Volunteer ESL Training Organization: Literacy Works In Chicago

By Kate | Permalink | No Comments | May 2nd, 2007 | Trackback

If you’re interested in one of the most common types of volunteer work abroad, teaching English, one of the best ways to get started is to volunteer at home – you can ideally start with some training and use that and your existing English language ability to benefit someone – or more than one person – who would like to improve their English.

Prior to doing the four-week intensive CELTA TEFL training course abroad and then working as an English teacher, I did a twelve-hour training course followed by some volunteering at home, starting with an organization called Literacy Works.

Literacy Works is a Chicago-based organization that provides workshops, trainings and direct literacy (which includes ESL) services in connection with various non-profit organizations in the Chicagoland area. NGO’s which receive government funds for literacy/ESL programs in Illinois need to ensure that their literacy volunteers get trained – and Literacy Works provides this training, typically on two consecutive Saturday sessions.

The training consisted of a reasonable mix of theory and lots of practical activities and examples, including some thought-provoking discussion about cultural issues and misunderstanding. Looking back and taking into account my experience since then, the training seems even more impressive in retrospect – it touched on ideas like how to check that your students are following a reading (ask them to make predictions, or to add to a chart about what you already know/what you want to know/what you learned) and other practical activities (sentence scrabble, journals where students write and the teacher replies, needs assessment).

One of the most interesting things about attending the trainings was meeting the other volunteers; some were headed to the Peace Corps, some were immigrants themselves who had arrived without knowing English well or at all and had learned – now they wanted to share their experience and language skills with others in a similar position.

Volunteering to teach or tutor ESL in your own city is an excellent way to get a taste of TEFL as well as to start your learning process. If you’re in Chicago, I’d encourage you to check out the Literacy Works website and contact one of the member organizations directly or Literacy Works itself for information on how to volunteer. If you’re not in Chicago, use idealist.org or even your friend Google to find a similar organization near you.

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