Tutoring was canceled today. It was my last session. In some ways I’m sad (not getting to spend time with wonderful people trying to learn English) and in some ways I’m happy (I get to end my day sooner).

The Peace Corps required me to fulfill 30 hours of ESL tutoring before I’d be qualified to leave. For some this might have been an easy thing to do, but for me it was a challenge. I’ve never been a huge volunteer and especially not while in college. I had no network to reach out to in order to figure out how to get my experience.

Back in March, I found a place that was looking for conversation partners for their ESL students. They wanted people to create an environment where the students would feel comfortable to practice English. I offered my time and I was placed with one, and then another student.

Being a conversation partner isn’t my thing. It was forced. For those of you who’ve spent a good deal of time around me, you know I like to jump from subject to subject as new thoughts sprout in my mind. You also, hopefully, know that I enjoy conversation downtime. It reminds me of the scene in Pulp Fiction:

Mia: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent: I don’t know. That’s a good question.
Mia: That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.

Conversations with my conversation partners weren’t either of those things. Plus, it became increasingly difficult to work around two school schedules and my work schedule. I had to find something else.

That’s about the time a friend told me she was looking into doing some tutoring for the Literacy Network. I tagged along for an info session and ended up with my name on a waiting list.

On the return portion of my July 2010 adventure, I received a call asking me to fill an open tutoring position and I gladly accepted. I showed for my first session and was handed a lesson plan for a student. I was there to be their guide in learning, to answer questions as they came up and to correct pronunciation as needed. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be; of course this could have been because I wasn’t making the lesson plans myself.

Through the past handful of weeks, I’ve come to enjoy talking with the students. They have great stories to tell and they’re really excited to be able to brag about their children’s accomplishments in English and I’m happy to listen.

One thing that bothers me is that the lesson plans seem to make the students seem dumb. I know they’re not dumb. For example, we’ll be doing an activity where they need to choose a word from a box to complete a sentence and each word is used only once. They don’t always seem to understand the process of elimination. My guess is that they don’t fully understand the instructions and therefore they don’t realize the simplicity of it.

Despite this, I think my tutoring has been a decent introduction into what I’ll be doing in the Peace Corps. Of course, the Peace Corps will have me write my own lesson plans and I won’t be working one-on-one but in front of a class (cringe). As I was told today, be prepared to make a fool of yourself.

Trust me, I am.