Nola Clark, Volunteer

“When I was approached to be part of this new, innovative scheme to provide children in more remote parts of China with English lessons taught by native speakers, I didn’t hesitate. I had loved teaching with Stepping Stones when I lived in China and now my week would provide me with forty minutes where I felt like I was back there. […] I knew teaching via videolink would be challenging at times but any problems that arose were not insurmountable. The biggest challenges were the variable Internet speed and not being physically present in the classroom to move amongst the students. The Internet speed varied from week to week. Some weeks there were no problems, whilst at other times there was a sound delay, which meant I needed to adapt my teaching to allow for this. Like all classrooms where I have taught in China, the students were eager to learn and well behaved. They sat in the same seat each week, so by having a seating plan on the wall above my computer, I was able to get the attention of any students I felt were becoming distracted. […] Each week, Ross at Stepping Stones provided me with a PowerPoint lesson. This formed the basis of my lesson. I found the student’s attention was highest when I was on full screen, so I added real objects to illustrate teaching points and used a small white board for incidental teaching or to play games. My lessons were revision of work already taught by the school’s English teacher. I found the students knew the content well but needed practice with pronunciation. This improved greatly over time along with the student’s confidence in participating and interacting with me. […] I have enjoyed this experience very much. It can be challenging, and you need to be adaptable, as you don’t have the same control over all the variables as you do in the classroom. It has been wonderful seeing the beaming smiles of the students as they arrive and leave our virtual classroom.”