Doing what I came here to do...

Welcome to UNO!

The Language Department Office (in Spanish and Maya)

The office

A classroom

The main classroom building

UNO´s architecture

The campus pet: Una! She´s a sweetheart!

I told you I would talk about teaching in this blog, so it´s about time I include something about what really brought me all the way to Mexico: my job! So far, working at UNO is wonderful. I have a lot of freedom in terms of the material I cover, the way that I teach it, and how I assess the students´ learning. In other words, this university´s language department is a very comfortable place for a person like me to work! Without a doubt, I can say that the Monterey Institute prepared me well for this. I know what I believe about learning and teaching, and it is so nice to be able to put my philosophy into action.

I am presently teaching three classes (because there are still not enough people signed up for the evening TOEFL course). All of my students are in their first cuatrimestre (freshmen) at the university, and we are covering very basic English language skills. Two of the groups are studying Tourism and the other group is studying Gastronomy. In all, I have about 65 students.

For me, the biggest challenges have been logistical so far. Let´s just say I´m not a linear thinker.

I´m not very methodical. And OK, I admit it, I´m organizationally challenged. I´ve had to develop a system (and modify it as I go) to keep track of materials, lesson plans, quizzes, projects, due dates, GRADES, homework, participation, and attendance. We´re about halfway through the cuatri now, and I´ve managed to keep it together, but it´s not easy! Also challenging is that the classes are mixed level, and within each group, there is a pretty big range of proficiency. Not only that, but of the three groups, one is significantly higher, one is much lower, and one is somewhere in-between, so a lot of modifications are necessary. For my lower groups, I have to use a significant amount of Spanish, for both course content and logistical/management issues. Sometimes it´s just a matter of providing clarification on an assignment or task, other times it´s because I feel like my words are being met with blank stares. I also use Spanish to make cross-linguistic comparisons (aka contrastive analysis, for all you linguists out there), which I have found to be very helpful, particularly with the students who really like language. Of course, not all of them do, and there are occasional classroom management issues...but that is also something I am prepared for (thanks, Vitalistic!), and for those moments, often body language alone will suffice!

With beginners, I have realized, it´s important to establish some very basic rules and expectations of communication. For example, "If you don´t understand, tell me." They are finally catching on! I try to be transparent with my students a lot of the time, explaining to them about the skills I am focusing on in a particular activity, explaining to them why I have had them work together, etc.

For the most part, the students are wonderful and I hope they are learning in English class. They are coming to class on time, turning in their assignments and doing their homework, and participating in class. They are smiling and asking questions, and I take that as a sign that they are enjoying the class.

For a recent lesson on Imperatives, I had students create a Top 10 list of Classroom Rules in groups of 2 or 3, and then as a whole group, we voted and ranked our Top 10. To provide them with even more practice, I was able to RECYCLE a lesson I made at MIIS using Dear Abby letters. I had students come up with simple imperatives to give their own Dear Abby advice (yay for authentic materials!).

I´ve also assigned a first project for all of my students: a Food Journal. They have to keep track of all of the food they eat for a total of three days: what it was, how much of it, what time it was, where they ate it, who they were with, what they were doing while they ate it, and how they felt. I´ve received, graded, and handed back the first part of this project: Day 1. This is where the logistics comes in: balancing how long it takes to grade the assignments for a class, when the class meets and when their next assignment is due, and how long it will take in class to go over the information they need to know as they work on the next step (Days 2 and 3). Not to mention, keeping track of who hasn´t turned in Day 1, recording grades for everyone else, and handing back the papers. (I know, I know: "Welcome to teaching." Don´t get me wrong - I know it´s all going to get easier in time, but for those of you who think teaching is an easy, breezy lifestyle of summers, weekends, and holidays off - think again!)

Today was a particularly good day, lessons-wise. I came into work feeling ready for the weekend, but I managed to put together a pretty successful 2-hour lesson on Determiners and Articles. I did some language awareness-raising, some straight-up deductive grammar, and I read from Sandra Cisneros´book, The House On Mango Street, and had them tally the number of times they heard me say a, an, or the. I also did some individual and group work with a previous jigsaw reading on traditional Yucatecan foods in which they had to identify indefinite and definite articles as well as plural nouns.

Something I would really like to do more frequently is incorporating technology into my lessons. I find that it´s not as easy for me to do here, because I have to plan at least 24 hours ahead if I´m going to reserve a computer cable or CD player, and I also have to bring my laptop to work, which is not always feasible. But, I hope that with time and experience, it will get easier and I will improve in my abilities to look ahead and build it in more often. I´m planning a lesson with the Michael Franti song "Hello, Bonjour" for next week, so I´ll let you know how it goes.

Well, I am definitely ready for the weekend! Hard to believe that October will be half over by next week...Time is flying!