GVI Phoenix Project

Facts and figures

On an annual basis we aim to provide:
First time education or educational reinforcement to almost 2000 children in primary school
Secondary education to over 200 children and adults
Employment to over 75 local people; more-so indirectly
100 energy saving wood-burning stoves and 15,000 trees planted
Around 100,000 teaching hours
Over 500,000 pieces of fruit
1,000’s of pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners, colouring pencils, work-books and erasers
Over 300,000 whole or subsidized meals
Daily education in 16 communities across Latin America
Direct benefits to over 500 families

Sunday, August 17, 2008

New teaching English program in Guatemala

The new GVI Phoenix Teaching English Project, run by Neil McMillan, who holds a Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (Trinity dip. TESOL) and includes an extensive GVI Introduction to TEFL Training course for the volunteers, has started in earnest in Itzapa and Santa Maria.

Over 50 kids across both schools are now getting regular, structured English lessons from Neil and the first two volunteers, Lisa and Liz.

The project involves delivering specialised EFL training to the volunteers, enabling them to plan and deliver their own lessons, as well as preparing the children for the (now mandatory) English component of their national exam.

Broken down into bare statistics, Liz and Lisa completed over 16 hours of training sessions, 37 hours of classroom observation and classroom assistance, 15 hours each of observed teaching, 26 hours each of unobserved teaching and 25 hours of reflection and assisted planning; this doesn't include the hours of planning they have done on their own time. They also fitted in 40 hours each of one-on-one Spanish tuition!

More importantly, the kids seem to be enjoying what to them is a new approach to learning English, with an emphasis on developing all the skills of the language in a fun and sometimes physical format.

Sponsorship from back home in Scotland, as well as funding from the volunteers’ contributions, have enabled us to purchase new chairs and desks, folders and paper for the kids, and a variety of books and resources to set the project up for the future.

Whether it’s the Santa Maria beginners getting their mouths round ‘Hello’ for the first time, or the older Itzapa teenagers developing their grammar, vocabulary and communication skills, it’s been a challenging but highly enjoyable ride so far.

Huge thanks to Liz and Lisa for being the pioneering volunteers on our new Teaching English program and we hope the upcoming volunteers maintain the same level of professionalism in the future.
Now, one more time kids: ‘How are you?’ ‘I am very well!’