I had the amazing opportunity to participate in two projects
for SVYM. My first project consisted of
designing games and songs to promote English in the Viveka Tribal Center for
Learning. I used appropriate camp songs and nursery rhymes and modified areas
that were not relevant or known. For
example, one of the songs was about a moose, which is an animal that exists in
North America, so I changed it to goose to make it easier to understand. For the games, I used ESL classroom styles to
formulate my ideas. ESL stands for
English as a Second Language, and it is different from learning another
language as an English-speaker like when you learned Spanish or French in high
school. It aims to incorporate the
children’s backgrounds and identities into the material, use bilingual lesson
plans so the students are understanding contextual material instead of
repeating English words, and it also capitalizes on specific learning styles
the children are interested in. In the
tribal school, a lot of the students enjoyed activities in the art field, like
painting, dancing, music, drama, etc.
Pictionary is a game that capitalized on those skills while encouraging
students to use English terms and thought processes to determine what is being
drawn. My second project was creating a
HR Manual for Hosahalli. There was
already a large manual for all of SVYM, but the school wanted a manual that was
specifically for them and formatted in a way where it is easy to navigate. I typed up the 83-page manual, excluding
irrelevant information and adding specifics about the school, and organized it
by different sections with a table of contents.
The hardest part of this experience, besides saying goodbye, was
curtailing my games to be easier or harder based on the reactions from the
class. I had an incredible time, and I
hope that my path eventually crosses with SVYM’s again after I graduate.
