Day One: Student Teaching

Earlier this week, I started my first day at the school I will be student teaching at in GDL through December. I ended up having my friend Gabi with me the entire time the first day since administration was still figuring out placement for her classroom of first graders. Lucky us got to sit in on the first day of school for 45 students, where they drew pictures and discussed what they did during vacation and wrote from 1-100 and backwards on graph paper. First impression is that the kids, teacher and staff seem awesome.

However, there are definitely differences in the classroom which I immediately noticed. First off, every kid showed up with about four rolls of toilet paper and antibacterial soap! Also, some of the kids have to sit three to a desk (short table) since there is not enough room to just do two to a desk. The rules were not gone over on the first day and there was complete disorder during the entire three days I observed. When I spoke to the English teacher about the students' current level, he told me they are a strong group even at 45. He also said a classroom with 45 students in Mexico is considered normal and that I should check out the 5th grade class with 51 students!! Holy mackerel!

So I begin actually instructing in a week and a half. I'm supposed to start off with one hour of an English lesson and then there's a week in September where I will have to teach an hour of Art, PE and Math to the kids. The only thing that makes me nervous is controlling all of the kids at once. There is hardly any order in the classroom as is, with about five of them coming up every few minutes saying, "Maestra! Maestra! Puedo ir al bano??!!?!?"

Deep, even, breaths...