Here is the long-awaited Spring 2021 edition of El Periodico with the CE events and news.
- I just want to personally thank our volunteer Sarah Olson (from Washington State, USA, Madrid Lifestyle November 2020) for her amazing first job on El Periodico (after taking over from volunteer English School director Cecilia Boyd). Sara is best know for her “Manual to Getting Your Visa During COVID,” which many of you will have seen and read and followed in order to get to Madrid the way Sarah did last fall.
- Thanks Sarah for the big impact you’re having as a volunteer for CE!!!
- Sarah is one among many teachers who are volunteering now. Our most recent volunteers are Jean and Carey, a South African couple who arrived in Nov 2019 for the Madrid Lifestyle and who are now going to be doing a series of videos for CE after we had a few beers together at the CE Club event Punk Kitchen last Saturday. My son Hector Clarke (just 17 last week, King’s College Madrid) will also be volunteering to help them with the videos.
- I want to thank the on-going volunteer work of Art (administrative) and Travis (CE VP), Michael (Florida, Madrid Lifestyle March 2021, never missed a Club event since he arrived and drinks us all under the table volunteer) and so many more like Lama in the past.
- Not only this, but I also want to give my heartfelt thanks to our many, many past Spanish University interns and our current interns who run the scheduling department: Miguel (who’s last day is today), Miguel Angel and Ceci in the mornings and Andy in the Afternoons, as well as Milena in the TEFL department. What a brilliant crew we have this year!
- And where would we be without the NUMBER ONE Canterbury English Volunteer Cecilia Boyd who has been running the Canterbury English Academy since the end of last year and wrote the first three El Periodicos.
- I just want to take this chance to show my appreciation to you all, because it’s thanks to you that we have been able to make the Canterbury English Academy a non-profit organization for the benefit of the teachers as well as making our second year continuing programs all free so that everybody gets a visa renewal and a Spanish course for free from the second year on. This all is thanks to our volunteers. I couldn’t do it without you.
- As Lama (from Beirut Lebanon, TEFL June 2019) said at our CE pub crawl a month ago, “Richard’s favorite word is “Volunteer” and she’s right, it is, but it’s because I can’t do it alone!!!
- Every single teacher is an integral part of CE. Whenever you put in extra work to prepare a great English class or you are inspired during the class and know that you have gone above and beyond the call of duty, that is when you are a volunteer. So we are all volunteers, especially when we love what we are doing and what we are doing crosses that fine blue horizon line from work to inspired service to others and this becomes vocational! And when we do something vocational, that is when we are happy and content with ourselves and our lives.
- Hope you all enjoy the beautiful, new design, the pictures and the read!
- Richard
