“I needed a place to do something that would help me and that would also help others. So I did that.

I wanted to do something that [was] linguistic related. Now, every weekend, I’m already teaching my native language [Tamil] to kids for families [in Houston] who want to keep their native language alive.

My dad’s friend owns a company called GWC DATA.AI. He was concerned that his employees didn’t have the business communication skills they needed in English, so he was looking for a soft skills trainer. I was like, ‘Okay, this is a great opportunity to teach English to people who don’t know English that well.’

It was kind of like them presenting a problem, and I was like, ‘I got the solution.’

I had to create a syllabus, and then I had to create my presentations based on the syllabus. [The company leaders] had a four-week program where I taught [the employees] English based on my syllabus. [The presentations] would change every day because I wanted to keep it interesting and I wanted to keep the class light and fun because they’d usually be really tired from technical training in their jobs.

[Classes were] scheduled for an hour, but extended to more than an hour every single time because we had so much fun. [Classes] would [consist of] me lecturing for 30 minutes, and then I would do a game based on the lecture. We would try to do tongue twisters to get [the] pronunciations of difficult words and I used Kahoot quizzes so they would have fun. I didn’t want it to be too hardcore on them.

I taught [them] how to introduce yourself formally, use business vocabulary, construct a sentence, make sure your grammar is right, send proper emails, and just basic business skills that you need in order to be working in the workplace.

[As classes] went on, I feel like [the trainees] got better and better. I noticed some changes in the way that they emailed me and in the way they talked to me. Eventually, I got better at [teaching] too. I just got to the hang of it. They became more like friends, not just trainees.

One day the assistant training manager asked, ‘Raise your hand if you like Akshatha,’ and everybody raised their hands and said they loved me, which was so sweet.

[Over time], I learned more about people in general. You can’t just expect somebody to do something the way you want it to be. I also definitely saw the perspective of my teachers.
When I would ask, ‘Are there any questions?’ and the meetings would be dead silent, I would be like, dang it. I wanted there to be a question and I felt like they weren’t paying attention. And I feel like that’s maybe what my teachers feel when they ask if there are any questions.

It definitely helped me gain some experience–not only just volunteering hours–but I also got to meet new people and teach.

[Teaching] felt great, because I felt like, ‘Wow. I was actually useful.’ I taught people things they can hopefully use in both their work and regular lives.