Future teachers learn about flexibility on international trip

A group of Lakeland College university transfer students took their education far beyond the classroom – all the way down to Ensenada, Mexico.

The five students involved are all on the path to becoming teachers themselves, and the trip was an opportunity to gain more hands-on experience in the classroom – this time, with additional challenges. They were teaching English and were faced with both cultural and language barriers.

“It was an incredible experience,” Emily McLean, a second-year university transfer student, says. “It wasn’t what I expected. None of our plans went as we thought they would but seeing the smiles on the students’ faces, even if they didn’t quite know what we were saying. I could tell us being there meant a lot to them, and it meant a lot to us too.”

The students created their own lesson plans before embarking on their journey. They spent a week in late April in Ensenada, teaching at private, public and migrant schools. They also collaborated with faculty and students at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) in the Degree in Language Teaching program. Students of the two programs shared their lesson plans and teaching strategies while learning about the differences in education systems between Canada and Mexico. They also helped out in the community with a lunch program, and toured the area.

“This experience will help me in the future because it gave me more experience in general,” McLean says. “I’ve already had the opportunity to teach in front of a class and present lesson plans that I made. I’ve had the opportunity to teach by myself. It’s given me insight into ways I can communicate that aren’t verbal. It’s helped with the nervousness too, knowing that I already have all this experience.”

The trip to Mexico was partially paid for using funds raised at Feast on the Farm, an annual Lakeland event. Since 2016, the community has come together at the event and raised over $100,000 to fund student-led initiatives and projects aimed at enhancing students’ experiential learning opportunities. Other projects have included renovating the interior design project room, creating a natural playscape, and constructing new outbuildings on the farm.

“I think a few of us cried,” McLean says, recalling when the students found out they’d been approved to use some of the funds for their educational trip. “It was just so overwhelming. We were so incredibly grateful to be given this opportunity. We were all willing to work so hard when it came to fundraising but knowing we could put more attention into our lesson plans, we had a little bit of weight lifted off our backs knowing the community came together to give us this experience. It was amazing and we are incredibly grateful.”