Enseñanza

I realized I hadn’t said much about teaching, and I figured it was time for an update! I work with 3 different groups of students. Four students are on a completely different schedule than everyone else and they go to school from about 12:30-6:00. I guess it is pretty common for schools here to have 2 school days in one. Presumably so they can accommodate more kids? One group starts at 6:30 or 7:00am and ends around noon or 1:00, and then the next group comes. I’m not really sure how that works out for the teachers… do they have 2 sets of teachers? Really long days? Split shifts? I don’t know.

Anyways, most students would rather go to school in the morning and have the afternoon free, which is why I only have 4 students in the morning. Luckily they at least all go to the same school and 3 of them are even in the same grade. I’ve really enjoyed working with this group; the mornings are quiet, and even though I often have to knock on the boys’ door a few times to get them to come down, they are always in good spirits when they come down. Plus it’s the morning, so they’re always there! Since 3 of them are in the same class, I’ve started working of off what they are learning in class. So far, it seems to be going well. The theme was going places, problems and accidents. I used a combination of flashcards, having students draw pictures, and acting out actions. I like having a plan to follow, and hopefully it is reinforcing what they are doing in class. The first week I worked with them, they were finishing up a chapter and had chapter review questions or homework. It was a pretty painful process. It was like they had never seen what was on the page, and we had to do a lot of Spanish translation just to understand the words on the page. Hopefully when we get to the end of this chapter it will be easier!

The second group that I work with is secudaria, or middle schoolers. There are 7 of them, all from the same school, although they are from 3 different grade levels. I haven’t met with this group as often, because it seems like they have had a lot of no-school days! When I asked what they were doing in class, it seemed like a lot of pretty basic beginner stuff: colors, numbers, animals, to be, hello, how are you, present progressive, etc. I had assumed that these were their first English classes, but at some of them have had English classes before. As always, some “get it” more than others, but all of them struggle with speaking and pronunciation in general. I don’t think they hear much English, even in English class. They are a fun group to work with and mostly, very eager to learn. I plan making a visit to their school next week, just to check things out and hopefully get a better idea of what they are doing in class.

The third group is bachillerato, or high schoolers. This is my biggest group with 13 students, and they go to 3 different schools. One school is a prep school and the other 2 are technical schools. (Apparently the 2 tech schools are significantly better schools, although the prep school is improving.) This is by far my most challenging group, just because they come from so many different classes. When they are all doing different things, I’m not sure what direction to go! I will probably end up splitting the group, but I’m not exactly sure how to split them up. Also, because I meet with them at 6:00, often they aren’t all there… there are always some that are still in town. Hmm… something I need to think about this week.

The other thing I notice about this group in particular, is that they are doing fairly advanced stuff, but not really getting it. At this point they’ve had years of English classes, but still aren’t really using it. They rely a lot on translation, but that can be confusing too. (As well as a sign that they are not proficient) Lots of phrases don’t make sense when they are directly translated. Or they get thrown off by words like would, which doesn’t translate into Spanish at all because in Spanish, the verbs are conjugated in the conditional tense. When they aren’t writing translations, they often write out the phonetic spelling of English words to help them with pronunciation. Sometimes even for whole sentences. The result is that they read the phonetic version without looking at the real words. They might say it ok, but they don’t know what they said. It kind of reminds me of that game where you read nonsense words, and the other team has to figure out what you are actually trying to say. Basically, they are low in all areas of communication, reading, writing, speaking, listening, and they are doing work that is above their skill level.

So, since I know that an uncommonly high percentage of my blog readers are teachers, I really would appreciate any ideas or suggestions that you have. I have a pretty solid 5 months to work with these students, which is a significant amount of time.