4 posts tagged “required”

"Profe's class is a lot of work. She always wants you to speak Spanish.  We never get done before the bell, and her tests are never multiple choice.  I thought Spanish would be easy."

"If there was a state test on Spanish, I would flunk."

"I went to a Mexican restaurant the other day and I said "hola, como estas" and the guy understood me!  I couldn't say anything else because I slept all last semester, but I remembered that."

I picked out 3 of my favorite quotes from their free write.  There were lots of great ones. 

I hear that state test on a lot.  Once one of them said it, all of them picked it up.  But I love little personal victories the kids have in Spanish like Cesár (not his real name) and the Mexican restaurant.

So here's the skinny.  The first semester of teaching, sucks.  It's hard to come in, especially with no curriculum, and just teach.  The kids are looking to take any advantage they can.  As a new teacher, you're likely to flounder, and you're guaranteed to screw up at least once.

However, all that stuff is worth it when you actually get yourself figured out.  When you get your classes, curriculum, discipline, and self personally and professionally, life gets so much easier, and you begin to breathe more easily.  Teaching begins to come second nature, and you're left with a sense of accomplishment like no other.  When you know that you are responsible for these kids and you are actually teaching them, you feel so accomplished.

Also, working on a real job matures you to a point I can't fully explain.  People are always surprised when I tell them how young I am, because they think that I am much older.  So your maturity level rises greatly (to say nothing of wrinkles).

Finally, looking at it from a purely selfish way, any kind of job worth having after college wants you to have a master's and two years experience.  This program will give you 2 in 1, and you won't be too old by the time you graduate.  That way, even if you don't decide to go on teaching, your options are a lot more than just teaching.

I've learned a lot from Carmen.  She is really helpful and glad to offer advice.  The most important thing I've learned, though, is to model.  She stresses over and over, that I have to model what I ask my students to do before they do it.  "MOD-EL-ING," she repeats to me, over and over.

She has the right of it.  Just as I can't do anything new without seeing an example, my students can't do anything new by just being told how to do it.  I find that my classes go so much more smoothly when I model, and I get so many less questions.  I would highly recommend it, and I plan to use it often in the year to come.

I have already talked about this, so I'm not going to go into any great detail, but my biggest problem is preparedness and acting confident in my subject.  The confidence issue should resolve itself once I'm teaching Spanish.  Preparedness is something I'll have to struggle against always, although teaching Spanish should help with that too. 

Being prepared has been a problem for me my entire life, probably because it was always so easy for me to throw something together and for it still to be better than adequate.  This is one of those things, though, where I can't do that.  What I'm doing affects so much more than just me.  I have to be prepared because those kids deserve so much more than a minimal effort.  Yes, it may be better than what they'll get with another teacher of theirs, but if it's not the best that I can do, they deserve better.  They are short-changed in so much in their lives.  They deserve better.