This semester I have been volunteering in a program called Inglés Sin Limites organized by ANEP (La Administración Nacional de Educación Pública) in Uruguay. It is an entirely virtual program of “godparents.” The program’s goal is to bring English education to the rural school in Uruguay. Some of these schools are small with only one or two teachers, some of whom live in the school. These teachers may sometimes teach an entire grade level or sometimes even mixed levels. Each godparent is assigned a school for them to work with during the school year. In some cases, the godparents meet with the class via Zoom or Google Meets once a week to talk to the students. The students and teacher can ask questions, practice having small conversations, or sometimes even pronunciation. The program is made so that both the students and the teacher can learn English. There is a textbook and a series of videos created for the teacher to play to their students and the godparent is an extra support for them. The godparents are also available to the teachers through WhatsApp. Some godparents are not available during the school day and instead will make videos or send audio messages for the students for practice or extra help. 

I was assigned a school in Colonia, Uruguay made up of about ten fourth-graders. I met with them every Friday for about 30-45 minutes. It was mostly up to them that we would do in that time. They liked to ask questions to clean up their pronunciation, they would ask about sentence structure or how to express certain ideas that were common to them, but they had not learned yet. There was one day where they made a list of words in Spanish that they wanted to know in English. This was very similar to another program I worked with in High School, called the Cape Cod Literacy Council, that provided English classes for people on Cape Cod. The classes were mostly made up of Portuguese and Spanish speakers living on the Cape. Both experiences have been incredibly fulfilling and I feel somehow closer to Uruguay after participating in it. My family is from there and originally, I did want to study abroad. However, I feel like this experience was more fulfilling in that I was able to actually do something for the community instead of just visiting it.