Teaching members of the Housekeeping Staff in the School
Our tutor group’s MAD project comprises teaching members of the housekeeping staff in the school basic communication skills in English, including writing and speaking, in order to help them communicate with others better in a host of situations they may encounter in their daily lives.
We had initially considered various proposals for our MAD project, such as working at an orphanage with underprivileged children, or collecting wasted food from nearby hotels and distributing it to those in danger of starving. However, at the same time, we really wanted to do something different to ‘make a difference’, that was never taken up before- we thus decided to look inwards and help our housekeeping staff, to whom we owed a large part of our school experience.
Every Friday, we have been taking turns to teach small hour-long lessons to the staff on a variety of topics ranging from vocabulary related to the ‘self’, to interacting with a person for the first time. Making power point presentations and planning speaking activities for our lessons have enabled us implement the Creativity component of the CAS programme fruitfully.
We had initially considered various proposals for our MAD project, such as working at an orphanage with underprivileged children, or collecting wasted food from nearby hotels and distributing it to those in danger of starving. However, at the same time, we really wanted to do something different to ‘make a difference’, that was never taken up before- we thus decided to look inwards and help our housekeeping staff, to whom we owed a large part of our school experience.
Every Friday, we have been taking turns to teach small hour-long lessons to the staff on a variety of topics ranging from vocabulary related to the ‘self’, to interacting with a person for the first time. Making power point presentations and planning speaking activities for our lessons have enabled us implement the Creativity component of the CAS programme fruitfully.
In an effort to assist their learning, we also integrated other components into these sessions - in order to meet the Action objective for example, we teach and play a sport with the men; in this case, volleyball skills, with a view to fostering team spirit by offering them something over and above just a simple classroom experience.
Having taught the staff for a few months, we can now appreciate the challenges faced by teachers when trying to teach others a completely new language- an experience that has given us newfound sense of gratitude towards our IB teachers. Even the simplest of tasks such as motivating the staff to speak in class have proven to be difficult. We now know that being a teacher is much more than just knowing a subject well. Showing enthusiasm and passion for the subject coupled with an aptitude for teaching, works wonders in language teaching, and we owe it to our MAD project for having given us such an invaluable experience. Interestingly, in our attempt to have made a difference, the MAD project has also “made a difference” to our lives too!