Surprise!

I went to the Instituto yesterday for the afternoon class with my new counterpart. She had been gone last week but fortunately she was here this week. So, she had told me before what she was going to teach and had asked me to help with pronunciation. I had expected her to teach the lesson and for me to jump in and practice pronouncing the new vocabulary, and then she would continue. However, I sat down in the class and she introduced me, wrote down some sentences on the board and then asked me to come up and handed me the marker. Surprise! I taught the rest of the class. I made the lesson interactive and the students even laughed a couple of times, and it was appropriate laughter :) I’m really glad that I have had teaching experience because this would have totally freaked me out before. It’s pretty intimidating standing in the front of a class full of 50 students who don’t speak your first language, and then try teaching without a plan. Fortunately, it was only a 45 minute class and not a bloque, which is 90 minutes. After that class was the next section of the same grade (7th) so I taught the same lesson again. I thought this would be a little boring having to do the same lesson again, but it was good because I changed a few things to improve the lesson. My counterpart told me she really liked the lesson and I felt good about it too. It wasn’t the best lesson, but good for improvising :)

P.S. Yesterday was also exciting because two students saw me walking through town and called out “Hola profe!” (profe=profesora= teacher) to me. I’ve always heard kids saying that to my counterparts, but now it was for me :)