Session 1: Cultural Engagement

This past week I had my first sessions with the adult learners at Haapsalu Rahvaulikool English as a Foreign Language classes. I led 2.5 hour sessions on the following days: Monday, October 23rd with a Pre-Intermediate level English class; Wednesday, October 25th with an Intermediate level English class; and Thursday, October 26th with a different Pre-Intermediate level English class. This session, at the request of Mari, was focused on cultural exchange where I would tell the learners about myself and where I am from in the United States and then lead conversations about topics that relate to both the United States and Estonia.

After some thought, I decided to put together a short power point of slides. I decided to talk about the IMAESC program, who we are, what we study and the different locations we studied in. Then I moved on to talking a bit about where I am from in the United States. To do this, I used the following slides as visual support:

I used the slide on the left to start the conversation about what IMAESC is, who we are and where we all come from. This is a picture that was taken in Malta of (almost) all of the cohort and was used in a Public Service Announcement at the University of Malta introducing us the university and the community.

This was the next slide I used which shows images from our first semester in Glasgow, Scotland studying at the University of Glasgow. Along with this image, I talked about the courses we studied there and my placement at LEAP Sports Scotland.

The slide to the left was the third slide I used which demonstrated images from our time spent studying in Malta at the University of Malta. Once again, I covered the courses we studied while we were there, the topics we discussed and my placement with the Foundation for the Support and Networking of Migrants. I did not have a good picture of the university, so I also stressed the beauty of our surroundings and what we did and saw as a cohort during our time in Malta.

The fourth slide was one from the time we have spent so far here in Estonia studying at Tallinn University. I explained again which courses we were studying here, the importance of those courses along with why I was there speaking to them as a part of my placement for this semester. I also included a picture of an event that many of us went to see in Tallinn to demonstrate the community our cohort has created for each other over the past year.

Finally, this was the last slide, which is a map of the United States. I wanted to present this during the session because in similar sessions I have led in the Philippines and elsewhere internationally, often the learners do not have a good idea of what my country looks like geographically so I find that showing a map is really helpful. This allows me to show where on the map I am from along with demonstrating exactly how large the United States is and why it may have so many diverse opinions, people and cultures.

Once I had presented the slides and talked a little bit about each one, I went around and asked the learners to tell me their names, one thing they know either from experience or from movies about the United States and one thing they love about Estonia. From there, each learner shared this information and we talked together about what each person said about the United States and about Estonia and I also shared what I love so far about Estonia (the language, the forests and the cities!).

After this topic was covered, we moved on to holidays and traditions. I thought it would be fun to hear about what holidays people look forward to celebrating in Estonia and what traditions they might have that are specific only to their families. I did this activity by sharing my favorite holiday and tradition from the United States and then asked them to get into small groups to share their own thoughts with each other. Then we spent the rest of the session talking about holidays, traditions and answering any questions they had about myself or about the United States.

In order to reflect fully on this session and this very intense week, I thought it might be helpful to talk about my feeling overall about how it went, then one good experience from the week, one bad experience from the week and what I would do the same or different. This is how I have structured the rest of this blog post.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, I think the sessions went pretty well. I was nervous about them because I felt like I did not really know what I was getting in to and I was wondering how I would be received by the learners who did not ask for me to be there and had no knowledge of why I was there in the first place. I think this is why I started off with talking about IMAESC and what my role was and why I was standing in front of them talking. I was pretty well received by the learners, but I do not think I would want to do a session like this and in this manner again. In the future, I would like the learners to know that I was coming and why I was there and I would also prefer it if they had asked for my perspective, input and facilitation of the class. However, the facilitation itself went well overall and I am glad I had the experience of teaching this.

Good Experience

One good experience I had over the course of this week took place in the first session on Monday, October 23rd with one of the Pre-Intermediate classes. After I had introduced myself and talked about IMAESC and being from the United States, I asked them all to share their names, what they knew about the US and what they loved about Estonia. We got around to one man, about half way through this exercise who introduced himself and then said that he didn't know much about the United States but he didn't like it very much because they are all egotistical and rude and all they do is eat fast food and drive big cars. This was the point at which I started with him. It turned out that, throughout the class, this was the person who had the most questions for me about the United States, what I thought about living there and other questions more related to geography. He even asked several questions about racism in the United States and politics in the United States. At the very end of the 2.5 hour session, right before every one left for the day, he said in front of the class that he was glad I had come to speak with them. He said I had changed his perspective on the United States and that I was the first nice person he had met from that country. While I don't think I completely changed his point of view about the United States, I am really glad that I was able to interact with him in a way that was different from other people he had met. I know there are plenty of people from the United States who travel abroad and act in rude, egotistical ways and are loud and think the United States is the best country in the world. I do not want to be one of those people- I am much more interested in providing a different perspective of what people in the United States can be like and I think I was able to achieve that even with just this one person during this one session.

Bad Experience

One bad experience I had during this week occurred during the final session on Thursday, October 26th. I don't know that I would call this a bad experience so much as just a really difficult one. What made this session difficult was probably the first hour overall. I was talking about myself and the IMAESC course and also about the United States and I was getting absolutely no reaction from the learners. I couldn't tell if they were having a hard time understanding me or if they just simply didn't care about the things I was discussing with them. As a facilitator, this is one of the worst feelings in the world and is pretty demoralizing. I tried asking them questions to get them engaged, but no one wanted to step up and answer the questions. When I asked if they could understand me or if I was speaking to fast for them, they just nodded and said it was fine. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong or why I was not connecting with these learners and that was a very bad feeling. I have faced this experience as a facilitator in previous environments, but I had always been able to connect and interact after a short period of time through asking questions and engaging with the participants. Nothing I had used in the past worked this time and the first hour of this session felt like an eternity. The up side is that the second 1.5 hours went much better because I stopped trying to interact in the same way and set up group discussions in which they spoke to each other and not to me. All I can hope is that next week will be better with this group of learners now that we have had one session together.

What would I do the same or change?

In the future, I think I would do many things the same and a few things different. As an introductory session to who I am, why I was there and what my background was, I think the content was pretty good. I think also having the assistance of visual aids was helpful particularly with a group of learners who were not fluent in English. I would do most of those things the same in the future. I would also continue to have the interactive learning part where I got to hear from them about their stereotypes or images of the United States as well as what they thought about Estonia because that gave us some good things to have conversations about. I was able to dispel some myths about the United States but also talk about why those myths exist in the first place. I think this was a good way to break the ice in most situations and led to good conversations and practicing of English about topics that are not often found in the text books.

In terms of what I would do different, I think I would try and be a bit more prepared as I thought I was not as prepared as I could have been. I would also come with more questions to make the sessions more interactive as well as some sort of engagement point like a game, ice breaker or something to ease the tension. I would also try and speak a little slower as I think sometimes I got so caught up in what I was speaking about that I started to talk at a pace where the learners were not able to understand me. Overall, I would try and focusing on changing these few things in the future while also keeping some of the best points of what happened.