photo by author
On February 29, I had an experience and chance given to me by the ICC to interact with, teach and learn from some young kids at Waseda Jitsugyo Elementary School. The experience was everything but what I expected, but still exceeded my expectations in the best way possible.
We had to arrive at the school early (well, earlier than I’m used to waking up lately) at 8:30am on a Thursday. We were met by one of the teachers that were there to coordinate us, the twelve volunteers chosen by the ICC. We were briefly given a run-down of the day and what we were expected to do. And since we still had some time before our first class, we were given a tour of the school and its facilities, which was really cool but made me jealous because my school in Ireland did not have even close to the same facilities ☹.
When the first class started, we had to introduce ourselves in front of all the students, which was a little scary. But all the kids seemed so genuinely interested in interacting with us that any nervousness melted away. The topic was personal heroes, and one that I found very common was Shohei Ohtani. The most interesting was a pet goldfish, and I fully understood why after the student explained. I also had to introduce my hero to each group of students I talked to, which they found very interesting (I hope!).
We had to speak to about 3-4 groups over 40-minute lessons, and then four lessons throughout the morning. As I said before, at the beginning I was quite nervous, but the more I talked, the more confident I felt talking to students who wanted to interact and learn from me as much as I also did. All in all, I loved the experience and if the ICC does another event like this, I’ll be sure to sign up, and I recommend you do too!
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ICC organizes Outreach and School Visits throughout the year, with elementary, junior and senior high schools. If you are interested, please watch for announcements. Subscribe to the ICC News emails so you won’t miss anything!
