Teaching in Spanglish

10-6-07
Ahh, Saturday. The first week of school is complete! This week, I realized that teaching bilingual fourth grade will be much more challenging than I expected. My students do know a little bit of English (mostly the words for body parts and classroom furniture), but are very resistant to speak what they know. For the first two days, I taught entirely in Spanish; it was the only way that I could keep my students' attention and have them accomplish the activities that I had planned. I have a rowdy class- maybe the most challenging in the school- but they are coming around. I have learned that the management of twenty boisterous personalities is better if I speak in English. That way, the students do not have to listen to their teacher make sentences with mispronounced Spanish words and improperly conjugated verbs. I have to laugh when I think of how my commands are probably translated in Spanish: "Please right now you give your pencil me." My Spanish is improving, but sometimes it does sound as ridiculous as that. By the end of the week, my students had begun to speak some English words back to me: "Miss, puedo ir a la cafeteria para mi lunch please?" I'm impressed with each attempt and make a big deal whenever they use English. The kids have a lot of energy; some are a little devious and some are perfectly timid. Wilmer wants to do pelvic thrusts in the front of the classroom, Andrea Suyapa likes to shout everything that she says, and Martha wants to get up every two minutes to help me with some task. My blind student, Michael, is the sweetest child in the class. This week, I visited him at his family's store and his mother taught me how to read and write in Braille and use the abacus. It is an exciting challenge to integrate Michael into our classroom activities; I am continuously thinking of auditory and sensory activities for each lesson.

Overall, it was an exhausting week. Last night, the other volunteers and I celebrated Friday American-style, with pizza, beer and card games. And right now, I sit here in my house, at a makeshift desk, bopping my head to the beat of a popular reggaeton song, blaring from somewhere in the neighborhood. I am glad for the weekend. ¡A todos: tenga un buen fin de semana!