Office: +84 2143 885 885 / Hotline: +84 914 697 345
Ly Tu Trong Secondary School
Ben´s school
about my school
general informations
At Ly Tu Trong Secondary School there are around 800 Students, in grades from 6 to 9, every grade has around 3 or 4 classes (for example: 6A1, 6A2,...), in every class there are around 35 students, the students also have classes on saturday, in every classroom you can find a board, a projector and of course a picture of Ho Chi Minh :)
At my school there are 3 female English teachers who are very friendly and nice.
The School buildings are arranged in an U-shape with an assembly/playground-place in the middle and a stair set on one side, which leads to the meeting-room for teachers. When you drive from GEL to the School you need around 7-10 minutes.
my experience in this school
On the first day in my school I already felt how excited and warm hearted everybody welcomed me. One of the three English teachers was kind of my mentor, she showed me around, and explained everything to me. My Job as a volunteer was to be a teaching assistant but soon I had the feeling that I can also teach on my own and in the end I mostly taught by myself. Admittedly the majority of the lessons, there was one teacher in the back but they were working on some things themselves and had no real influence on my lesson, so I could freely teach and was thankful for the support because it's always better when you just have a “real” teacher in the room to keep them focused and quit.
For preparing the lessons they gave me the English book and they always sent me a detailed plan for the week about what I have to do. Often you have to be very flexible, bec. lessons change or get delayed or you have to help someone or you have to work in the afternoon. But I have to say the communication with the teachers was always good and I could really feel that they care about my well-being. I often taught 2-3 lessons in the morning (the first lesson 7:15-8:00) and some in the afternoon (sometimes just spontaneously). In the breaktime they have rooms to rest even with a bed and a kitchen, but I often had the time to drive back to GEL and eat something there. I also taught most of the time on saturday, which was unusual for me but it was mostly just 1 or 2 hours. Because Ly Tu Trong is the second best secondary school in Lao Cai, the English level was comparatively good and you could really work with the students. My role as a volunteer went beyond teaching. I attended a lot of meetings about teaching and covid, motivating the students for their contest or exam, holding presentations about schools and teaching in Germany and so on…
To sum up, everybody that I met was super friendly, they always tried to help. You just need to be open to everything and don't be afraid of asking for something.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.