Last week, Rachel and I started teaching English to a sixth grade class at the Chicon primaria. It's a short course--just until mid-December--that is just one of the mini-projects we're working on until January, when we begin our heavy duty projects. I'm astounded at how much I've learned after having taught for only a week.
The day before Rachel and I were scheduled to begin, we had no clue what we were doing. Steph sent us a lot of helpful materials for teaching English--lesson plans, tips, games, puzzles, activities--but we had no idea where to start. We had only a vague idea of the students' current level ("basic," we'd been told). Despite that, we threw together a lesson plan, which was actually more of a diagnostic in disguise. We'd both had a good deal of experience teaching, but strictly violin, and strictly individual lessons. We were therefore pretty nervous as we entered the classroom for the first time. But as we soon found out, we were more prepared than we thought. The students didn't know much English at all. But they did have what I think is the key ingredient to a successful learning experience: ganas a aprender (enthusiasm for learning).
The first day was smooth sailing. We taught for just over an hour, and didn't get much farther than halfway through our lesson plan. But when it was over, the director dropped the bomb and asked us if we could teach the full day--English from 8 to 1. We couldn't say no. So here began the challenge: figuring out how to hold the attention of 11-14 year olds while teaching the same subject for three blocks. Here's what I've learned.
- I think one thing Rachel and I do well is that our plans are pretty rough and leave room for deviance. Sometimes the best ideas come to you on the spot. You can plan for hours, but you never know just what to expect, especially when you're teaching kids.
- It's imperative to vary the lesson plan. We do best when we have a nice balance of review, written independent work, interactive 'lecture,' and games.
- In my humble opinion, the hardest obstacle a Spanish speaker must overcome when trying to learn English is pronunciation/reading. In Spanish, each letter has basically one sound and one sound only. Also, as they say, Spanish words utilize natural letter sounds. For this reason, reading English is extremely difficult. Many letters have multiple sounds, or no sound at all. And even though there are rules, such as "magic E causes the vowel to say its name," they are as often void as they are valid. But in an effort to aid pronunciation, we dove right into the alphabet, especially vowel/consonant combinations, and have been focusing heavily on this topic. It's especially important to me that students learn to read and pronounce English, because this skill will allow those who have ganas to advance on their own in the future.
- Teaching is exhausting work. If you thought high school was a little too much at one time, try teaching for a full day.
- Peruvian schoolkids are nuts for singing. So far, we've sung 'I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas," "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," the alphabet song, and the Hokey Pokey. If you're ever teaching here, be sure to incorporate songs. I also bring my violin, which the kids go a little crazy over.
- I've noticed that the students in my class are really detail-oriented. This is an asset in many respects; for example, most of what they write in their notebooks is neatly and uniformly organized. But at the same time, their attention to detail can be a hindrance. Today, after reviewing our unit on description words (such as tall, fat, intelligent, clean, etc.), we had the students play a modified Pictionary--meaning they had to choose a word and draw clues on the board for their classmates to guess. Rachel and I were shocked at how many times many of them erased and started over after drawing merely a head. I think they were so preoccupied with trying to make their people look perfect that they neglected to add the features distinctive to the particular adjective. Therefore, there were many 'tall' people who looked just like the 'clean' people who looked just like the 'intelligent' people. They seemed to have trouble thinking of other ways to portray the adjectives...for example, drawing a person next to a tree to indicate "tall."
- The kids give us a run for our money, but they are adorable and I am enjoying the experience.
That does it for the time being.
Peace.
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