Juliana TS#16

Since all of my three tutees left the country and I only needed one more tutoring session, I decided to go to the Library. One of my private yoga clients referred me to a woman who runs a program at the Leon County Public Library called Literacy Volunteers of Leon County. I went in to meet with a woman named Karen Strange. I told her that I was interested in joining this program as a volunteer. She was thrilled to hear that I had already finished my 7 weeks of classes for the TEFL course. This meant I would not need to go through training as many of the other volunteers do since most people come in with no experience at all. We talked for a while and she gave me a booklet detailing the program. In the booklet there was a weekly schedule with all of the group tutoring times on it. She told me to come sit in on one of the sessions that week to get a feel for what the program is like. this blog post is about that tutoring session.

The class I sat in on was in the afternoon led by another woman named Karen. Apparently there are several Karens involved with this program. There were only three students in the class: one woman from Vietnam whom I recognized from CIES, another woman from Iran, and a man from Turkey. Unfortunately, I cannot recall their names. This session was discussion based. Karen led the discussion and began by asking everyone how they were doing and how their weeks have been so far. This segued into a lengthy discussion about the recent uprising/internal attack against the Turkish government. The Turkish man in the group knew some people back home that had died in the attack and he also knew some people who were involved in orchestrating it, although he says he had no idea they were going to revolt until it happened. We then discussed the political turmoil in his country for quite a while and that moved us into a conversation about government interference in personal space when it comes to protecting the country against terrorist. The students had different views on this topic, which was interesting to hear.

We then moved on to the topic of the TOEFL and the GRE. The woman from Iran was preparing to take both in a couple of weeks. She was very nervous about it. We talked about the problems she has with the exam and what she can do to improve her score. Some of the other students who had already taken it had some study suggestions for her.

This was fun for me because I was not only observing the session but I was also able to participate in the discussion. I asked the students questions and prompted them to think differently. It was fun! I also learned quite a bit about the political structure of Turkey.