Friday, June 26, 2015

My Internship Begins!

Soooooo I bet you are all wondering about the whole reason I´m here....MY INTERNSHIP!!! Let me tell you, it was not an easy road that lead me here but in the end it was truly worth it.  Though I love taking pictures and sharing everything with all of you, I am not allowed to take any with the students so you will just have to use your imagination.

Third Time´s the Charm

So it took a few tries but the wonderful people of CEA were with me every step of the way and helped to place me in a perfect school.  The first school had finished all of their lessons for the most part, so my day there was spent watching preschoolers as they watched educational youtube videos in English or played outside. Not exactly what I had in mind for my internship.  Now I was not going to be picky about the age group but I was told that I would be helping to teach English in the classroom....not be a glorified babysitter.  So needless to say as soon as I told the wonderful people of CEA I was placed in another school.

The second school I went to said that they too were done with teaching and that they were only going to be doing fun activities with the students until the last day.  No point in me being there for that.  

In that same day however, we went to what would be my perfect match school.  This school (or el colegio as they are called here) has a bilingual program as part of their curriculum where I could help in almost any class.  Here the teachers went from class to class instead of the students and a class period was an hour each.  So for three hours a day I had two or three different classes, with the third hour being a recess time on the days I had two classes.  

My Classes and Students

One day a week I worked with the preschoolers again.  Though they are adorable, little kids I can now confidently say that I am not meant to teach preschoolers.  Their adorableness factor can only count for so much, and when they come to me crying because someone is sitting next to their best friend and they want to sit there, or another child smashed their snack and juicy?  Let´s just say I cannot picture myself doing that every day for the rest of my life.  Though I give huge props to the teacher I worked with who was always smiling no matter what as well as any and everyone who works with or wants to work with preschoolers. You are all awesome!

Besides the one day a week I was with the preschoolers, I was almost always shadowing the school´s English teacher.  I could not have been luckier because she is truly a wonderful woman and I learned so very much from her.  I was not simply standing in the shadows as she taught her classes, I played an active part each and every time.

Some classes I helped the students work on their end of the year projects making sure they were using proper English.  The hardest part of that was explaining to them that idioms and sayings do not translate well at all.  They had to speak literally in order for their meanings to translate into English correctly.  Similarly I could not use sayings when explaining or talking to the students. I knew that this would be a problem however I never considered how much of one it would cause, and English is chock-full of them.

Though when the classes finished their projects we played games (all in English) to pass the time.  Not to worry they were learning as they played.  One example would be 20 questions, where someone would think of an animal and the students had twenty questions to figure out what it was, only catch all talking had to be in English.  For all the games I would start it off and the winners would follow suit, unless someone who already went won again, they had to pick someone else to go or I would go again.  

For the most part this system worked, except one day one little boy decided he did not get a long enough turn (another student guessed early on) and so he should be allowed to go again.  I told him no but he can be first in the next game.  Instead he put his head down and would not talk to me or anyone for the rest of the period, though he was fine at recess.  You will always have that one student no matter what and though I was sad he was upset we kept playing the games without him and everyone else had fun while learning.  As the saying goes, you can please some of the people some of the time but never all of the people all of the time.

A Rap-up and Reflection

I had gotten rather close with a lot of the students in my different classes and could not be happier with my overall placement and activity in that wonderful school. I know now that I am meant to be a teacher and I am on the right path for my life.  I was so very happy every day that I got to see their smiling faces, every morning I was greeted with a "Buenas Dias Senora" or "Good morning teacher" depending on how well the child spoke English. I was excited to start my day with them and always sad when it was time to leave, and when you have a day like that every day, you know its where you are suppose to be, doing what you are supposed to do.

It is hard to explain the feeling I got while working there: excitement to be given the opportunity to teach and help the different students in different ways, satisfaction as I saw how they were learning and having fun all at once, and this deep sense of belonging as I worked with the students.  The hardest thing to explain is how doing this made me feel more secure with my decisions and path.  Everyone has doubts as they try to figure out what they want to be when they grow up and I was no exception to that.  Would I be able to manage a classroom? Will I like helping the difficult students? Will I wake up with a smile as I get ready to go to work each day? Though I will never know what the future may hold for me, thanks to this internship and the amazing people I met along the way I feel optimistic for my future as a teacher and excited to start it all.   

Everyday was a different adventure and I could not be more excited to continue them back home, because this is  what I am supposed to be doing in life, and nothing is better than knowing that deep in your bones.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me to get to this point, and a special shout out to my amazing family who have always supported my decisions and helped me through my doubts, my family here at CEA who have stuck with me through the ups and downs of this crazy process and made sure I knew it would all work out no matter what, and my family at Stockton University's School of Education who have all been more than amazing every step of my college way and I know I can always count on if I become confused or unsure.  Thank you to everyone who show support by reading this blog and simply being there for me, I am truly one lucky and blessed girl.

And until next time lovely's

~Little Red

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