Wow, what a week I have had, I can’t even believe it. To be honest I don’t know where to start so here it goes… I absolutely love CPI and my Spanish teacher, Judith Salazar. Having four hours of Spanish everyday seemed so crazy to me, but it went by so fast. She is one of the best teachers I have ever had. We all agreed that we never actually felt like we were learning, we just had such a wonderful time and by the end of it we know the basics of Spanish. She taught me more in one week than I had learned in three years back in high school. It was so great to watch her teaching skills as inspiration for when I become a teacher. She does not let us speak in English for the most part, but that nice enforcement and positive encouragement made me feel like I could do anything and learn as much as there is to learn. She asked about our families, our experiences here, what things are important to us, etc. Getting to know your students on a personal level is so important in teaching. I will make it a goal to know all of my students very well. She was very curious and that made me eager to tell her, but it was a struggle because I had to respond in Spanish. This is exactly what we were told that was going to happen. We are going to experience how it feels to be the one who can’t talk the language of the place they are in. Sometimes it made me feel really stupid and it made me discouraged, but I forced myself to try as hard as I could. I will have students who will try hard to learn, but I think those that stay quiet and pretend they are learning are going to be the majority, rather than the minority. It is so tough to feel out of place and just because you don’t know the language it makes you feel so much less intelligent. I want to do everything in my power for those students who are not English speakers to feel just like I felt in my class. I felt silly at times when I didn’t know what to say, but I was comfortable with my teacher and that made all the difference. I knew she would help me when I needed it and I knew she had faith in me, more than I had for myself. Setting high standards are so important because when you don’t expect much out of a student you are not going to get much out of them, but when you set goals that they can achieve with a little bit of a challenge they will be amazing students and learners.
To immerse ourselves in the culture even more, we got to take a Latin cooking class at CPI. It was cool to be able to cook they way they do here with all of the fresh ingredients and to make a beautiful meal that everyone enjoyed.
We were supposed to go to teach in the school on Tuesday, but there was a miscommunication so we taught on Wednesday instead. We planned two lessons; one was a science one that had the students categorize different types of leaves according to size, texture, shape, etc. The other one was a letter writing activity that was for the students to send notes to a pen pal back in the states. On Wednesday we got there and were told that we wouldn’t be able to teach our lesson, instead we were going to observe kindergarten and special ed. I went to first grade and played with a few girls. We did some puzzles, I read books to them in Spanish and I read them an English book that I translated into Spanish. I could tell that they really appreciated me spending time with them and interacting with them. I felt very foolish at times because they would talk to me in Spanish, but I would not know how to respond or even know what they were saying. I did my best, but after a while I was exhausted. It really gave me an insight on how Spanish speaking students will feel when they enter into my classroom not knowing much English. It will be a struggle for them, but like I have said before I am really going to strive to make them feel very comfortable in my class. Obviously they aren’t going to learn right away, but they need to feel ok with making mistakes and not knowing everything. We all need to feel that way in our life and I am honestly appreciative that I got that experience today.
Thursday we got to actually teach our lessons. First I went to a sixth grade class and taught the lessons about leaves in a small group of five students. I absolutely loved it! Somehow all of the Spanish I had ever learned came rushing back and my students understood most of everything I had to say to them. The exceeded my expectations and they did really well with the lesson. I challenged them a little by saying some things only in English which forced them to recall what they had learned in English class and eventually everyone got it and finished up the lesson. They were some of the nicest children I had ever worked with. They knew exactly how to behave, they didn’t fuss about anything and they were very willing and eager to learn. All I could think about was how they are so much different than the students in the US. I personally feel that they students are very whiny and they don’t want to learn as much as they do here. I also noticed that it is such a process to transition in classes back home. For example, if they need to rearrange desks to complete a project or assignment the students make it a game and they get very loud and rambunctious. But here it was entirely different; the students picked up their desks with very little talking and they sat down ready to learn. I think that the problem is that a lot of teachers back home don’t get the same amount of respect as here just because they take education very seriously in CR. I plan to establish my classroom rules in the beginning so that my students understand how my class works. You can’t be lenient in the beginning and then try to be strict, it works the other way.
Then we went to third grade and taught our letter writing lesson. It went pretty well, but I think it was much harder to teach in comparison to the leaf lesson. We had to teach give them a lot of extra help because they were creating sentences, but creating a sentence takes a lot. Most of the students just copied the templates we created and filled in the blank. They were very proud of their letters, but it was a struggle for me. I liked that we were able to just know the vocabulary of the science lesson and just use those words, but having to do a lesson plan in English about English is very tough. But that is the whole point of this trip, understanding how it feels to not speak the common language. It gets so overwhelming, but I have to push through it so that I know what it is like.
Today is Friday and we are planning on going to La Carpio which is a city of severe poverty. I am very nervous because I have never really seen much poverty or spent any significant amount of time in a city with a lot of poverty. We are supposed to make beds for people in the area that are in need of them, but there has been some murmurs that that might not be happening. We are also planning on spending time in the Montessori school which will be an amazing experience. I’ll write soon about the trip and more about my week!
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