Volunteering in York

- If you are interested in volunteering in York you can contact - York cvs 

- Have a look on www.do-it.org.uk for volunteering opportunities in your area

This is a story which starts about a year and a half ago ,it's an explanation of why i volunteered 447 hours of my time between January 2013 and the present .Volunteering with a variation of organisations has given me great joy, lots of new experiences and has been a helping hand in me securing a job to teach english in Japan.

I first decided to start volunteering when I thought about what I wanted to do when I finished University. I enjoy travelling and visiting different countries to find out about different cultures, and there are still lots of places I want to visit. I decided to become qualified in a field that would allow be to travel to different countries and experience the culture, after meeting someone on a trip to Jordan I decided what that would be. I met a girl there from America who had just finished a year teaching English to children in South Korea. She told me about her experiences teaching and living in Korea and what a great experience it was, you can check out her travel blog here -> http://traveljunkette.com/.

When I returned home I started googling ‘Teaching English abroad’ and my mind was opened to the possibilities of travelling the world, staying in different countries to teach and slowly making my way around the world, as it’s estimated there are around 1 billion people learning English worldwide I realised there should be no shortage of jobs.

At the time I didn’t have any teaching experience, or experience working with children or adults in a learning environment. I decided to change that through volunteering.

I started in January 2013 by contacting York CVS, an organisation in York that act as a middleman to help organisations find volunteers, and volunteers find organisations to volunteer with, to see what opportunities were available in York. I also looked on the Do-it volunteering website , which is a great tool to find volunteering opportunities across England.

I got some information on different places looking for volunteers and decided to contact my local library about helping in the ‘Online Basics’ courses they ran.

I contacted them and soon started to help out once a week with the sessions, helping learners understand the basics of computing. The sessions usually had around 4 people and lasted an hour. After a few weeks of doing the course I started to do one to one sessions with people helping them with skills such as setting up Internet accounts and getting them started with a new computer.

A few months later I contacted the volunteer coordinator for Adult Education, who are a section of the council that run various courses and classes for adults. I started helping in a more advanced I.T class. Helping learners work towards either the ECDL or CLAIT qualification, this involved helping them work through the various tasks they had to do to achieve the qualification.

A few weeks later I decided I wanted to get some experience working with children. I searched online and found a youth organisation in York called York Playspace that was looking for volunteers. I applied to be a volunteer with them and soon started helping at the different youth clubs they ran sessions at.

The sessions varied week to week but I usually spent the session playing sports such as football and basketball with the children as well as creating crafts with them.

From June until September I had a break from all the volunteering I had been doing to start the month long CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at the English Language Centre. The course lasted a month and I taught every other day teaching elementary for two weeks and intermediate for two, I also had an assignment each week to complete. Each day we also had various inputs covering different aspects of teaching.

Three weeks after I completed the CELTA course I went to Morocco for a month to teach English to teenagers at a school in Casablanca. You read about my experience in Morocco HERE.

After returning from Morocco I had two weeks before returning to university, with it being my final year I found out I was only going to be in 1 or 2 days a week, with most of the work being done in my own time. I decided I wanted to start getting some more experience teaching English.

When on the CELTA course they mentioned an opportunity to volunteer in a language class. I emailed the contact and started volunteering in the class late September. It’s a Pre-Entry level English language class where I act as the assistant language teacher, I present some of the language and help them work through their tasks each lesson. 

I also started volunteering in various other I.T classes through adult education. The classes are usually for beginners and the learners are usually adults, who want to learn how to use the internet to do a wide range of activities such as; sending emails, shopping online and finding out information.

In October I started to volunteer at Visit York , which is York’s tourist information centre. I help visitors to the city and locals with whatever they need. Usually helping visitors decide what to see in York as well as giving locals information on upcoming events. 

In November i started to run a tablet and E-reader drop in session for York libraries, members of the public can come in during the session and have a play with the different units we have, and ask any questions they might have.

I initially started volunteering for a particular purpose, to gain experience teaching and to boost the chances of me getting a teaching job abroad.

Volunteering with the different organisations I have has given me much more than that, it’s being a way of getting an insight into lots of people’s lives, whether I have just seen them for 5 minutes giving them directions in Visit York, or getting to know them over a period of time in the classroom. Other volunteers I've met have donated their time for a variation of reasons wether it's to gain experience in a particular area or just to feel like they're helping people, whatever your reasons for wanting to volunteer and whatever skills you have there will be a cause you can help.

I now work with York Playspace as a playworker at one of their weekly sessions, as well as running an after school I.T club for them at a local primary school. I still volunteer with Visit York, Adult education's english language classes and York libraries running the tablet session.

I've also just been offered a job from Interac as an assistant language teacher in Japan to start in August, you can read about the application process HERE. The volunteering experiences I've had gave me a great deal to talk about in my interview and in my personal statement, so volunteering no doubt played a part in me getting the job.

The pictures below were taken at some of the different locations I've volunteered

INTERAC - Application process and interview

This post is designed to give you an insight into the application and interview process involved with Interac. If you are unfamiliar with Interac, they are a dispatch company who recruit English teachers from all over the world to teach in Japan.

The first step in applying to Interac is to go onto their website www.interacnetwork.com and click the APPLY NOW button. You then create a login profile which you use to login each time you want to update the application or add a document.

The online application involves the following main components;

- General information about yourself age, dob etc

- A 2500 Personal statement 

- Education history

- Work history

- Reference contact details

- Heath information

I spent a few days going through everything on the application to make sure it was all correct and i didn't have any spelling mistakes. I also spent a lot of time writing the personal statement, as this is a big chance to sell yourself and tell Interac about yourself.

A few days after i submitted the online application i received an email inviting me to have a phone interview, it was scheduled for three weeks time. I prepared for the phone interview by researching facts about Japan and going through my personal statement. The interview went well, it consisted of the recruiter giving me some basic information about teaching in Japan and what's expected from an ALT. She also asked me questions about why i wanted to teach and why i had an interest in Japan, it lasted about 20 minutes.

The day after i had the phone interview i was informed i passed this stage and i was invited to a seminar/interview, i was glad to see there was one in my city (York) so i didn't have to travel down to London. The interview was scheduled for two and a half weeks later. I was given information about what the seminar/interview involved so i could prepare beforehand.

There would be an information session from the recruiter to give us information about living and working in Japan, a one-to-one interview and we would have to give a demo lesson, this would consist of an introduction - pretending we had arrived in Japan and were meeting the teachers for the first time, we would have to read from a script, give a primary school walm up and a quick demo lesson on directions for a middle school class. 

The day of the interview came and i dressed up in my best suit and got to the interview location about 20 minutes before we were due to start. I found two other interviewees waiting in the reception area so i had a chat with them until the recruiter arrived. As there was only five of us (including the recruiter) we had the info session on some sofas in one of the lounges. We had a chat for a while, explained why we wanted to go to Japan and answered a few questions. We then had a grammar test, which covered a few grammatical structures, differentiating between the passive and active voice and correcting some spelling errors.
We then went up individually to a hotel room with the recruiter so we could do out recorded intro and demo lesson. As i'd practiced mine about 20 times i remembered it all and didn't mess any of it up. We were then give two sheets of A4 with some interview questions to answer for the recruiter to have a read through and we finished with a one to one interview for each of us.

Exactly a month after the interview i received an email from INTERAC offering me a position to start in August ! It would normally have been faster but i had a delay from one of my references.