First Day

January 26th, 2015

Today was my first day with my own classes, and boy am I tired.  After standing all day, my knees are screaming, "what did you get yourself into?!" However, the experience was a positive one.  Many of the teachers in the teachers' lounge asked me, "are you nervous?" Of course, I was, but not nearly as nervous as I had expected.  I felt prepared, and that was mostly all that I needed.

However, I did run into a few obstacles.  My biggest complaint was that I did not have enough copies for my last block class, and that interfered with my teaching a little bit.  Also, if that is my biggest concern from the day, I suppose that I am in pretty good shape.  La vieja came and checked on me with each class, which was a very nice comfort.

I had all three of my Spanish II classes, and it was astounding to see the difference in performance levels.  The first class was incredibly prepared and is ready to move on.  The second class--to be honest--is not ready for Spanish II, so we need to review.  The last class of the day was moderate in skill level, but I struggled a little bit with classroom management.  The students were pretty chatty, but they calmed down when I asked.  I hate being the "strict" teacher, but I know that being strict is vital to my success as a teacher--especially for the first few weeks.

The students loved the activity that called for them to interview each other and share, so I plan to prepare more lessons like that.  I was impressed that I did not hear any side conversations during this activity; everyone was engaged, which makes me smile just writing that. I took their interviews home just to see how they were because only a few students were asked to share, and I was very impressed that some students used advanced grammatical techniques, or fixed mistakes throughout the lesson. I have recognized some patterns of error, which gives me a better idea of how to proceed.

Cambio y corto,

Timothy Chávez