Better day

With all the nerves I worked up on Monday night I was relieved that I was not met with frustration and or any animosity feelings when I arrived at school on Tuesday. I got there about 930 and I got to teaching about 10:00 am. I was planning on doing a quick review of the alphabet and then going through our 8 words we learned and playing a pictionary game to add to the review. I also had planned a mini lesson of numbers, which they already knew, and we were going to play a game: bizz buzz. This didn't go very well because the students were gone after 45 minutes. I had mentioned that the material we are supposed to cover in our short time would be too much and all of us are on different pages on what to teach and when. After this lesson we ate lunch and then headed to our meeting with the teachers, since we had a short day. 

View from outside my school

Our meeting with the teachers went better and we actually worked on a basic conversation for them. We went through it together and had them repeat after us and then we broke up into small groups to practice together. For me this worked very well, worked with my cooperating  teacher, fourth grade teacher and another teacher (not sure what level).  Each of them practiced the conversation with me where I lead them into it and then they took on the role themselves. It was cool to see them doing this with each other. For the hour we were there we practiced this and I tried to phonetically write out the conversation in Spanish to help them on their pronunciation. When they went back and reviewed it, it worked well! I did not add vocabulary as some others did because I didn't want to overwhelm them and wanted them to feel comfortable with one thing first then add to it to make it more complex. Also that afternoon at our afterschool program I made a song with our conversation that we will use next class with our teachers. I used the tune of a song I taught to my 7th graders this year!

After Tuesday things went well and we came into Wednesday ready for classes. I was excited to have another one of our previous classes because I really liked one teacher and got what he was saying. Today I was kind of sad that it did not go as well. However our 2nd class today was new and very interesting also. Our teacher took more of a sociological/philosophical approach to the material and drew us in. His main focus was to ask ourselves and challenge ourselves to see the problem in front of us, narrow it down, find out who exactly is involved and face the reality that is in job. I got myself asking questions about this program that I have asked myself before and while on this trip: who am I?, why?, what am I doing this for?, by asking these questions I can come to a conclusion and hopefully get all of what I desire instead of parts and bits/pieces. We were asked to think about what is actually possible to do in what's left of our program, after we opened Pandora's box. So I am going to gather some information from my teacher, from above questions, and bring it to class Friday to add to our focus. 

Besides this I have now booked tickets to Nazca, Paracas and back to Lima for this weekend. We leave Friday after class!  Also I got to talk to my professor and work on a research project of his, self-efficacy of teachers traveling abroad. Finally I found out yesterday that one of my friends is coming to Lima in about 2 weeks and he'll be here for a week, Santiago for a week and Cuzco for a week too. I was glad to hear it and also I gave him some contact information of a good friend of mine in Santiago who can help him out!! 

Tonight we are going to celebrate at 12 for our mom's birthday tomorrow. We bought her flowers tonight! Chau chau for now. Nos vemos mañana.