by Aisha Irfan (YES 2019-2020, Pakistan, placed by World Link in Swansea, IL)

I am from Sukkur, Pakistan but I am currently studying in Karachi. After returning home from the YES program, I thought that whatever I’ve learned during my exchange year I should use and apply to my life to help my local community. During the recent summer holiday, I went to Sukkur and contacted one of the teachers at IBA Sukkur, a university. The teacher there started a summer academy called Leaders Academy Sukkur and she asked me to join! She asked if I could teach English at a local academy in my hometown for the summer. For the two-month course, I would teach English one hour a day for three days a week to 15 students. I started off the course with teaching basic English vocabulary and grammar and eventually the students could advance to higher English grammar. During the course, we had days with presentations, games, and activities to make learning easy and interesting for the students.

We started the course in Sukkur at the lowest fee affordable for everyone. However, after a while, I had the chance to get to know the security guard at the academy. He had a son who wanted to learn English but he couldn’t afford the fee. With this in mind, I got the idea of making the English course free for all underprivileged students in the town. I knew it was important to make the English course available to anyone that wanted to learn. Since English is one of the official languages of Pakistan, it is important for these students to learn the language - it shouldn’t matter what their family background is.

I must say all the memories of teaching at the academy are my favorite! By the end of the course, I got so attached to my students and when they said they will miss me so much and that they learned a lot from me, it just melted my heart and made me even more confident in myself and ability to teach. Those words mean everything to me. Overall, it was so much fun teaching students a new language. I know that the skills they learned in my classroom will help them a lot in their future.