Excellence Center Review

To begin my review, I would like to talk about my arrival to the center. When I first arrived, I was confused, they were very helpful in making sure I could find the center. My accommodation was very nice and clean. My first day volunteering, I was very nervous, but the other volunteers were extremely kind and welcoming, it wasn’t very hard to fit in with everyone. The breakfast was different from what I was used to, but it was delicious, and you could tell that they put in a lot of work preparing it. The excellence center provides a great amount of freedom to the volunteers, personal and in the classroom. The personal freedom that I was allowed, gave me the opportunity to explore Halle. I thought about the classroom freedom that I was given, and it made me feel uneasy because I have never taught and some structure would have been nice, however this gave me the chance to become a more confident person. Doing the work myself will help me prepare for when I move into a teaching position after I complete my time volunteering. When it comes to acquiring students, I will say that the process was a bit unorganized. I wouldn’t say that it was the fault of the center but rather how the volunteers handled transferring students. However, I do wish that there was a better way of scheduling classes. For example, there could be a board somewhere in the room and we make our schedules based on the available time slots. That way no one is looking for a place to teach when the classrooms are occupied. I did like when we played sports and the special goodbyes we did to fellow volunteers, I just wished we played more sports before we started the day. I found that exercising before sitting down and doing work made me more focused and in a better mood. Overall, I found this 2-week experience to be very fun and rewarding. There were more positives than negatives and I would definitely recommend this program to others.