This week I started teaching a new English class in a new school. One of our contacts, Marcia, works in a fairly new middle/high school here in Tarma, and she came to me a few weeks ago about teaching a six-week summer English course to the students attending the summer session. I agreed and taught my first class this past Thursday. It was a bit of a nerve-racking experience because I went into the class with little information about the students, the resources, and expectations. It ended up that there are 20 students on my roster, all ages 11-15. I am in a somewhat run-down class room with a chalk board and colored chalk. The students are well behaved and I can already tell which ones are going to want to answer every single question and which ones are going to try to become invisible.
Teaching in El Horizonte is very different from Lucas’s Institute. There I had no more than 5 students in a class and only taught 1-hour classes. I am teaching 2-hour classes without a break at El Horizonte, which is a lot for me – but I’m adjusting and learning how to keep my energy up. This is the first Private School that I’ve taught in here in Tarma, and come March I will be teaching at a second school as well. It’s definitely challenging to learn how to teach, while still making so many mistakes in Spanish – but the students are gracious when I make mistakes, and I’m finding my system. Strange to think that when I get home I will have taught more than a year’s worth of English without a teaching degree!
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