So my last unit in my intermediate class was natural disasters and weather. To finish up the unit, I had them do a news report as a project about a tsunami hitting Portoviejo where one student was a reporter and each student was a person in the town (teacher, doctor, policeman, mayor, etc). They each had to talk about what they were doing before, during, and after the tsunami hit using various grammatical points and weather vocabulary that tied in with what we had been learning. I gave them part of the class for three days to work on the project and as they were writing their lines aka sitting there in silence on the first day, I went over to them and told them to make the project fun… that it didn’t have to be boring and they could make their lines exciting and have a fun plot. (One of my students responded by saying ‘but teacher.. a tsunami isn’t very fun’ haha). The next day they were much more lively as they were working on the project and they came up to me and asked ‘so teacher, we can make this fun right? You’re sure?’ And they spent the rest of the class giggling and looking over at me as they wrote their lines.
When it was time to present the next day, they were weirdly excited for presenting a project but I was clearly thrilled because usually they just sit there and seem bored so I sat in the back of the class to watch their presentation. I had brought my brush to use as a microphone but the reporter (also the girl who loves vampires and writes vampire smiley faces on everything) pulled out a microphone and her cell phone that had the news show’s ‘theme music’ and everyone started off by dancing as she walked out to start the news show. She had to give an introduction about what a tsunami was and explain what happened in general and then interview each character. I figured she would give the definition of a tsunami in this introduction, but she pulled out a picture of an obese man and said ‘yesterday’s tsunami was caused by an obese man jumping in the river in Portoviejo. Yesterday was the obese men’s holiday and all of them left their houses because they didn’t have to work and one jumped in the river and caused the tsunami that hit our city.’ She proceeded to show pictures of obese people jumping into the ocean and even a picture of an obese man where the paper was cut off at his head because ‘they were still unsure of the identity of the obese man who jumped into the river causing all of these horrible problems.’
She interviewed the rest of the students and most of their lines were all pretty weather-related, but when she interviewed the mayor his entire speech was about how they were going to make Portoviejo healthier and put all of the obese people on a diet so they could avoid problems like this in the future. I had to take a few points off because he literally didn’t use any weather vocabulary, but it was literally the most hilarious thing I had ever seen. And I only have 6 people in my intermediate class so I was just watching this by myself and I just lost it and could not stop laughing. I was so proud of them because they’re so creative and are motivated to learn English in a fun way. My intermediate class started out as my most difficult one because they were all at different levels and I didn’t know at all what they knew, but now I really enjoy it because they really can communicate and be creative and we can do really fun activities. We still have a lot of grammar to practice, but each class I can tell that they’re improving because they’re more and more willing to participate and put themselves out there with ridiculous scenarios that I don’t expect (obese men’s holiday, hilarious). I really hope I can move up with them after this session ends in December because I really do love working with students who I can challenge and who are really working towards speaking English really well. I absolutely love my job and even though they show up late and talk about vampires when we’re studying the present perfect, I really do look forward to each class.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Profesora Solie
As usual, sorry about the delay in writing about everything but I’ve been crazy busy loving teaching and being absolutely exhausted sooo here’s some info about my experiences as a teacher in the last month-ish.
On September 20 I had my first real class with the students I’ll have for the next twelve weeks. I was extremely horrified and it didn’t help walking onto campus with literally every single person staring at me (worst awkward ugly kid first day of school scenario of my life) but I got through everything just fine. My first two classes of the day are Principiantes I aka students who’ve never had formal English classes before. The first day we rocked the alphabet and ‘my name is’ and played a ridiculous amount of games. Games, by the way, that were meant for the 40 people I was told I would have but only six people showed up for my first class. I had about ten in my second class and wasn’t so nervous so that one went a lot better. I also planned for a lot of students in my intermediate class and after half an hour one kid showed up. I had all these posters saying ‘who is your favorite singer’ and ‘why do you want to study english’ and me and the one kid filled them out while I panicked and thought of other stuff do to. About an hour after the class started, another student came in and the three of us basically just chatted for awhile and drew what we did last weekend on the board and it was a complete mess but I successfully completed my first day of teaching without failing completely, win for Krista.
Slowing down the Krista Rambles
Since the first day I’ve definitely gotten a lot better at teaching (I still have a ton to learn but I’m definitely improving with every class) and enjoy it more each day I teach. This week I finally learned all of my students names (they make fun of me because I say their names with an American accent and then I make fun of them for saying pour-pal instead of purple and we all laugh together) and I’ve gotten way more confident being up in front of the class so I feel like an actual teacher rather than an awkward girl who doesn’t fit in giving a presentation about the alphabet.
One of the most challenging parts of my class is not using any Spanish. I don’t speak any Spanish and I don’t let my students speak any Spanish or ask any questions or vocab words in Spanish so everything I teach them has to be demonstrated, acted out, drawn, or shown. I’ve gotten ridiculously skilled at drawing stick figures and have spent a considerable amount of every evening drawing stupid pictures but it really helps. And explaining directions for games each day is a full blown charades event; STAND UP (gesture) MAKE A CIRCLE (gesture) are extremely common activities for my class and they hate it but really like playing games.
Attempting to be a hardass
Also, despite being the general pushover I tend to be, I’ve surprisingly done really well with enforcing my rules and creating a good classroom environment. My main rules are no Spanish and no cell phones and I’ve already taken four phones and been pretty serious about my no Spanish rule even though the only thing my students really know in Spanish is what I’ve taught them. I haven’t had to yell at anyone yet but when they’re interrupting or not listening I give them the evil eye and they know I’m serious because usually I’m pretty laid back. I make them do a lot of ridiculous acting and games so it was really important to me to create a positive and easy going environment which I think I’ve done and I’m really proud of (unless they’re being annoying and I have to take their phones). They all stay after to individually say “BYE TEACHER” after every class and they always help me pick up all of my stuff that I have all over my classroom by the end of the class which is so nice. Overall I’m so excited to be teaching and it’s way more exhausting than I thought but really fun and I can’t wait to get the hang of things.
Hilarious things from teaching thus far
- My students not knowing what ‘we’re done’ or ‘class is done’ means so the end of class gets really awkward until I walk over to the door and open it and say BYEEEE.
- I’m getting used to speaking in Spanish so whenever I say anything in Spanish everyone always yells ‘teeeacher no Spanish!’ because they hate when I say it every five seconds to them
- When practicing phone numbers I asked everyone their phone number on the way out and after he told me his phone number one guy said ‘teacher, write that down in your notes’ haha
- Whenever I walk anywhere in town but especially on campus, people will yell ‘teeeacher’ and then anything they can think of in English. ‘Ohh teeeacher see you soon hello very beautiful goodbye what is your name very pretty.’ It’s absurd and hilarious.
- One of my 13 year old girls in my intermediate class is OBSESSED with vampires and draws vampire smiley faces on absolutely everything. Including her drawing of a flood: a bunch of people dying and also, vampire sad face.
Since I started writing this post I’ve now finished three weeks of classes. I’ve definitely improved since the first week but also bombed a few classes which is to be expected and hopefully the number of awful classes quickly goes down. I’m getting my students ready for their first test next Tuesday and most of them will do great and some of them can’t say ‘My name is’ so hopefully my review sessions have helped. My basic students have made a lot of progress; I’ve now taught the alphabet, numbers, colors, classroom objects, prepositions, classroom commands, and descriptions of people (how are you, what are you like, and what do you look like). It’s a lot of stuff but has really been going well. Lesson planning is still extremely difficult for me because as we move past the basic numbers and letters a lot of them have a tough time understanding when I don’t explain things in Spanish. I just keep acting everything out and drawing horrible pictures and using a lot of repetition to try to make sure everyone understands.
My intermediate class has also been getting better (thank goodness) because the first two weeks were pretty awful. My students are at very different levels and there are only 5 of them so it’s really hard to know what they’ve learned before and what they haven’t but I’m getting better at thinking of level-appropriate activities and lessons. I’ve been doing a unit on weather for the last two weeks and since the first day it’s gone much better; the first day I decided to do a vocab “review” of weather words which ended up all being new words. First of all, I had way too many words and second of all, there is no way that anyone from Portoviejo, Ecuador will ever need to say “It is freezing” instead of “It is very cold.” I was talking with Heather after class and we realized we were going about the class in the wrong way; we didn’t know how to say any of those weather words in Spanish but wished we knew them so we thought they would want to learn them in English. Turns out, there’s a reason we didn’t learn those words in an intermediate class. It turns out that I can functionally live in Ecuador and have conversations about the weather just fine knowing a very basic vocab. Thank goodness we had this realization early in the class because now I’ve had a much easier time planning my lessons to basic stuff that they need to know but making them practice in more challenging ways. In our weather/natural disasters unit we’ve now covered present progressive, past progressive, adverbs, and prepositions of time. It’s a lot easier for me to be a successful when I can help my students be successful with each class instead of scaring the shit out of them with way too many weather words that we only use in Minnesota. I’m having them do a project now where they’re each a different character in a news report and each have to describe their version of what happened when a tsunami hit Portoviejo. They’re all really quiet but smart so hopefully they get into the project a little bit and make it kind of fun rather than staring at me like they’re bored all the time.
Lesson planning has definitely been the most difficult part of all of this which I didn’t really expect. I have so much respect for good teachers now because it takes so much work to think of good activities that are actually fun and make you learn. I’ve been using some grammar books for basic ideas, but I have to decide everything I want my students to know and plan a way for them to be able to learn it without using Spanish. A lot of games or activities would be great for the lessons I’m teaching, but there’s no way to explain them just by demonstrating or with their limited vocab so I can’t do them. I’m finally learning which games work and which ones don’t so it’s gotten easier as I’ve narrowed down the endless possibilities of activities. And even if I have one good activity, I have to make it flow with an entire class of stuff so that it seems like one class instead of a bunch of different activities. We also have our students do different levels of ‘practice’ with the material we teach them; first we have to diagnose what our students already know about the topic, then present the new material, then have a guided practice where you help them go through the new information, followed by an independent practice where the students produce the new material on their own. Orientation really prepared me for understanding how important all of the different stages of a lesson plan are but I was not prepared for how long it would take me to successfully come up with appropriate activities for my classes. It’s definitely getting easier each day but still is really hard.
So as usual, I wrote all of that more than a week ago. Apologies for my ultimate fail at keeping a blog, but hopefully I can stay on top of it now that everything isn’t so overwhelming. I’ll add stuff about all of my trips soon, AMOR!
On September 20 I had my first real class with the students I’ll have for the next twelve weeks. I was extremely horrified and it didn’t help walking onto campus with literally every single person staring at me (worst awkward ugly kid first day of school scenario of my life) but I got through everything just fine. My first two classes of the day are Principiantes I aka students who’ve never had formal English classes before. The first day we rocked the alphabet and ‘my name is’ and played a ridiculous amount of games. Games, by the way, that were meant for the 40 people I was told I would have but only six people showed up for my first class. I had about ten in my second class and wasn’t so nervous so that one went a lot better. I also planned for a lot of students in my intermediate class and after half an hour one kid showed up. I had all these posters saying ‘who is your favorite singer’ and ‘why do you want to study english’ and me and the one kid filled them out while I panicked and thought of other stuff do to. About an hour after the class started, another student came in and the three of us basically just chatted for awhile and drew what we did last weekend on the board and it was a complete mess but I successfully completed my first day of teaching without failing completely, win for Krista.
Slowing down the Krista Rambles
Since the first day I’ve definitely gotten a lot better at teaching (I still have a ton to learn but I’m definitely improving with every class) and enjoy it more each day I teach. This week I finally learned all of my students names (they make fun of me because I say their names with an American accent and then I make fun of them for saying pour-pal instead of purple and we all laugh together) and I’ve gotten way more confident being up in front of the class so I feel like an actual teacher rather than an awkward girl who doesn’t fit in giving a presentation about the alphabet.
One of the most challenging parts of my class is not using any Spanish. I don’t speak any Spanish and I don’t let my students speak any Spanish or ask any questions or vocab words in Spanish so everything I teach them has to be demonstrated, acted out, drawn, or shown. I’ve gotten ridiculously skilled at drawing stick figures and have spent a considerable amount of every evening drawing stupid pictures but it really helps. And explaining directions for games each day is a full blown charades event; STAND UP (gesture) MAKE A CIRCLE (gesture) are extremely common activities for my class and they hate it but really like playing games.
Attempting to be a hardass
Also, despite being the general pushover I tend to be, I’ve surprisingly done really well with enforcing my rules and creating a good classroom environment. My main rules are no Spanish and no cell phones and I’ve already taken four phones and been pretty serious about my no Spanish rule even though the only thing my students really know in Spanish is what I’ve taught them. I haven’t had to yell at anyone yet but when they’re interrupting or not listening I give them the evil eye and they know I’m serious because usually I’m pretty laid back. I make them do a lot of ridiculous acting and games so it was really important to me to create a positive and easy going environment which I think I’ve done and I’m really proud of (unless they’re being annoying and I have to take their phones). They all stay after to individually say “BYE TEACHER” after every class and they always help me pick up all of my stuff that I have all over my classroom by the end of the class which is so nice. Overall I’m so excited to be teaching and it’s way more exhausting than I thought but really fun and I can’t wait to get the hang of things.
Hilarious things from teaching thus far
- My students not knowing what ‘we’re done’ or ‘class is done’ means so the end of class gets really awkward until I walk over to the door and open it and say BYEEEE.
- I’m getting used to speaking in Spanish so whenever I say anything in Spanish everyone always yells ‘teeeacher no Spanish!’ because they hate when I say it every five seconds to them
- When practicing phone numbers I asked everyone their phone number on the way out and after he told me his phone number one guy said ‘teacher, write that down in your notes’ haha
- Whenever I walk anywhere in town but especially on campus, people will yell ‘teeeacher’ and then anything they can think of in English. ‘Ohh teeeacher see you soon hello very beautiful goodbye what is your name very pretty.’ It’s absurd and hilarious.
- One of my 13 year old girls in my intermediate class is OBSESSED with vampires and draws vampire smiley faces on absolutely everything. Including her drawing of a flood: a bunch of people dying and also, vampire sad face.
Since I started writing this post I’ve now finished three weeks of classes. I’ve definitely improved since the first week but also bombed a few classes which is to be expected and hopefully the number of awful classes quickly goes down. I’m getting my students ready for their first test next Tuesday and most of them will do great and some of them can’t say ‘My name is’ so hopefully my review sessions have helped. My basic students have made a lot of progress; I’ve now taught the alphabet, numbers, colors, classroom objects, prepositions, classroom commands, and descriptions of people (how are you, what are you like, and what do you look like). It’s a lot of stuff but has really been going well. Lesson planning is still extremely difficult for me because as we move past the basic numbers and letters a lot of them have a tough time understanding when I don’t explain things in Spanish. I just keep acting everything out and drawing horrible pictures and using a lot of repetition to try to make sure everyone understands.
My intermediate class has also been getting better (thank goodness) because the first two weeks were pretty awful. My students are at very different levels and there are only 5 of them so it’s really hard to know what they’ve learned before and what they haven’t but I’m getting better at thinking of level-appropriate activities and lessons. I’ve been doing a unit on weather for the last two weeks and since the first day it’s gone much better; the first day I decided to do a vocab “review” of weather words which ended up all being new words. First of all, I had way too many words and second of all, there is no way that anyone from Portoviejo, Ecuador will ever need to say “It is freezing” instead of “It is very cold.” I was talking with Heather after class and we realized we were going about the class in the wrong way; we didn’t know how to say any of those weather words in Spanish but wished we knew them so we thought they would want to learn them in English. Turns out, there’s a reason we didn’t learn those words in an intermediate class. It turns out that I can functionally live in Ecuador and have conversations about the weather just fine knowing a very basic vocab. Thank goodness we had this realization early in the class because now I’ve had a much easier time planning my lessons to basic stuff that they need to know but making them practice in more challenging ways. In our weather/natural disasters unit we’ve now covered present progressive, past progressive, adverbs, and prepositions of time. It’s a lot easier for me to be a successful when I can help my students be successful with each class instead of scaring the shit out of them with way too many weather words that we only use in Minnesota. I’m having them do a project now where they’re each a different character in a news report and each have to describe their version of what happened when a tsunami hit Portoviejo. They’re all really quiet but smart so hopefully they get into the project a little bit and make it kind of fun rather than staring at me like they’re bored all the time.
Lesson planning has definitely been the most difficult part of all of this which I didn’t really expect. I have so much respect for good teachers now because it takes so much work to think of good activities that are actually fun and make you learn. I’ve been using some grammar books for basic ideas, but I have to decide everything I want my students to know and plan a way for them to be able to learn it without using Spanish. A lot of games or activities would be great for the lessons I’m teaching, but there’s no way to explain them just by demonstrating or with their limited vocab so I can’t do them. I’m finally learning which games work and which ones don’t so it’s gotten easier as I’ve narrowed down the endless possibilities of activities. And even if I have one good activity, I have to make it flow with an entire class of stuff so that it seems like one class instead of a bunch of different activities. We also have our students do different levels of ‘practice’ with the material we teach them; first we have to diagnose what our students already know about the topic, then present the new material, then have a guided practice where you help them go through the new information, followed by an independent practice where the students produce the new material on their own. Orientation really prepared me for understanding how important all of the different stages of a lesson plan are but I was not prepared for how long it would take me to successfully come up with appropriate activities for my classes. It’s definitely getting easier each day but still is really hard.
So as usual, I wrote all of that more than a week ago. Apologies for my ultimate fail at keeping a blog, but hopefully I can stay on top of it now that everything isn’t so overwhelming. I’ll add stuff about all of my trips soon, AMOR!
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