Full Time Teaching :)

This is a fountain at the end of La Calle de Romance.  When I saw it from a distance, my first thought was that it was covered in snow!  Silly Caitlin, there's no snow in Mexico!!  When I got up close, I learned that it was all bubbles....how fun!  You can pick up some of them and play with them.  I saw one girl throw some at her boyfriend...haha.

This is La Calle de Romance, a little walk where couples can go.  It's too narrow for cars, so it's just for walking.

My first week of full time teaching went pretty well for the most part.  Since I write lesson plans to turn into the coordinator over a week before I actually teach them, I've found that I need to plan everything again to adjust to where we actually are in the curriculum.  Everything changes for my actual plan, and I've found it helpful to plan throughout the week before each day.  We always seem to be a bit behind, which seems to be common for the teachers at Varmond due to the constant volume of content to cover.  I finished up the main content from the February book and fit in time for some review this week, but we've yet to start the March book.  This is in part because this was a short week.  Varmond is hosting a huge fútbol (soccer) tournament this weekend (Thurs. afternoon through Sunday), so we had an early release on Thursday and no classes Friday.  Due to the short week, I was squeezing everything in as quickly as possible.  My cooperating teacher had a history review guide that the students needed to copy from the chalkboard (42 questions).  We did this over the course of three days, but it took a lot of time.  My cooperating teacher told me at the start of the week that we could do the same with my math review guide.  When I realized that there was no way the students would have time to copy my guide, I typed it up and had copies made to hand out.  I decided to look up some internet resources (websites with math games) to add to the guide as optional extra practice.  This was kind of fun to look up, and it's a way I can integrate technology a little bit more.  Technology is very, very minimal in the primary curriculum.  The students have a computer class, but the other classrooms are not equipped with any computers, overheads, etc.  They only have CD players to play the disks provided by AMCO.  The secondary students are required to all have laptops at school to use, but before 7th grade, the technological integration is minimal.

On Thursday of this week, I encountered a challenging classroom situation.  I found out that the Spanish teacher needed to be in a meeting during his class time.  My cooperating teacher asked me to go to their room and teach them in English, so we could use it as time to catch up on our Feb. book.  Well, the students were really confused to see me in their Spanish room, they all wanted to know where the Spanish teacher was, and they did not want to work from their English books during what should have been Spanish for them.  Nevertheless, they at least all sat down and took out their English books.  However, at least half the class was chatting with their neighbors and not paying much attention.  Despite my switching into Spanish to give directions and explain what was going on and telling them that I needed them to be quieter, they continued goofing around.  I think part of it was due to the unexpected situation and part due to the fact that we were working in Language Arts, a content section that is full of really hard workbook pages with unfamiliar words, difficult puzzles, and obscure references to American culture.  Sometimes I can't even figure out the answers to the questions in Language Arts.  Moreover, the students know they don't receive a grade in this content; they just have to fill out the pages in class when we go over them and sometimes as homework.  Few students understand the questions, so they aren't very fun activities.  This means there's really no intrinsic or extrinsic motivation for students to do these pages.  All in all, this made for a pretty crazy classroom.  I started removing 5 minutes of recess for students who were not paying attention, but this didn't help significantly.  They were just completely unmotivated, and I didn't know how to make these pages more interesting.  Looking back, I probably could have tried having time for team work or turned them into some kind of competition.  However, given no time to prepare to teach this extra class, I was just glad to get through it.  It was a good lesson for me, and hopefully the students will take me more seriously now, regardless of whether I'm teaching in the English classroom or another classroom.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Varmond to be a "Staff" person for the soccer tournament.  I think this will mainly consist of telling people where the bathrooms, food, fields, etc. are.   I hope I can also catch some of the games.  From what I've seen at recess, the students are quite skilled in soccer here!!  The rest of the weekend, I hope to see more places in Morelia.  There's some more sections of the Historic Central colony I want to check out.  Also, I borrowed the movie "P.D. Te Amo" (P.S. I love you) from my cooperating teacher, and Sonia and I plan to watch that at some point.  I haven't seen it in English, so I hope I can follow it all in Spanish.

I'll close with some more cultural tid bits:  

• A typical thing said at the end of a visit in the evening or before one goes to bed:  "Que descanses" ("That you rest")
• Calling (on the phone) during the main meal time, La Comida, is considered relatively acceptable (as opposed to our American culture in which it's rude to call during dinner). Since people know they can find someone at home during La Comida, they'll call then.  However, my family hasn't received many calls during our meal tim
• About 70% of Mexicans are diabetic...!!!  (I heard a Doctor give a presentation on diabetes tonight...more on that on Tuesday.)
• A lot of stored a more old fashioned (not sure if I've mentioned this before or not.)  Many smaller shops still have all the supplies in back.  You go to the counter and ask if they have something; if they do, they go look for it and find it for you.  Then they give you a receipt for the things you want to buy.  You take the slip to the cashier to pay for your purchase, get a stamp that says "PAGADO," and return this slip to the other clerk in order to pick up your purchase.  This can at times make for a longer shopping trip, especially if the clerk takes a while to find the item you want.