first class

I have officially taught my first class in El Salvador to Salvadoran kids. It was an English class that I gave to 6th graders. Almost the entire lesson was in Spanish though, with a few English words thrown in, so I’m counting it as my first class in Spanish! I’ve already learned a few things about teaching.
1) I stink at time management. I planned for the lesson to be 45 minutes long, but I was done after about 30! Part of it was not my fault, as the children knew more of the verbs than I thought they would, so we flew through some of the sections. I should have had more back up activities, or just done the ones that they liked a lot a few more times. I’ll remember that for next time.
2) Kids love to get up and learn. For my English class I was allowed to pick my own topic, so I asked some of the kids in the class beforehand what they wanted to learn. They said action verbs. I decided to do TPR (total physical recall) that we always used in Señora Kule’s Spanish class at FVS. We would recite the words in Spanish and do some action that would remind us of the word. I figured for action verbs that was a no-brainer! I picked 15 verbs because there are 30 kids in the class. The verbs ranged from swim, run, and eat, to hug, cross and lift. We also played “Simon Says” with the action verbs as well as a find-your-verb-partner. I had written all 15 verbs in English and Spanish on separate sheets of paper so I could hand them out to each student and then have them all get up and find their partner. I should have played that game 700 times they loved it so much. I especially liked it because the kids were really great about helping each other out to figure out what verb they had on their piece of paper, and then who their partner was.
3) The kids were really forgiving and made my first class a breeze. I know a handful of the kids in the class either from my host family or from the group of kids that we’ve been working with in the community. They were very excited to help out and show me what they know. Also, gringo TV—stare at the gringo ‘cause they might do something incredibly interesting—is fairly popular here so getting and holding their attention is not too much of a challenge!
So all and all I think my class was a success. I guess I could randomly poll the kids to see if they remember any of the verbs to know for sure, but I was pleased with their performance in class. I clearly have things I need to work on (time management!) but I’ll have plenty of opportunities to get better. I plan on teaching another English class before we go to our own sites. One last chance to mess up in front of a forgiving audience!