Teaching and Working with children with Learning Difficulties

The Emerging Voices team are continuously working on finding more placements and projects to give our volunteers more variety.

Colegio Ricaurte De Soacha is a school located in the south of Bogota. It's in a poor neighborhood outside of the city centre. It's about a one hour bus ride from the apartment. The school is split into 2 buildings, one for children in the first grade, kindergarten and crèche and the other for children in second grade to ninth grade. The schools are very close so the volunteer has the choice of which building to work at. There are about 30 to 40 children in the kindergarten. The volunteers will help assist the 2 teachers with lessons, play times and feeding. The lessons will consists of drawing, painting, building and teaching things like the numbers and the alphabet in Spanish. There is a lot of fun and dancing to be had with the children during the playtimes.

There are also children with learning difficulties here so they need a bit of extra care, attention and affection. In the other building the volunteers will teach and help assist with the children from grades 2,3 and 4. These children are always very excited to be taught anything from our volunteers. You can teach them are wide range of subjects, anything from English to math to sports. There are also children with learning difficulties in these classes so the volunteer can choose to stay with these students if they wish and give them one to one teaching. The school starts at 6.30am and finishes at 1.00pm. We do try and get there as early as possible and generally stay for about 3 hours. This school is in desperate need of teachers and assistants... for example... they have a music room with musical instruments and yet no one can actually teach these children music. Emerging Voices help as much as possible with assisting this school but we need more volunteers to give these children the proper education they deserve. On Saturdays the school holds a dance and acting class for the children with learning difficulties. We give the volunteers a choice if they wish to attend. It's a lot of laughs and smiles and is a great opportunity to interact with these children a little bit more.