Interview with Larry Raffety, August 15, 2021

Interview Summary

Raffety, an independent architect from Montana, served in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, as a TEFL volunteer teaching English in a private institute in that industrial city. He captured student interest in his lesson plans using maps of London, for instance, to elicit impromptu speech in English. Another activity was based on a New York Times editorial "Scents of the City" in which students randomly drew a neighborhood in the city, wrote a summary about it, orally presented that neighborhood to the class, and wrote a fictional story about it. Students’ grades depended, mostly, on their participation in class. Raffety organized a series of Living Libraries at the institute, where foreigners served as “the books,” and participants as “the readers.” These were person-to-person encounters with people unlike the students; his counterpart still uses the guide to the Living Library that Raffety wrote while there. As an avid cyclist, Raffety biked all over the city; his colleagues gave him a T-shirt with: “If lost, call….” written on it. Peace Corps significantly changed him, as a result of the lasting relationships that he made there. Caring for one another, in his estimation, is a precious value reinforced by living in Ukraine.

Interview Keyword

Zaporizhia, Ukraine Architect TEFL London, England Impromptu speech Living Libraries "the other" T-shirt Ukraine (Country of service) 2015-2016 (Years of service)

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