By Teodora Boshkova (YES 2016-2017, Macedonia, hosted by AYA in Timmonsville, SC)

Every Saturday starting in September 2017 until the beginning of May 2018, I held the YES Language School. The YES Language school provided children from socially vulnerable households that are not able to afford to attend a private language school the opportunity to learn English through the non-formal educational approach I learned at the Workshop for Youth Leaders in English Teaching (WYLET), is a one-week program held in Washington, D.C. funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and organized by American Councils for International Education for YES, Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX), and Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) students during their exchange year.

The language school was definitely my favorite volunteering job and an experience I will never forget. Firstly, I had a group of ten children, from second to fifth grade. Eventually, two more students came along and found that they were the perfect fit to our program, bringing our group to 12.

We started off with the English alphabet, the numbers, the months of the year and other basic English terms. I discovered many ways to teach the material, thanks to my participation in WYLET. The students were having a lot of fun and really liked the program. They even said that the YES Language School program was much better than regular school and that they were learning everything at a much faster pace. I was proud of myself.

My YES Language School program was held at the (coincidentally named) Language Education Center Yes, where the director allowed us to use their student books together with its activity book. I looked through these resources and discovered that the book “Fairyland 3” was well-suited to the student’s knowledge and continued teaching with it.

We started reading simple texts, and then continued with grammar tenses: present simple, past simple, and present continuous. We had little exercises and tests on which they showed great results. In every class, I was telling them something about my experience with the YES program and American culture. They were excited to celebrate U.S. holidays; we celebrated Halloween with a party and made cards for Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

At the end of our studies, we shared what we learned and I handed them certificates. I was learning from my students, too. They taught me how to be a better person, to be patient, and to have understanding. We learned how to make compromises together. We spent every Saturday for the past eight months together, learning and having fun. Now that the program is finished, I feel very sad, but also grateful that I had the experience.