Teaching

We have been teaching Maths, Natural Science, Spanish and Social Studies now. I am quite happy with doing the Maths and enjoy it. I felt an imposter with the Spanish (Español) though. The course text we were following meant that we were teaching pronunciation rules about which syllable is stressed in a word. The kids who speak Spanish all day clearly had different ideas from the formal presentation and I as an English speaker was trying to tell them that they were wrong. I did mention this to Charlotte last weekend when I saw her, her advice was simple. You are the teacher so you are right, the are the pupils and if they disagree then they are wrong. I fully understand this but it still does not feel right.

After three weeks of following text books for the subjects, we have been told to follow a different text books which is also frustrating for me and it is doubly frustrating as we do not have enough text books for every child which means the kids have to share. Again, I can quickly adapt to the different text book for maths as it is essentially the same topics. However in Spanish, it is now more "creative", we did a story yesterday and the kids had to come up with a spell for some magic as the story was about a witch. They really did not have a clue, the text seems much more suited to kids who watch television etc which I guess is fair but in our community there is no electricity and so it is difficult to expand their imagination.

In Social Sciences, we were discussing family and neighbours and courtesy etc but now we have been trying to explain conciousness which I think I would find difficult to explain to year 2 in England so I really struggle with the Spanish on this subject. But hey, let´s look at this as a challenge.

Science also has a new text book but that is essentially the same text but dressed up better. We have been doing the parts of plants and the cycle of life, you should really see my drawings of chicken and egg on the whiteboard. The kids decided that they were ducks.

Anyway, teaching is still a challenge, I think I enjoy it but it certainly keeps me on my toes.

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