I'm really grateful for the experiences that I was able to learn through my internship at the Long Lasting Community Development Association (LLCDA).  Over the course of a year, I was able work with a variety of students from true beginners to advanced learners.  Also, everyday was different! In the beginning, I mostly helped children who were learning ESL with their homework and adult learners who were studying for their citizenship test or American geography.  Later on, I started teaching a true beginner very basic conversation and the alphabet and an intermediate-level student the core basics (reading, writing, speaking, and listening).  I would also occasionally led the advanced, conversation circle. 

All of these students helped me learn the value of lesson planning and revising the lesson plan to match the students better.  As I saw the students progress, I became more confident in my own ability to teach English and apply the information that I was learning from my linguistics classes.  This was one of the most rewarding internships I have ever had and I'm so grateful that it exists to help refugees and immigrants.  

^{I first learned of LLCDA’s English as a Second Language Program through the linguistics program at the Ohio State University, where I was studying at the time, in the fall of 2011.  Being new to Columbus, I was looking for an opportunity to become more involved in the local community, and as a student of language, I thought this would be a great chance to be of help while building skills relevant to my field.  I spent that semester as a volunteer, starting out working with a team of both old and new volunteers to learn the basics of working in an ESL classroom environment and slowly acquire new responsibilities.  The LLCDA leadership was very supportive, and while we were supplied with teaching goals for the semester, we were allowed a good deal of flexibility in our lesson design and curriculum planning.}

            ^{I continued in the following semester, now through an internship offered by the linguistics department, giving me a more involved and independent role in the classroom.  During this time I picked up many teaching skills.  The diversity among the students, both in background and skill level, trained me to handle a wide variety of classroom situations, and taught me to design lesson plans that could easily be adapted to fit the needs of each student individually.  It is also during this time when I really realized how much I enjoy teaching.  The moment of comprehension, when something clicks in the mind of a student makes me, as an educator, happier than anything in the classroom.}

            ^{In the years following my internship, I stayed on as a volunteer, teaching on and off and training new volunteers.  However the experience I gained would stay with me beyond my role as volunteer.  In the summer of 2013 I went to Poland to teach English to children at a summer camp.  The knowledge I had gained from LLCDA helped prepare me tremendously, and it was absolutely no problem adjusting to teaching in this new environment.  I am now currently applying for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistanceship, and am planning on pursuing a career in language education after graduate school.  I am very glad to have worked in LLCDA and made a difference in the Columbus community, and that LLCDA has made a difference for me, influencing my educational and professional goals, and equipping me with the tools to help me achieve them.}

^{While in college, I decided that I wanted to get a job teaching English abroad once I graduated. So in order to gain experience for such a job, I volunteered with LLCDA for about a year. I was able to develop my skills in teaching small groups and leading discussions, planning lesson materials, as well as explaining English words and grammar to meet the level of the students (teaching English in English). My time with LLCDA remains as one of my favorite college memories. It was always a pleasure to converse with the students, who truly come from all walks of life. I graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in International Studies and Japanese, and thanks to my experience teaching ESL with LLCDA, I was able to achieve my dream job of teaching English in Japan.​}

Tyler Shankel says.....

^{LLCDA helped me grow my communication skills immensely.  Because so many of the students did not speak English well, I would often have to explain things multiple times, and find different ways of saying them to make them easier for the students to understand.  This is useful practice for explaining things in a classroom setting (I would like to be a professor), where being able to explain things in multiple ways would be helpful to my students.  It also gave me perspective on how immigrants adjust to life in the United States, which will be valuable to me as an economist, as I would like to study the situations and issues immigrants face in more depth from an economics perspective.  In addition to these practical skills, my time volunteering with the LLCDA taught me much about other people and cultures, and let me meet and work with wonderful and kind people.}