Noo teacher noo!

I’m a teacher!!!

I had orientation right after Christmas where I found out that I would start my job as an ESL teacher on Monday, January 2^nd. I teach 6 classes a day of mostly adults but I have one “jovenes” class, or class of teenagers. The schedule is not ideal, but all of the teachers are on the same one so we’re all in it together. I teach two classes in the morning, 7-9am, then one class at 4pm, then three classes from 6-9. I got mostly low-level classes because of my proficiency in Spanish. When they translate a word in Spanish (I can’t translate for them, that’s not how we teach) I can tell them yes or no. I also can communicate with them about important things like test dates, books, etc. I love all of my students! The wonderful thing about teaching at an institute is that most of the students are there because they need to learn English for their job or to graduate University. In other words, they WANT to be there and they WANT to learn. I’ve had students ask for homework before I got around to giving it. All of the students---sorry, learners…we’re not allowed to call them students---call me “teacher”, very few of them call me Molly except some of my jovenes girls who love me.

So, I started on Monday bright and early at 7am! And lucky me, I had no voice! From a weekend full of partying and a lack of sleep, my voice was shot. Not a good way to start the week! Luckily, the first 2 days of classes are relatively easy because most of them time only a few students show up. I actually had 3 classes with no students! In the ones that I did have students, I played a lot of ice breaker games and asked “get to know you” questions and such and did very basic lessons. By Wednesday most of my classes had filled up anywhere from 8-13 people. Naturally, my biggest class is my class of teenagers!

Throughout the week I’ve taught things as basic as the alphabet and numbers, to conjugating the verb “to be”, to demonstratives and possessive adjectives. I’ve done readings, listening activities, and lots of book work, but my favorite thing I’ve done by far was play Battleship with my jovenes. They went nuts for it! I obviously made it educational and had possessive adjectives built into the game, but they really got into it. I think I won them over that day. We also played Jeopardy as review on Friday and I gave them candy.

Some funny things from the first week…I got to elicit (eliciting is pulling words or meanings from the learners, we do not explain or define anything for them) the word “stepbrother” and then talk about the movie. I had to elicit the word “diaper” for a reading and tried to physically demonstrate it. Awkward. But the very best and funniest thing from this week is that my 3 night classes are in the basement. What I didn’t know about the basement is that across the hall from our classrooms is a nightclub. This nightclub starts bumping music around 7:30, halfway through my night classes. And to top it all off, this nightclub is rumored to be a STRIP club! So while I’m teaching my students English to help them get farther in their careers, there are girls getting naked 25 yards away. One night, I finally started talking to my students about the club because the music was particularly distracting. I said “have you ever been in there?” and I was met with a look of horror and the response “NO! Bad place! Bad place!”.  Confirmed: I teach next to a strip club.