, high school students! I quite enjoyed my teaching even though it was only 15-20 minutes. The seniors were very welcoming!

After our teaching, I had a chance to play mah-jong (a Chinese tile game) with a Facilitator and other patrons. It was very fun to play mah-jong even though I had no prior knowledge of how to play this game. I was grateful to have the Facilitator and the patrons teach me! 😀

Hello everyone!

This is my first written blog of my Community Field Experience at the UBC Learning Centre, located at the heart of Chinatown, Vancouver. Today is my first day! I am very glad to be working with Joanna as part of our field experience.

Our day started at 9 a.m. with a brief orientation of what to do and what are expected when working at the Learning Exchange. After our orientation, Joanna and I toured for 2 hours around Chinatown. I have to say – this is a very interesting neighbourhood! I see that the neighbourhood is comprised of the old with the new. This juxtaposition of the old and the new brings a diversified and authentic environment to the community as a whole. We went to a lot of galleries and stores hosted by local shopkeepers and artists – although some stores weren’t open until 11 a.m. – but thankfully others were open, so we were able to go inside and explore! We also visited the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Garden in Chinatown, and explored various shops that sell Chinese artifacts and stationery.

After our tour, we headed back to the LE for lunch, and we met with other LE staff, which was wonderful. For the rest of the day, we were left on our own with reading materials on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), which is a strategy that the DTES (Downtown East Side) thrives upon.

We have already assigned our tasks for the week, which mainly revolves around preparing for the conference that the UBC Learning Exchange will be presenting at the Japanese Language School on May 3 and 4!