"I wanted to finally do something practical and helpful!" - the start of Milan's ESC experience Blog dei volontari

After quitting uni, I wanted to finally do something practical and helpful as a contrast to years of theoretical scholarship. A voluntary service would be optimal, I figured.Northern-Italy was a natural choice since My family always loved to spend the summers at the Lago Maggiore, where the water is clear and the nature all around is rich in greens.

It was a shame I did not learn the language yet. I also wanted to see if the work as a teacher would suit me. So, Ultimately, all of this led me to the Comenius School in Trento.

After arriving I spent my first week enjoying the september sun at the beautiful lakes and cooking some italian dishes. Then soon I was introduced to my school and my accompanying teacher Luisa, who speaks fluent German and thus could guide me slowly and gently during the first days.It was lovely to introduce myself to all of the classes, who welcomed me with much excitement and had so many questions about my hobbies and family.

They are all very sweet and vivid. Same goes for my colleagues with whom I could chatter and learn Italian in the pauses. All the while, I was glad that there are many german speaking teachers, which helped with not feeling lost.In the beginning, I’ve been talking a lot of German with the children or I was just present in class to help keep calm.

Then of course, I had difficulties, because some kids did not respect me in the first place, because they could be so shy that I would not get them to speak or yet so restless I did not know how to help them concentrate. Luckily I could talk about all my worries with my colleagues, who assured me, these problems were only natural for teachers, and after all: I had just begun. Soon I had my first Ideas and started to take the initiative: I did a bit of a warm up to let out the childrens energy before and after class, I did a little presentation about Berlin, I introduced some informal german language to make learning German more fun and last but not least I turned some classes into a quire to sing a german children's song and it did go pretty well :). I was very happy about having the opportunity to transfer my passion for quire singing to the kids. And that's pretty much it.

Thanks for reading!

Milan