As the new academic school year has begun, I was determined to find a new way for me to be more involved in the school community through any kind of activity or volunteer work. Late last year, I was invited to join Seoul Foreign School’s chapter of the National Honor Society, and personally I did not think much of it as I was unaware of what the clubs primary functions were.

To my luck, I found out that through the National Honor Society, there were many ways to serve the school community through fundraisers, tutoring, and also by simply being a role model for other students. So, to achieve my goal of helping the community, I offered to tutor students in my school, hoping that I would get at least one student. But to my surprise, I ended up with 3 students.

So far, I have been tutoring once a week for around a month, and I must say that it is harder than I thought. I assumed that running a class would be easy as I am a student myself, and I always thought that teaching was easier than learning. But, it turns out that, from the perspective of the teacher, it is nothing like I imagined as there is a lot of work the teacher must do before the actual class begins.

This ｉｎｃｌｕｄｅs making presentation slides, preparing worksheets, and being ready to answer questions asked by the students. Throughout the week, I often found myself actually learning while getting ready as I had to brush up on some subjects that I had learned back in 7th grade, which I found to be a great refresher for me.

 

As I am still a member of the National Honor Society tutoring committee, I am really excited to continue to not only serve as a member but also refresh my prior knowledge.

 

At first, I was really scared as it was my first time tutoring, but now I am actually really excited about every class even if there is a lot to do before the actual day of class.

 

It is truly interesting to see how well a student grasps the knowledge that I share, which I think is also good for me academically in the sense that if the students cannot understand what I am sharing, I must learn to explain it in a more in-depth and clearer way.  

Based on what I have learned over the past month, I would say that volunteer tutoring for the school community is a very beneficial extracurricular in many ways, for both the tutor and the students. I always underestimated the work of a teacher, but now, I really respect their work ethic as I cannot imagine having to do this every single day of the school year.

I am really excited to see how far my tutoring journey will take me as I feel that this opportunity has given me a lot of room to grow as an individual while re-learning many topics that I had forgotten about and giving back to the community of Seoul Foreign School.

 

Clare Sohn

Grade 11

Seoul Foreign School