I teach now. Go figure.

WHAT a rush.  I am preparing for my first English class, which will be tonight.  I've got all kinds of phrases floating around in my head that sound teacher-y and I can't wait to just point at someone and have them be responsible for giving me an answer.  Dr. Rego, what drove me mad in Con Law had a method, and I am so excited to try it out myself.

“Dedo” means finger in Spanish and in Pre-Service Training we learned about the “Dedocracy” in classrooms and meetings.  If you're not getting answers, just point.  I'm also reminded of Mr. Rinda's snarky take on teaching government in high school.  “This is a dictatorship.  I'm the dick, and you're the taters.”  ¡Que poderrrrr!, what power!  I love it.

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So, class was pretty successful.  At least, I feel like it was.  The class knows that when they come in, there's the date to copy into their books.  Then we played Whisper Down the Lane in Spanish to demonstrate that even in our native language we can have difficulties communicating.  I talked to them about how we're all just starting out learning English and because we all communicate differently, there are some things we could do to level the playing field.  Then BAM I brought out my list of classroom expectations that I'd written out on newsprint paper.  Arrive on time; complete your assignments; participate in class with respect; no cell phones; and remove yourself quietly if need be.

Excuse me, but I am totally legit.

Then we moved onto what I called the fundamentals of classroom communication.  These are commands such as “sit down”, “copy”, and “get out your homework”.  We also worked with requests such as “Can you repeat that, please?” and “What does ______ mean?”  I read out loud in Spanish situations, one at a time, for which they could use these phrases.  Then students chose what they thought would be the most appropriate command, question or request from the board and spoke it aloud in English.

We finished early, actually, which makes me think I didn't do enough repetition exercises.  Like, they understood what I was getting at and that made me really happy.  But producing it themselves is what I was lacking.  That's the plan for this next class – mad repetition, but not memorization per se.  Memorization of long grammar or vocab lists kind of freaks me out, probably because of the way that I learned Spanish.  I had a great base from high school Spanish classes that were focused on using Spanish in real life situations.  And then I got to a real-life situation during study abroad in Bolivia and dang...when you're hungry, you learn pretty fast how to ask about food.

So The goal of the class is to be able to speak because, if I'm being frank, that's all I'm good for when it comes to English.  Me and grammar ain't close friends.  The next three months are just totally focused on understanding spoken English and being able to appropriately reciprocate in a conversation held at a basic level.  That's not a bad goal, right?