Teaching to Learn

As I walked through the mountains of Poland to a castle, surrounded by children, I realized this experience has taught me more about the world than I have ever known before. After study abroad, I signed up for a program called Angloville, where native English speakers go to a camp with polish children to teach them conversational English. Every day we have 6 meetings with children, 3 game times, 1 social time, and all meals together. The goal is to immerse the children in an English speaking environment within their own country. These children are astonishing to watch, as they learn and adapt so well. Today, we went on a hike through the forest to make it to a castle. The journey included 3 miles up a mountain, one cave that was pitch black, and a total of 44 flights of stairs. Needless to say, their English wasn’t the only thing getting a workout. Once we reached the castle we were able to see an amazing view of the polish countryside.

Every evening we have a social time, and today myself and one other native speaker were in charge of coming up with the activity. We chose to teach dance, since I have danced my whole life and she has been a Zumba instructor. We had an absolute blast dancing with these children. We taught them line dances, such as cotton eye joe, and the cupid shuffle, and we taught them a Zumba dance to Despacito. Following our dance lesson the English speaking coordinator, Ross, taught us a Scottish traditional dance. The idea was to have the children interact with us native speakers as much as possible, and these social times are used for informal learning. Since I’ve been at Angloville, I have learned so much. I came to help teach polish students English, but I have learned so much about different cultures. Each student I talk to had a different story, and long list of places they have traveled to. Since our goal was to keep them talking, I often asked them to describe these different places and what they liked about them. I was also able to learn a lot from the other native speakers. I was the youngest one, so many of them had years of traveling experiences and stories to share. The native speakers were from Scotland, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, London, Canada, and the U.S. This has been an amazing experience, and I highly suggest looking into it if you want to travel more.