This summer, Olds College (OC) participated in a program to teach Mexican students and instructors English as a Second Language (ESL) and teach them about Canadian and Alberta culture.
About 30 students and instructors from post-secondary institutions in Mexico participated, staying in residence at the college for about a month.
The class was part of the Proyecta 10,000 program, offered by the government of Mexico. The goal of the program is to have 10,000 Mexican undergraduate students, teachers and researchers study ESL in Canada by 2018.
This is the first time Olds College has been involved in the program, OC coordinator Pablo Ortiz says.
The group at Olds College did everything from studying English and Canadian customs to going on tours of Banff, Drumheller, Edmonton and the Calgary Stampede, as well as writing poetry on a wall at the OC Learning Resources Commons and learning how to line dance.
Ortiz was impressed with what he saw.
"I was in touch with a couple of them and I saw the development in a period of two to three weeks," he says. "They were really shy, coming from Mexico, with almost none of the skills and the proficiency of the language.
"Probably they had them, but they were not confident to use them or to put them in motion. And here, they had to. They had to, because they got involved in the community, they had to do some shopping around, so they had to practise all the time."
He says Olds and area residents were "great," really embracing the opportunity to help the Mexicans learn the language and understand local customs.
"Sometimes one can get a little bit frustrated and impatient when somebody else is learning a language and they're trying to practise," Ortiz says.
"Here, the community was great. They were really patient, they were really helpful, and they embraced their learning of English ñ at all levels."
Learning specialist Brendan Richardson primarily looked after the academic side of the four-week program.
"We did literature studies with them, we took poetry. We spent a lot of time on idioms, teaching them sort of the idioms of the general public and also sort of the idioms of millenials," he says.
"We got them to talk to middle-aged people and young people, which was fun. And that was really collaborative; we got the young people in the college involved."
A highlight occurred when the students, with the help of instructors/translators, created their poems.
"We surveyed the students on what they wanted to do and one of them that they suggested was poetry, so it all kind of happened very naturally," Richardson said to a crowd which had gathered to hear the poems read out loud at the end of the program.
"I imagined myself being sort of the Robin Williams figure -- the Dead Poets Society guy, taking them through this painstaking artistic process, but that didn't really happen," Richardson said, sparking laughter.
"I just said, ëwrite a poem,' and then they did," he added, sparking even louder laughter.
"And that is so much better than I expected and so much better than I can do and I think a lot of people can do."
Volunteer Natalia Chiles helped out with non-academic activities for the group.
She says a big highlight was the line dancing, which took place in the gym at the Frank Grisdale Hall.
"We had a projector set up so that they could follow along with the dance moves and stuff," Chiles says.
"It was funny, because we ended up teaching them (songs) like Cadillac Ranch, and in the end, they ended up teaching us a line dance."
"The community was great. They were really patient, they were really helpful, and they embraced their learning of English ñ at all levels."PABLO ORTIZ PROGRAM COORDINATOR FOR OLDS COLLEGE
