Empowering Youth Through English

This summer, I had a teaching fellowship at Summerbridge in Hong Kong. The program is 8 weeks long, including 5 weeks of teaching and 3 weeks of training and evaluation. As a student teacher, I teach a class of my choice. At Summerbridge, you can teach anything such as drawing, creative writing, survival skills, first aid, and architecture. My students are local Hong Kong students aged 13-15 from the local schools with an underprivileged background. The aim of the summer program is to provide an immersive English learning environment for students as we speak English all the time. Each student will join 2 consecutive summers at no cost.

The workload is intense yet rewarding. A typical day during my internship is quite busy. Every day, I wake up and commute about an hour to get to school. This is very normal in Hong Kong as everyone commutes to work for a decent time. Once I arrive at school, we have a short staff meeting to go through the schedule of the day. Right after, students arrive in 3 buses and we all come and greet them when they get off the bus. In the morning, there are 4 class periods. Each teacher teaches 2 periods and gets 2 free periods. During the free periods, there are always things to do. As each teacher designs their own class, we work on every part of it from lesson planning and class material like slides and worksheets. It is a lot of work as we want to best facilitate and benefit our students. We have lunch with our students and we all sit in the hall. I enjoy lunchtime as it is a time to interact and talk with students outside of class. Once we are done with lunch, we will have 2 periods in the afternoon. One is the sports and electives period where teachers come into pairs to host an elective/sport. Some examples are badminton, volleyball, board games, and yoga. We are not necessarily teaching them during this time but more of a playful and active time. I enjoy my elective so much as we play UNO all the time. Besides this, the other period is family time. So each family consists of 2 teachers and 10 students. Over the summer, we truly build strong and supportive relationships. Students will get on the bus at 3:30 and we have an afternoon staff meeting which can be long sometimes. So I normally get back home by 6. However, there are deadlines mostly every day at 10 pm so there is still lots of work after school. 

Though it sounds intense and packed, I always find working with youth is so rewarding. I spend every day with the students and speak English with them. Their English level varies but seeing them trying their best to speak to me truly makes my day. One of the most memorable moments was when a student asked me in English what is the word for the green watermelon, which turned out to be a cucumber. But this moment sparks to me that they are trying so hard to use and learn English. The most rewarding part of working with youth is that you can easily see your impact on them after a short period of time. Many students have opened up, and become more confident, building their love of learning over  5 weeks. 

Summerbridge is truly a unique program offering the summer teaching experience for undergraduate students. The experience is impactful on every student and student teacher. I am more than grateful to have this opportunity for a transformative summer with the help of the International Whitman Internship Grant.