A Little of the Old and a Little of the New.

So all week I've been enjoying getting to know the new students in our classes and figuring out which students will be the class clowns and which ones are "reservados." One good thing about this week is that the Para Empezar chapter focuses on describing oneself and others, so it has been great for me in getting to know the students. I have somewhat missed some of the students from last semester because I could always count on them to pull me out of a hole when an activity wasn't going as planned and to get the rest of the class engaged in what I was doing. However, I have been seeing them around school (mostly in the other Spanish 2 classes I've observed) and they tell me they miss me and want me to switch and work in their class. (They have no idea the smile that puts on my heart. :) One of the old students even told me he was going to come see me after school on Wednesdays when we stay for tutoring so he could get help with Geometry and Spanish at the same time since I am pretty good with math. 


This week I have also seen that I have an advantage as a young teacher with high schoolers that some older teachers don't have - the students think they connect and can relate better to me. Today I had one student (one who really struggled in Spanish 1) and their friend (who is a student in my Spanish 2 class) pop in to talk to me during B lunch today, a time when we are not even holding smart lunch. They just wanted to say hi, but they ended up staying for the whole period and I talked to them about college and how they really needed to work on their attitudes (because they can be very rude) even if they didn't necessarily agree with or like the teacher; the teacher is still the teacher and should be respected. I talked to them about finding tutors if they needed to get tutors for their classes and not being afraid to ask for help. I also explained to them that they shouldn't waste their time in high school classes doing nothing, especially if they want to go to college, because they know they have to be there anyways. 


Seeing these familiar faces and finding out that I have already impacted these students by just providing them with an ear for listening and giving them advice on bettering their future really made struggling through the first activities I led (completely in the Target Language) seem worth it. Most of the students in my classes are not used to classes being taught completely in the Target Language and they think they are going to break me into using English, but I just keep telling myself that if I let myself speak English this early, I will speak almost no Spanish at the end. So for now, when I lead activities, I feel slightly Italian from all the hand gestures and speaking with my body language that I do. I do need to work on allowing the students to translate for those who are struggling to understand me - I let them do that a lot of the time, however, I usually comment on how whatever they said was not Spanish and the fact that "Yo no hablo ingles" so in "la clase de espanol no hablamos ingles." (They just think I'm trying to be funny.) 


I am so excited about working with all of these students this semester and hopefully watching them grow in their ability to speak Spanish. I feel like I might be putting a little too much of my heart into this and the success of these students, but what kind of teacher would I be if I didn't care too much? Something the principal (whom I really like and look up to) did at our staff meeting Monday really stayed with me. He was talking about how teachers should really try to connect with and relate to the students in order to improve the environment of the school and then he closed the meeting with the following quote, which really sums up my thoughts for the week: 

"Risk more than others think is safe,

Care more than others think is wise,

Dream more than others think is practical,

Expect more than others think is possible."

-Claude Bissell