I'm a Teacher!!!

Yay!!!  I am officially a teacher!!!  I finally had my first class last Tuesday night, and I immediately loved it!!!!  My students are so sweet and fun and teaching is crazy fun and crazy hard, all at the same time!!!  Now that I'm more settled in my schedule and have the time, let me tell you about my first week(s).

My First Day
Okay, so my first class was actually supposed to be on Tuesday morning (July 26th) at 10am.  However, the only students who signed up for that class were teachers from one of the schools where I was supposed to be teaching.  However, I was never given contact information for any of them, so I had no way of letting them know that the location of the classes had been changed.  But wait, let me back up for a minute...


I was supposed to teach at one school, the Liceo Nocturno in the mornings and at another school, Escuela Laboratorio, in the evenings.  However, the Escuela Laboratorio kept dragging their feet and I may not have had access to that classroom for a few weeks.  So, Martha, the director at Calitur (the Liberia Chamber of Tourism...my local employer) got in touch with the local municipality and secured the "Antigua Gobernational" as the location for my evening classes.  The building is vacant and was the original office for the city government until it moved to its current location.  It also happens to be located right next to the White Church in the Central Park area (aka, great location).  Martha and Calitur are also hoping to transform the building into an Information Center for Liberia tourism next year, so having access to it this year is a "big win" for them.  In the end, it was offered up as a location for all my classes which is amazing because it's literally a straight shot from my house, and I have a little more control over the space since I can access it at any time.  Very cool.  That's not to say though, that it didn't need a little work....

So, back to Tuesday morning.  I arrived at the "classroom" at 8:30 so I could set up the space and get the keys to the room from Martha.  One of the government employees had moved about 18 chairs in to the space, and there were a bunch of random large desks, benches, cabinets, etc. also in the room.  Needless to say, it needed to be cleaned up.  Fortunately there's a smaller room attached to my main classroom, so I was able to move all the crap I didn't want into the other room, and ended up with a really cute/organized space.  Calitur bought me a whiteboard, markers, trashcan, etc. and by 11am, my classroom was ready to go.  In other words, it was a good thing that none of the teachers from the other school showed up because I really wouldn't have been ready for them.  And I guess since we were no longer using their school as a teaching location, we didn't have a responsibility to try to get them enrolled in classes?  Anyway, had I known it was going to be a "working" morning, I wouldn't have worn my "first day of school" outfit.  Oh well.  Following's a pic of the finished product and a pic of the spare room where I moved all the crap I didn't need.  I should have taken a "before" and "after" pic, but I guess I didn't have that kind of foresight...

From the doorway into my classroom: (notice that I have my very own "official teacher's desk."  so legit!)  Also notice that there are no desks.  Kind of a bummer for the students but the arms of the chairs are kind of wide so the students put their notebooks on that.  Martha said she heard we would be getting a table but it hasn't appeared yet...a week later.  The students are making due without it so far though.  Such good sports!)

It's hard to see all the crap from this picture, but this is some of the stuff I had to move out of my classroom to make it usable...

 From the "spare room" to the entryway of my classroom:

 "Welcome Students" on the whiteboard :)

So after organizing my classroom and overcoming some issues with my ever-empty front bike tire (see previous blog post), I made sure all my lesson plans were ready to roll, I had all my materials printed out, and got ready for my first class at 6pm that night!

I was a little nervous at this point, but mostly just pretty excited (since I was supposed to have started classes the Wednesday before!  So I had been "ready" for a week already!!).  My first student, Jerry, arrived at class ten minutes early, so I just chatted with him for a bit.  Class really got started about five to ten minutes late because of "tico time" (which I love - that means Ticos (Costa Ricans) are always running late, but so am I so it's a really good match!  I mean, it's not so great for classes, but it's worked out fine so far!).  I had 9 students show up to my first class, which doesn't sound like very many, but it's actually a really nice number.  It means we were all able to get to know each other quickly and it gives all the students plenty of time to talk/practice, while also being a big enough group to make team/group projects/games fun.  For the first day, we mostly just did "getting to know you" activities and icebreakers (like BINGO and fun fact interviews) and had a lot of fun.  It was also a good way for me to see how my students interacted and to evaluate what they did/did not know.  And, without them really knowing it, they learned a few things too :)

My Tuesday/Thursday night class is a lot of fun.  The students are really outgoing, very smart and so funny.  We laughed a lot on the first day, which was great!  I told them that the classroom is an "English Only Zone" (phrase compliments of Kristi - must give credit where credit is due!)  and that when they step through the doors, they have to leave their Spanish outside.  Naturally, when we were on our break and we were all hanging out outside, my students informed me that I had to speak Spanish with them when I left the classroom.  This prompted me to run back into the classroom ;)  jaja, I kid.  All in all, the first day was a success and I went home tired and happy.  I mean, I am definitely not the world's best English teacher, and as expected, there were plenty of things that I didn't do quite right, and lots of things that I need to work on, but I guess that is just part of the experience.  My students are learning English, and I'm learning how to teach.  (Side note: I keep forgetting to take a group picture of my beginner classes, but keep checking back.  I'll add pics when I remember to take them!)

Day Two
My second beginner class began at 8am on Wednesday morning, so I got up extra early and made my way to the classroom.  For those of you who know me, you know I'm not so much a morning person, so having an 8am class is a little rough, but it's good for me I guess...When I got to class, I realized that I had been so fixated on prepping for my first day of class, that I had neglected to make sure I had enough of everything for my second day of class!  (In my defense, I had all my materials from the week before, and I was supposed to have started with my 8am class, giving me plenty of time before or after that to make additional copies.  Regardless of my excuses though, it was a totally embarrassing rookie mistake, and one that I should mention Kristi previously reminded me to look out for.  Dobt!)  Thus, I had only four copies of my BINGO handout and like two copies of my fun fact interviews.

Luckily, only four students showed up at the start of class (which was disappointing as I was expecting a lot more students, but also great because it meant I had exactly enough copies of my first activity (BINGO) for my students!) so I was saved from my rookie mistake by chance.  Yay!  At around 9am, six more students arrived at class, and it turned out that they had been running late/weren't able to find the classroom (which is a little funny as I kept looking outside for students and the building is really not that big, but whatever!).  This, again, ended up being perfect timing b/c it was just in time for interviews (which I just put on the whiteboard, quick thinker that I am...who needs copies?!?!) and in the end, it was another successful, though more stressful, class.  (I learned at the beginning of class how nice it is to have more than four students.  Four students is just really not enough for the kind of fun group activities I had planned....another note to self....plan activities for many students or just a few students...).  Again though, I really liked this group as well.  The students are so sweet and all willing to talk and have fun.  Very cool!

That night at 6pm I had my first intermediate class.  By default, that class is smaller, and while I was supposed to have like ten students, only 5 showed up to class (though more will be coming in the future, yay!).  As with the beginner classes, I started with icebreakers and introductions, and just made it a little more difficult by using harder vocab and grammar structures.  The students in this class are, again, very smart and very easy to get to know.  They ask a lot of questions, and we had some good discussions right off the bat.  There are definitely perks to both the beginner and intermediate classes.  With beginners, the material is really basic and easy (easier) to teach, but with more advanced students, I don't have to think about my sentences as much and its easier to have more robust conversations, which is nice.  At the end of class, I remembered to bust out my camera and snapped a pic!

My Other Classes So Far:
In case you haven't guessed it already, this is my class schedule:

Mondays and Wednesdays, beginner class: 8-10am
Mondays and Wednesdays, intermediate class: 6-8pm
Tuesdays and Thursdays,  beginner class: 6-8pm
Fridays, private lessons with Martha: 8-10am

To round out my first week, since I started on a Tuesday, I only had a second class with my first group of students.  (I was supposed to have my first private lesson with Martha on Friday morning, and while I showed up to the classroom, it turned out she had completely forgotten about her lesson and had booked a meeting at the airport, so that just didn't happen.  oh well!)  In this class, we got down to business and reviewed the "introductions/greetings vocab" used in the book (like "as a matter of fact, I am" which was super confusing at first for the students!), and the verb "to be."  Again, since this was my first hard core lesson, things did not go perfectly, and I took a lot of notes about what to do better for my next beginner class, and what to do better with this group in the future.  Still, all in all, the students had a good time, learned a lot, and everyone left on a high note.

I think it worked out well that this is my "guinea pig" class because it makes me want to try really hard to make the lessons as smooth as possible for them, because I really want them to feel like they are succeeding, and I really want them to keep coming back.  That being said, the notes I took on my lesson with this class really did help my other beginner class on Monday morning (yesterday) because it did go a bit more smoothly and was a little less confusing.  I also had an intermediate class last night.  A lot of the students had previously told me that they couldn't make it, so there were only two of us, so we just did some review and prepped for our next class together with the whole group.  The kind of cool thing is that I have continued to get new students to show up to each of my classes because my current students are spreading the word to their friends and coworkers, so that's cool too.  It's nice to have new additions to the classes...at least for now, while we're still at the beginning!!

Overall, my first week of teaching has been a lot of fun.  Right now, it takes a lot of time to prep all the lessons and to try to come up with creative and fun ways to engage the students to help them learn the material.  I don't want my classes to be boring and I don't want to be the one doing all the talking.  (In a good ESL class, students do 80% of the talking, so thinking of ways to get them to do the work is a good challenge for me).  Its also a challenge to make sure all the students are learning/understanding the material.  As with all classes, some students understand the material right away, while other students take a little longer to understand.  As a teacher, I'm trying to learn the right balance of keeping the higher learners engaged so they don't get board, and keeping the lower learners from getting discouraged or lost in the shuffle.  I think that's definitely a skill that you acquire trough practice and trial and error, but if anyone has suggestions, holler!