On Sunday, September 14th, the Roslyn AYLUS branch volunteered at the Chinese Cultural Association of Long Island from 1:30 to 5 pm. Our jobs as Teaching Assistants were to support and help out the teachers and the students if they ever needed assistance.
As TAs, we started the afternoon by assisting the teachers with adjusting the classroom so that the students could focus. Since it was just the Beginning of the year, it may be difficult for us to return to our learning atmosphere, so we helped the students relearn new concepts related to our Chinese culture. After the students are comfortable with the learning environment, we assist the teachers by handing out simple packets and worksheets to help the students get back to learning more about Chinese culture. Afterwards, we would give the students a short break to go to the bathroom or grab a snack before going back to learning.
Even though we helped the students, TA’s would also help the teacher with a handful of tasks in order to loosen the teacher’s workload. We would help bring the student to the bathroom, print worksheets,settle the classroom down, and simply hand out work to the students. Despite the task being very simple, we helped as much as possible to make the teacher’s job easier. The benefit of being a TA is that the teachers can focus on teaching the students and engaging with the class without worrying about small distractions.
As the class came to an end, the TAs helped pack the students up by organizing their belongings in their backpacks. This then made it easier for the students to leave the classroom without losing their belongings. The TA’s would then help the students to get picked up safely by a parent or a guardian. Lastly we would clean up and organize the classroom to ensure that it was organized and the same just how we entered it.
Generally, being a TA’s taught us how working as a teacher was like and it showed the amount of responsibility that teaching can be in a classroom. Despite the TA’s having easier workload we were still able to decrease the workload of the teacher and increasing the fun of the learning environment in the classroom.
Sofia Chen (3.5 hours), Joy Zou (3.5 hours), Abigail Zhao (3.5 hours), Rita Meng (3.5 hours) Joanna Huang (3.5 hours), Ethan Liu (3.5 hours), Shinree Zhang (3.5 hours), Ryan Lin (3.5 hours) Jamie Zhao (3.5 hours) Charleen Fu (3.5 hours)
Reporter: Joy Zou
