Internship Post #5

Tyndale St-George's Community Center itself is not a religious institution with a religious mission. The building may have been a church in the past but it does not contain any religious symbol or relic today. The only religious symbols you may found are those worn by the kids or the adults working there like a hijab or a rosary. A few posters can be found in most of the building and educationnal posters in the classrooms as well as the class rules. In the cafeteria area, photographies of the past years showing kids and volunteers can be found. There is no music playing inside the building as any technological device such as the iPad nano are strictly forbidden.

The whole community itself at Tyndale is extremely multicultural and multiethnical not just the kids but also the people who work there. To highlight that fact, it even occured once that I was the only white person in the classroom. The kids come from famillies with extremely diverse backgrounds, not only can you find asian, black, white, hispanic kids but you can also find mixes of culture such as an asian looking girl with an hispanic first name! It's a big melting pot of cultures!  

The English I have been exposed to differs slightly depending on who I am speaking to. The kids themselves use gramatically correct English but with a small range of vocabulary and they also make very little use of slang. The other volunteers also speak gramatically correct English but with a much wider range of vocabulary also with very little use of slang. The vast majority of them are anglophones, as opposed to me. I can safely say that their English is much better than mine as sometimes I have a word on the tip of my tongue and they help me with that.

The most difficult aspect of my internship was having to deal with francophone kids, not that it was hard for me to help them but I couldn't help but feel like I was wasting my time as I'm there to make observation on the Anglophone community in Montréal. On the other hand, the best part of my internship was playing hockey with the kids in the gym. It was a lot of fun.

Internship Post #4

When interacting with the other volunteers, I noticed that the vast majority of them are part of a specific program and already know each other from before the internship. When they get to know me and why I am there with them at Tyndale often suprises them because it is a very odd place to do an internship for a language program. The volunteers are very nice people as you would expect from volunteers such organization and are also polite, they greet each other with a "Hi" or "How are you?" which is no different from what people would use in French.

The main difference between being in a classroom in Cégep André-Laurendeau and being in a classroom at Tyndale's St-George's Community Center is that at André-Laurendeau I am there to learn only and at Tyndale I am there to learn, teach and observe. Acquiring a new language through a traditionnal structured classroom does allows me to learn through various activities which are suited for the entire classroom and not specifically for me. On the other hand, at Tyndale, I decide how the content is used and adapted for the needs of a single student. Teaching specific content in English allows me to make the use of vocabulary I don't normally use and therefore to practice speaking English. Tutoring allows me to think of how the content will be used and what will the effects of the activity be. If I am to specifially teach English to a francophone kid, it will affect my choice of words and the flow of my voice, etc. It makes me think not only what the student needs to learn but also how will he learn and fully understand it. The only challenge I've faced is when a kid doesn't want to do his homework and stops working to mess with the other kids but that usually doesnt last long.

Internship Post #3

I can safely say that aproximately half of my interaction I've had in English were with members of the staff or volunteers at Tyndale and the other half with the kids themselves. Even though my job is to help the kids, I was unlucky enough that half the kids I helped were monolingual francophones so my interactions with English speaking kids is fairly limited. Nevertheless I have still made a few observations. In the context of the classroom, the majority of the kids keep calm and respect the rule of "raising your hand before speaking", only a few "troublemakers" disobey to that rule. The teachers often used body language when explaining activities. When the teachers adress the kids, they are usually asking a question or giving them a directive. My own interactions with the kids were mostly through questions I would ask them because when they encounter a problem I always try to make them figure out the anwser on their own by gradually taking them to the anwser. My interactions clearly make me a better language learner because when I am leading a kid to the anwser, I make links with specific vocabulary such as the cardinal points when I am referring to geography.

When I first came to Tyndale, I was told that the families whose kids were in the program are low revenue families for the most part. I have to admit that poverty is not something I noticed or even thought of during my internship. All I see is a big group of kids doing their homework and having fun during the activities. Something very interesting I noticed is a slight difference of accent between bilingual kids and bilingual teachers; when speaking french, the bilingual kids speak completely fluently with an accent that would make me swear they are francophones but on the other hand, when the teachers speak french, they are also fluent but also carry a small english accent. The difference is that the kids probably learned french and english at home making french and english both their first languages when on the other hand, the teachers probably learned english first and then english.

New words or expressions;

 "mix it down" : Used in the context of making home made clay, when mixing the clay inside a pot with her hands. I still don't know the difference with "mix it up".