Flexibility

I am a person of habit. I don't always like to admit it, but I am. Sometimes I'll even subconsciously repeat certain ways of how to do things just because I'm comfortable with it. After all, if it isn't broke don't fix it...right? Wrong!

Throughout my student teaching career so far, I've learned that many times things won't go as planned. I've experienced people showing up late for important appointments, students forgetting crucial assignments, and the like. However, today I was given the chance to really practice thinking on my feet (I always though this was kind of a silly phrase, no one has brains on their feet...). I walked in this morning and CT was sitting at her desk, in a bit of a tizzy. (One thing you should know about CT is that she is not only the ESL teacher but the school translator as well.) She told me that she had to translate for parent teacher conferences today from 10:00-11:30am, which meant I would be teaching in her place. My heart start pumping a bit because the most I had taught these students was one lesson. I took it as a positive challenge though, I need to start teaching more anyways, so why not jump in head first? It's not like I hadn't worked with the kids before, and they were all familiar with me. CT gave me the run down for the three periods I would be teaching and then she was off.

Second period there was only one student, so it sailed right on by. Third started out as a little bit more of a challenge. One of the students kind of has an attitude sometimes, but once we got working they all were pretty well engaged. I think it helped that I asked them a lot of questions about traditions in their home country of Mexico. It was nice to be able to relate to my students in this way. Once fourth came though, things got a little bit more interesting.

The lesson itself went fine. We reviewed their homework and I had them play a game where they practice giving each other commands in English. They seemed to enjoy it. After all, how many times are you told to tell someone else to do something? (Whoa, a command to give commands...it's almost like Inception...but not). As we were working, a loud click sounded and all the lights out in the library went off (our classroom is located in small room in the library). One of my students gave out a quick "What the heck!" in broken English. Our lights were fine so we continued to work, but not for long. Soon we were in the dark as well. CT came back from translating and told us that school would be let out for the afternoon due to the loss of power. We were all little excited to say the least.

Apparently what happened was there was someone burning a chain-link fence and the flames made their way up a pole to one of our power lines. So our fuses went ka-put.

I can't complain though, it's nice to have the afternoon off :).

Tomorrow should be an easy day too. We're having shortened classes due to the middle school and high school dodge ball tournaments. Apparently it's a really big deal to the students, they make teams for it and everything! There's nothing like watching 100+ students pelt each other with foam spheres to get the weekend going ;).

If anything else blog worthy comes up (like a tornado, flash flood, or zombie attack) I'll be sure to write.

Until next week.

Lessons Learned this Week
-Don't ever expect things to go as planned, especially as an ESL teacher.
-Even if there is a language barrier, try to talk and relate to your students.

Goals for Next Week
-Teach more lessons.
-Find different ways to keep everyone engaged in the lessons.