Submitted by Jaclyn Janes on the 2017 winter session program in India sponsored by the Department of English…
It’s my dream to teach English in a foreign country, so I felt right at home at Parijat Academy in Assam. This school is organized to teach students from surrounding tribes that probably wouldn’t go to school otherwise. All of the children are very multilingual, as well as clever and friendly. In fact, on our very first visit there, they taught us all how to play one of their local games and the visit went on for hours. For our service projects, we got to choose what we wanted to teach, so of course I taught English to class eight. Learning prepositions has never been more fun than when I was instructing these students. They are not blasé about school or resistant to learning which has often been my experience in American schools. In India, young students understand the power of knowledge and try to soak up as much of it as they can. The lesson turned out to be harder for them than I anticipated, but they never got frustrated. It was so honoring so see them so curious about my native language, when I have no idea about theirs.
It’s hard to ignore the positive experience I had at this academy or think of it as a one time endeavor. It has inspired me to come back to India to teach after I graduate. I can’t think of a better way to start my career than with the friendly faces of these students that are excited to learn. So when I said good-bye, I knew it was really “see you soon”.