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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Dear future volunteer –Part 2

by

20150204

This let­ter comes from Alexan­der Bain, a first-year vol­un­teer tu­tor at the St Aidan's An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School Al­ta class in Arou­ca.

Dear fu­ture vol­un­teer: Wel­come to the Al­ta fam­i­ly! Just about a year ago I was right where you are–fac­ing un­chart­ed ter­rain.

Like all new en­deav­ours there is un­cer­tain­ty. How­ev­er you have a team, which has trav­elled the route and which you can re­ly on to get you to your des­tiny. Be­ing in the same boat with you I would like to share my Al­ta ex­pe­ri­ence with you. First­ly I wish to quote an ex­cerpt from Zel­da La Grange's Good Morn­ing Mr Man­dela: "When you spend a day like Christ­mas in such pover­ty-strick­en area one is tru­ly and ho­n­ourably thank­ful for your own priv­i­leges..."

La Grange is a white South African (Afrikan­er) woman brought up in the then apartheid sys­tem. She had all priv­i­leges not al­lowed to black South Africans. She had been em­ployed as Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela's per­son­al as­sis­tant. Pres­i­dent Man­dela had asked her to or­gan­ise a Christ­mas par­ty on Christ­mas day. The par­ty was for the chil­dren of Qunu, the vil­lage where Man­dela grew up. At that event this priv­i­leged white woman re­alised that there was more ful­fill­ment in giv­ing than in re­ceiv­ing. It is with hu­mil­i­ty La Grange was able to man­i­fest the re­al­i­ty of the dif­fer­ence be­tween priv­i­leged and un­der­priv­i­leged.

Trained peo­ple do the job bet­ter

Al­ta train­ing pre­pares you for the task at hand. The train­ers and fa­cil­i­ta­tors make the train­ing en­joy­able by their hu­mor­ous, ami­able and cour­te­ous ap­proach. They buffer you from your doubts and er­rors. They are help­ful and ac­com­mo­dat­ing. The best part of the train­ing comes when you have to teach your fel­low trainees. That ex­er­cise is the zenith of the train­ing.

Fu­ture vol­un­teers, we are so priv­i­leged to be able to be in a po­si­tion to give. In so do­ing we can re­ly on our pas­sion, the pas­sion that led us to make the choice to be­come an Al­ta tu­tor. Pas­sion is the fu­el that will keep you buoyed as you stand in front of the class to de­liv­er.

Your dri­ve and com­mit­ment to be the change that you want to see, the in­tense af­fec­tion for this par­tic­u­lar vo­ca­tion, will help you to tri­umph any fear or hin­drance that you may have. The pas­sion to con­tribute to na­tion and com­mu­ni­ty keeps you ground­ed to tri­umph in front of the class. It is pas­sion that im­pels you to give of your time and tal­ent to es­pouse so­cial change in our coun­try. All of the above will in­spire you to re­main stead­fast in your pur­suit to be an Al­ta tu­tor.

Prac­tice makes per­fect

So when one prac­tis­es the steps shown by the train­ers your fear of be­ing in front of the class is re­duced im­mense­ly. At first one may be shaky. But re­sid­ing in each of us is the con­fi­dence of knowl­edge, train­ing and prepa­ra­tion. These el­e­ments are what we would re­ly on to be con­vinc­ing to our stu­dents.

Two heads are bet­ter than one

Team teach­ing al­le­vi­ates the stress of hav­ing to re­mem­ber large blocks of in­for­ma­tion. It al­so en­hances uni­ty and sup­port for each oth­er to bol­ster our con­fi­dence to de­liv­er. Fi­nal­ly, there is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for team build­ing and work­ing with new peo­ple.

My fel­low Al­ta tu­tors look for­ward to wel­com­ing you to the team in Sep­tem­ber.

?�2 Al­ta needs vol­un­teers to teach at class­es across Trinidad for aca­d­e­m­ic year Sept 2015-June 2016. Call 624-AL­TA (2582)/ 653-4656/ 664-2582 to sched­ule an in­ter­view and be­gin the process of be­com­ing an Al­ta tu­tor. Vol­un­teers are un­paid. Vol­un­teer, Do­nate, Spon­sor a stu­dent. Find us on Face­book: Al­ta Trinidad.


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