Día 57 - MY students

A student from the local university needs to do a practicum in which they plan out and teach a few days for a few classes.  It's nothing major.  But it is something that could be incredibly great for your students or it could be something horrible for them.

She hasn't really learned much about TPRS prior to coming and observing last week.  But she has been excited about the idea and was able to see a little bit of the language gains one can accomplish through TPRS.  The day she observed, we only went over a written story and then made up some different parallel storylines.  She came yesterday to do two lessons with two of my classes.  The first class went ok.  After watching, I'm really glad that I had a little bit of an idea already how to tell a story through TPRS thanks to the workshop this summer.  Granted, I still have so many questions and things I need to improve on.  The main idea is to circle structures with questions and to go somewhat chronologically. 

I noticed I hadn't explained it very well because the first class went in all sorts of different directions and the students (as well as the student teacher) were having a really hard time trying.  The good thing is that I was able to model it a little more for her during the 2nd period class and she improved quite a bit between the first hour and the third hour classes.

Today she came back and did even better.  The kids were enjoying the language and she was having a good time with them.  Overall, I think she did a great considering she'd never learned with this method or really seen it modeled well.  Tomorrow she'll come back for a reading with the kids.

But while I've been observing, I have found myself feeling kind of territorial with my Spanish students.  They're MY students.  I want to teach them.  If something isn't taught how I would have taught it, I feel myself get uncomfortable about the concept.  It's strange.  It feels weird to give up my class to some stranger.

Lastweek I had a student transfer schools and in their new school they told me the teacher is just doing conjugation (the traditional way of teaching) and she's probably going to drop the class!  That makes me sad because she did a great job in the class with the language with TPRS.

Long story short, I guess I care about my kids more than I thought I did.