First weeks of teaching

I started teaching last week! I was so excited and nervous about my first class. I had all sorts of thoughts about how the class would go, I planned out a lesson and went over it in my head dozens of times.

The first day of classes didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I felt discouraged, the students seemed confused about what I was doing and I wasn't getting the level of participation that I wanted. I talked to the other ETA and she said she had a similar experience with the students when they first met her and started working with her. For the second day of classes I simplified a few things and lowered my expectations. The second day was much better.

This is what I have learned in my first two weeks of teaching:

• Speak slowly and emphasize words that I know are cognates to help the students understand.
• Ask the teacher to encourage student participation. Some teachers sit in the back of the room and work on their lessons, some leave the room when I'm teaching and others participate in my activities or push their students to join in. The latter group are my favorites. 
• Maintain a positive attitude and smile as much as possible - even if my face starts to hurt after four hours of class.
• Students often have the same schedules as other students in their major. For example, juniors studying Economics might be part of a small group of students who they have the exact same classes all day everyday. They sit together in class and are usually extremely reticent to move around and talk to other students. I have to be creative to get classes to mix more.
• Students will revert to Spanish if not under my or their teacher's direct supervision. 
• The people around here really like eating guinea pigs and potatoes.

I have been teaching the same lesson for two weeks now and will be modifying it slightly next week for the first year English students. I think the only modification I'll do is to deliver my introduction and instructions for each section in both English and Spanish. This is what I do in my lesson:

1. Introduce myself. I talk about the Minnesota and Minneapolis. I tell them about the current weather and explain that because of the often changing weather, Minnesotans are obsessed with the weather. I tell them about similarities between Minneapolis and Cuenca: rivers traverse both cities, they both are home to many beautiful parks and interesting museums. I talk about my education, my background with Spanish to explain that practice is the best way to learn a language, and a little bit about the Fulbright Program. 
2. Three questions for Rose. I allow the students to ask me any three questions. I first experienced this at a school in Minneapolis with middle school students. They all wanted to know what my favorite Justin Bieber song is. The Ecuadorian students asked me the same three questions in the first week - how old are you, are you married and do you like Cuenca? So this week I told them the answers to the top three questions right off the bat and asked them to come up with new questions. I was really happy I did this, now many of the questions are more interesting. Students have asked me about geography, politics, and why I like teaching. 
3. Question of the day: What do you like about Cuenca? Next I ask each student individually to tell me what they like about Cuenca. This helps me connect briefly with each of the students. I hope it also helps the students relax and not find me to be such a scary giant. I'm still a giant but maybe a friendly one. Cuencanos are proud of their parks, the rivers and the history and architecture of the city. This is how I learned that they also really like eating guinea pigs with potatoes. One man told me, "I like to eat the guinea pigs and I like the womans in Cuenca." Since then a few other male students have told me they like the girls around here. This morning for the first time a woman told me she likes the boys. I like the honesty! In two weeks and after asking this question to over 400 students, only two have told me they don't like Cuenca. One was a young man sitting at the back of class wearing sunglasses at 7:00 in the morning. He thinks Cuenca is boring.Oh well, to each his own.
4. Conversation activity. As a class we brainstorm questions that one asks when meeting a person for the first time. The questions the classes come up are usually the same, "what do you like to do in your free time?" "how old are you?" etc. Rarely a student will throw in a different question like, "what kind of clothes do you like to wear?" or "do you like to ride on a motorcycle?" but after teaching the same class 20 times, I love the unusual questions. Once we have a list of at least ten questions we practice them. This is the tough part - getting students to get up and talk to people outside of their little groups. I tell them to have a 3-4 minute conversation with at least five different people but that's only successful when I have teacher support. I circulate the room and try to talk to most of the students. I ask questions from our list but always try to throw in a few others. I ask about brothers and sisters and what they always struggle with is when I ask if their siblings are older or younger. I tell them that it's okay to have to ask what that means. Sometimes we're conversing in a group and I'll ask other students to help the student who is struggling. If all else fails, I tell them the words in Spanish.

So that's my class! I have one more week of teaching this lesson and as I said, it will be to level one students so I'll work in more Spanish. We'll see how it goes. For the following week I'll be back with the level threes and I'll start a new lesson. I have some ideas but I'm keeping an open mind in case it flops. 

Teaching here is a challenge and it's tiring! I have so many students and I talk from start to finish in all of the classes. Talking for four hours a day is something to get used to for me. Even though I spend only a few minutes at the start of class talking to the whole group, I spend the rest of it talking to individuals and small groups, trying to engage them in a conversation. 

Teaching is fun, though. I love hearing about the students' families, their interests and overall I'm impressed with their abilities! I met a woman who prepares breakfast early in the morning for her family, gets them off to school or work, goes to school herself, returns home to fix lunch for her family, goes to work in the afternoon, prepares dinner in the evening and then spends much of the night caring for her mother who has Parkinson's disease and often wakes up three or four times in the night. Today I talked to a woman who is married and has a daughter studying medicine at the same university! No surprise, I have a special place in my heart for these impressive multitasking "non-traditional" students.

Well, I'm done with teaching now and have a few free days until I'm back at the university at 7:00 am on Monday!