Teaching practicum

We had our first teaching practicum today, i.e. our chance to practice in real Chilean classrooms what we´ve been learning . My group of three WorldTeach volunteers had two 90-minute classes today at a K-12 school. We found out about it last night and so had very little time to plan. On top of that, we were given no idea what the kids knew or what they were learning. There´s a whole lot of flying-by-the-seat here in Chile.

Our first class today was 9th grade and they knew a lot of English. The activities we´d prepared were therefore pretty easy for them, and we were able to do more free conversation. They were so eager to have us there and were very excited, but also well behaved. Excitement got the better of our second class, grade 5. They had a ton of energy and very short attention spans. We should´ve had a new activity for them every 10 minutes. So we improvised.

We also got to visit a 4th grade class. What a difference a year makes! The 4th graders were so obediant and calm, while still being very excited to have gringo teachers visiting. The whole time, I felt like such a novelty. The ones with cell phones (yes, 10 year olds with cell phones!) took our photo to show their families. I guess it was only fair, as I was taking their photo to show to mine.

It was a full, exhausting day with just two classes, but it has me SO excited to have my own classes and my own students. It will be great to get to know them, to plan lessons, to prepare them for tests. Today was a taste of the rewards and challenges that I will taste this year. My palate is primed.