Teaching English

Our church here has a program called Panes Kids at two of the daughter churches, Año Nuevo and Km.22. Panes Kids is an afterschool program that includes a big lunch and a lesson. Children in Peru usually eat their big meal when they get home from school around 1:00 or 2:00 pm. In families where the Mom has to be working all day and they can't afford to pay someone to watch the kids (or cook), getting this big meal in gets complicated, thus why Panes Kids is a huge help to the families whose children attend. I started volunteering two days a week at the Año Nuevo Panes Kids about three weeks ago. We have about 40 kids ages 5-13. Recently I started teaching them English. Even though we didn't come here with any plan to teach English to anyone, it's exciting to be able to teach something that is SO in demand in Peru to kids who otherwise lack the resources to get this kind of education. Speaking English in this country is an enormous asset that automatically increases opportunties for well-paying work. I love that these precious kids are getting it for free.

Today, I was teaching a group of 5-7 years old that I hadn't taught before. I started the class by asking them if they knew any words in English. One said "Hello!", another, "Thank You", and another shouted, "GRINGO!". Good guess, but no. Ha!

I then proceded to ask them what countries are English-speaking. One immediately said the U.S. When I asked for more countries, I got Chile, El Salvador, Spain, and finally, when I had said no to all of those, a kid answered confidently, "Mexico!" They all got quiet as they waited to hear my answer, as if they agreed that was a good guess. At that point I decided it was time to move on.

Today we learned how to say "Hi", "Hello", "What is your name?", "My name is ____", and how to count to 10. They learned even faster that the 8-11 year olds. Some barely even know how to write and read in Spanish, so they weren't asking why things were the way they were or how Spanish and English are different, they were just listening and repeating. I was so proud of them. But there's a difference between listening and repeating (even if perfectly) and understanding. When we were saying goodbye, a few of them (not just one!) excitedly waved to me and said "Hello!" as they ran out the door. I didn't have the heart to correct them. We'll have to save that for another day.

A Savings Group with some of the moms of Panes Kids. This is also our classroom.