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.