Hawaii Literacy Orientation

I went to the Hawaii Literacy orientation today, which was held at Barnes & Noble in Ala Moana. It was an informational session for prospective volunteers and is mandatory if you want to become a tutor. It was scheduled to be two hours long but was just a bit more than an hour. Everything was pretty interesting and I'll be contacting them to sign up for the tutor's training classes.

Before you can become a tutor, you have to take four four-hour long classes. I don't think it'll be that bad. Once that's done, they try to match you up with a student (all 18+ years old) who matches your criteria. You can request different things, such as that your student lives near you, your student's age or if you would like a male or female.

I'm also planning to contact Hawaii Literacy about their ESL program, which is separate from their adult literacy program. Maybe that'd be a good one to volunteer at too? The adult literacy program that I'm doing is just that - adults who cannot read or have trouble reading. They all speak English so it's not ESL. The ESL program will be able to expose me to what it is like to teach someone who is not from the US and who may speak only a little English. This will definitely help prep for teaching in Japan if I make it into the JET program (Yes, I realize I keep mentioning this but have yet to really write a post explaining it. I promise to do this soon).