Well, it's the end of week one in the classrooms and we are still alive. And unlike my first week of teaching in Colombia, I wasn't even driven to tears once! Things actually went pretty well, and my classes seem like they're full of really great kids. While there are two teachers, and we both work in every class, I plan and teach the morning primary and middle-school classes in la Palma, while Erin has the (considerably more rowdy) afternoon primary class in La Palma and the primary class in Jalpa.
My primary class contains seven very shy students between the ages of 8 and 12, although we expect seven or eight more students from Tierra Blanca, a nearby pueblito, to trickle in next week. This week we worked on basic introductory things like rule- and goal-setting, icebreakers, and getting a sense of the kids' levels of literacy in Spanish and English. I think this is going to be a good group. They're definitely a lot calmer than their afternoon counterparts, none of whom embody even the slightest bit of shyness. Two classes and it's already easy to identify a gossipy clique of fifth-grade girls and Juan Pablo, the 9-year-old holy menace ironically named for the Pope.
The middle-schoolers are pretty typical middle-schoolers; they're expert eye-rollers with impressive under-the-table texting abilities. They're a nice bunch of teenagers, though, and I think that once they come out of their shells a bit more we'll have a lot of fun. Yesterday was our first music class and I would actually consider it a success! We discussed different types of music and why music education matters, and by the end of the class we even had some pretty well-developed definitions of terms like tone, rhythm, and beat. We did some singing, which was mainly a lot of giggling, and then we brainstormed song ideas for the Christmas concert. Since I let every group of students generate a list of possible songs, I have a pretty bizarre weekend of music ahead of me. I'm definitely going to be using my executive power to veto Justin Bieber and One Direction. Still, it was great to see the students get excited about music. Even the boys were singing!
We're all pretty exhausted right about now; we've worked a lot this week and things are only going to get busier from here, especially with the Dia de los Muertos events creeping up on us and trying to plan for the Christmas Concert. I'm looking forward to a weekend of cool stuff at the Cervantino festival with my coworker Catherine and learning to play my donated electric guitar with the lovely and talented Salomon and Cinthia tonight. They always have tequila, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment