We, Sven and Angelina, two Long-Term-Volunteers from Germany, have been working at Government Higher Primary School Manoor-Padukere since August 2016. In a few days, summer holidays will start and we are going to leave our project.

In the beginning, it was not always easy for us, since we are the first volunteers in this project. For example, communication, as well as adapting the Indian culture and lifestyle were challenging. But the longer we stayed, the more we got used to the daily routine and our purpose as volunteers.

The structuring of our lessons consisted of direct communication, a variety of games and different types of English grammar exercises. We often tried to combine these activities to motivate the children to participate. The classes we taught were I to VII standards, but according to our timetable we spent most of our time in IV and VII standards. As time passed by, the children became more confident and started talking to us in English, even though they did not have much practice. The reason for this is that the students learn many things in theory, but they are not trained to apply their skills in everyday life. For this reason, it took us some time to figure out how we could reach our students so that they also could contribute to the lessons. By interacting more with our students, we became more creative and were also able to pay attention to their wishes. We put a lot of effort into the preparation of our lessons so that we always could introduce the children to new methods. Our main goal was to combine ordinary learning and uncommon fun-based activities.

What we can see as a result now is that we not only have a very close relationship with our students, but we also motivated them to speak English and raised their interest towards learning more about different cultures.

Therefore, we have come to the conclusion that we had a multi-faceted time, with exceptional experiences in this environment. We have learnt a lot about a completely different culture, had a lot of fun too and we think we could contribute a little bit to the children’s education as well.

We will miss this place and will always carry pleasant memories.

Angelina and Sven