Okula Yüz Verin by Ayşegül Özdemir

As you know, for the Community Service course, students have to be a volunteer for some projects like EngelsizDersane, Hazırlık, etc. and Okula Yüz Verin is one of these projects.

Here is the story of the project:

A few years ago, some of the people from ODTÜ Mezunlar Derneği came up with the idea that they could build a school if they collected 100 liras from each member, charity people, etc. Facing with many problems, at the end, they managed to finish the building and the school accepted its first students. (The school was named after “ODTÜ MezunlarıOrtaokulu”.) Yet, the people from ODTÜ MD continued to do things for the school and the students. They decided to organize some courses for the students at the weekends. The courses aim to help them socialize and provide them with assistance for their classes. There are science, math, and English courses. For the volunteer teachers for the courses, people responsible for the project contacted Faculty of Education for some help.

I was one of the volunteers for this this project last term. When YaseminHoca (YaseminTezgidenCakcak) introduced the project to us for the first time, we got really scared. The idea of being in a real classroom as a teacher sounded to us really difficult and challenging, but, in the end, we agreed to be a teacher in the project. It was beneficial for us to be a volunteer for such a project. First of all, we had a chance to experience teaching before practicum and graduation. Some of us (like me) liked being a teacher and decided to postpone their MA plans while some of us started to think about changing their career plans. After having finished my practicum, I have realized that being a volunteer in OYV gave me a lot of things. To be precise, I had no problem in accessing the students, managing classroom & time, etc. during my internship since I knew how state schools worked and formed my own teaching style in advance thanks to OYV. To be honest, before the project, I regretted having decided to study teaching because I am more interested in linguistics courses than ELT courses. However, after having worked in the project, I learnt to combine my linguistics knowledge with my teaching skills.

Secondly, we met people from different departments, ages, status, etc. and that helped us socialize as well.Therefore, I would like to advice those who will take community service course next semesters to be a volunteer Okula Yüz Verin. If they go, I would strongly recommend them to make much of time there.