First day of teaching

Hola!

I had a pretty fantastic first day of class! I had four classes today, and although I was nervous this morning on my way to school to get up at the front of the class and address a group of kids that may or may not understand me, as soon as I got to my first class, all the nervousness went away.

All of my classes today were the bilingual students, so their English was very good. My first class was level 3 English so all of the kids in there are 14 years old (high school here, and the school system in general, is very different from that in the United States, but more on that later). My second class was level 1 English and all of the kids in that class are 12 years old. My third class was biology, but the teacher wasn’t ready for me to start teaching today so I had a little break during that time. Basically, in all the classes that I taught today I just introduced myself, told them a little bit about me, and jumped into whatever grammar or reading lessons they were on.

A few things about the school system here: first of all, they learn British English, so the grammar and vocabulary is a bit different. For example, the students corrected me today when we were going over a grammar exercise and the sentence read: “You ____ park your car here. You will get a ticket.” I told them that the answer to the blank is “cannot,” but the actual correct answer is “must not.” Excuse me. Also, instead of “eraser” they use the word “rubber” and I had to keep myself from giggling when one of the kids asked another if they could borrow a rubber.

Also, secondary school goes from age 12 to age 16. Before that is primary school which goes from age 3 to age 11. After age 16, school is optional and some finish through 18, others start going to a professional school if they know what they want to do, and others never do more school after that or go back to school later on.

Like I mentioned earlier, all the classes I taught today were the classes with the bilingual students, so they have been learning English since age 3. Thus, their English was fantastic and some of them spoke it better than some of the English teachers there. Later on in the week I will have some “normal” English classes in which the students are not bilingual and their English is not nearly as good. From what I hear, there is a very big difference between the two groups.

Anyway, I have been saving the best for last: my last class of the day. This was the level 4 English class with all of the 16 year olds. As I walked into that class, I was immediately struck by the huge cloud of perfume/cologne and I’m sure I winced as I entered. The class was mostly boys with a few girls who spent the entire time giving me sour looks or just pretending like I wasn’t there at all. I definitely had the boys’ attention, however. The only ones who weren’t looking at me were nudging each other and making comments and laughing. I immediately spotted the cool kid when I walked into class because he was the one standing in the corner with the popped collar, the severely gelled hair, and the two gold earrings. I got the nod of approval from him, and all I could do was roll my eyes and try to contain my laughter. I forgot how ridiculous being 16 is. As I introduced myself my hands were shaking so badly and I was trying to appear cool, calm, and collected so that they wouldn’t be able to sense my fear and try to take advantage. After I told them I was from Texas, a lot of them were like “oh, I know about Texas. I’ve seen those western movies.” None of them could really tell me where Texas is (although I did get some smart-aleck answers like, “in the United States” or “in the universe”), but after the class clowns finished putting on their show and I told them that Texas is in the south United States, and shares a border with Mexico, and is actually bigger than Spain, and etc. I think they realized that I do know some stuff that they don’t (because they were, in fact, in awe that the state I am from is bigger than their whole country) and I do believe I earned myself authority in that class.

Bottom line: I survived day one as a teacher. The kids had a lot of questions about Texas, which I gladly answered (with pride, duh). For some reason I was asked several times if I had ever been to San Francisco. One boy also asked me what race my dogs are. Lots of really funny questions. I know it’s only day one, but I’m really excited about this year! I’ll be sure to keep you updated with any more interesting stories!

XOXOXO