RCOE International Student Teaching Spring 08

I have now been in Mexico for almost one week, and I still am observing the culture as if it was the first day. We arrived in Acapulco on Thursday, March 27 after quite an adventure through the Mexico City airport. We quickly learned that Acapulco is first a Mexican vacation destination and second has an intense riptide. Once we conquered the taxi and eating on our first night there, we were ready to take on Acapulco, and I was pleasantly surprised when I realized how little they catered to Americans. I am able to use so much Spanish, and I love being in Mexico. Throughout our time in Acapulco, we enjoyed watching the Mexican families interact and observed the differences between American and Mexican families.

After yet another adventure in travel, we arrived at the home of Maria Elena Baeza. We immediately loved our host mother, who is reminiscent of a grandmother. She has taken every measure to ensure our safety and knowledge of Guadalajara, all the way from taking us to Wal-mart and the Plaza Patria (like a mall) to riding with us on a trip to school. She has even told us what hour to set our alarms for, and ensures that we are out the door for school no later than 7:15, so we don´t miss the ¨camion¨.

Today was the first day of school in Guadalajara, and the school is wonderful. Everyone is so friendly, and the school itself is beautiful. There are gardens, soccer fields, a pool, everything you can imagine within the walls of the school. The resources that these students have is amazing as well. Soon, they hope to have every classroom equipped with a projector and screen. My teacher, who is also ¨Miss Sarah¨ is very helpful and it is nice to see a young face in the crowd. She is very patient with me and with my lack of knowledge about the elementary age student (I'm a Spanish major.) and I think that it will be a successful placement.

So far it has been a great experience being in Mexico. I can´t really imagine being placed anywhere else. We landed last Thursday in Acapulco and stayed there for a couple of days relaxing before school started. Staying in the youth hostel there was a great idea because it gave us the opportunity to meet a lot of people near our age from various parts of the world. We made some Australian friends and met others from Austria, England, and one from Oregon. It was a very nice break between student teaching experiences! :)

On Sunday night we landed in Guadalajara expecting to find our contact person waiting for us. Somehow there was some lost communication and she did not know that was when we were coming into town so we ended up taking a taxi to our host home. That made our first night a little eventful and interesting, but in the end everything worked out just fine. Our host mom is an older Mexican lady who has an adult daughter that lives with her. She is very hospitable and very funny! She laughs at Sara and me often.

I can understand much of what she says when I am concentrating. I have found that it is exhausting to listen to Spanish all the time. I have to process it and attempt to translate it in my head. It´s also easy to tune out because it takes so much energy! I try to respond as best as I can, but my Spanish is not very strong. I hope it gets better!

We got to eat Special K cereal and toast with this really great jelly here! It is different from the States...much better! So far our house mother is very considerate of what we like and fixes us things that are very good to eat! We live in a nice house. Sara and I share a room and have our own bathroom. We´ve gotten to meet some of her family as well, which has been nice. We are learning our way around our part of town, taking little outings to Wal Mart (yes, they have that here) and the shopping center, just to walk around and see the city. There is also an Internet cafe down the street from our house where we go to check email, Facebook (haha), etc. We are thinking next week we will get a little more adventurous with our outings and head to see some sights we´ve read about in books.

School started today! It was a bit overwhelming (It feels as if Spring Break has lasted forever because we have been doing so much!) to be back in school again and be in a completely new setting. However, the school is beautiful and has so much to offer. I am in a ¨pre-first¨ class which is similar to American first grade. My teacher is very nice and helpful and has made me feel comfortable here already. I am going to start doing more little by little...we are just going to play the next few days by ear and see how they go.

My kids are very cute and welcoming. Some of them speak better English than others, but they all try very hard. I am exicted to get more involved. After student teaching in the States, it is a little difficult to just observe now...I got so used to being in charge! I already see some ideas that my teacher uses in her classroom that I like. I am going to take notes on these and take pictures of them so that I can keep them in mind for my own future classroom.

So far, Mexico has been great! I am slightly exhausted, but it is totally worth it to think about the experience that we are gaining!! More to come...

My second week in Mexico has definitley been different--from following a routine to getting used to working with the second grade.

It is an interesting feeling working in a foreign country because with the small amount of international travel and living I have experienced, it never ceases to amaze me how hard it is to balance the feelings of responsibility and vacation. We are here in Mexico to learn and to do our student teaching in such an exciting environment, yet when you walk home from the bus it is hard to not look around and stop to enjoy the moment of living in a different country.

The time here is flying by, yet it is taking time for me to get used to working at the elementary level. Having come from an inner city high school, it is so different working with students who have everything and anything that they need and want, not to mention the differences in maturity levels and cultural norms. Recently, a widespread topic at the American School has been how "chatty" the students here are. It is the truth. And, it is interesting to see that it is a school wide issue, not just a classroom issue. These conversations are definitley a huge help to me in terms of working with my own patience and classroom management techniques to find that happy balance in the classroom.

The students here are teaching me more than I ever could have imagined, not only from being in front of them, but also with my Spanish! Everyday students teach me new words, and I will never get tired of the question "Miss Sara, how to you say __________ in English?" simply because it is a challenge to me as well as a challenge to them.

After a long week at the American School, Elyse and I are heading to Lake Chapala this weekend. It is a local lake that is filled with upscale Mexican homes and American retiree homes. It will be nice to get away from the busy city for the weekend and just relax. Soon enough, it will be Monday again, and time to start the week over!

Mexico is still great! Sara and I had quite the adventure getting to Lake Chapala this weekend. After staying in an "interesting" hotel, walking down the highway, and eating breakfast in the supermarket, we found our way to Ajijic. It is a quaint little town with lots of American retirees. I have to admit it was nice to see some people who are more like us! We had a really relaxing time there hanging out at the pool and watching the sunset from the Ajijic Pier. The bus ride home was eventful and a little stressful, as usual, but I've come not to expect it any other way in Mexico.

School is going well although sometimes I struggle with the classroom management part. My students here are so different from the students I am used to working with. They talk all the time! I am not getting easily frustrated, though, because I know it is partly a cultural difference. Also, my frustrations would only make it harder. This is great management experience before I go into my first year. My teacher has been a huge help and support. She hosted Sara and me in her home for dinner on Friday. That was very nice.

It is also different here because the families and students I work with are wealthy. Some have "staffs" in their homes! this is much different from my student teaching school in the States.

Our host home is still great. "Mom," aka Maria Elena, does her very best to make us happy and comfortable. She tells us the same thing over and over, which is a bit funny, but she is only trying to look out for us, so we love her for it. I can't believe we've been here almost three weeks...the time is flying by!

So another week in Mexico is flying by!

Sara and I spent the day on Saturday in Tequila, Mexico. We were so hungry after the bus ride that we found aplace where we could eat hamburgers and french fries! [a nice little taste of home. :)] Afterwards we toured one of the tequila distilleries and that was cool thing. We ended up not having much time to just hang out, because we had to catch the bus back to Guadalajara to be home for "cena" at 8:00.

On Sunday we tried to get to ruins that are about an hour and a half away. After the longest, hottest bus tour of the city of Guadalajara, we realized it was a lost cause. We ended up back at the artisan market shopping! Not a bad day, in the end!

My birthday was last week,also, which made it very special. My teacher knew it was my birthday and so we had a party at school with brownies and special "birthday" things. When we got home, Sara had told our host mom it was my birthday. She had a cake for me with candles and a flower and everything! It was really lovely and made me really happy!

School is going pretty well. Next week we have a half day on Wednesday and we are celebrating children's day. This is a big event in Mexican schools so we are going to play and eat pizza til 12:00. Then, we send the kids home and we have a 5 day vacation for Cinco de Mayo.

School here has definitely been more of a challenege that I am used to, but it's been a great learning experience for me as a future classroom teacher. My students know a lot of English to be so young, but they are still learning vocabulary. I say things and then have to remind myself that I usually need to explain words in more detail. With the words "mow the lawn," for example, they don't know to be just to cut grass. It's interesting to see how I have to explain things in different ways and how much they are soaking up. I can't believe that two weeks from today I will be on my way back to North Carolina. These weeks have gone by very fast!

Wow! Time has flown by since we first arrived at the home of Maria Elena Baeza, and now we are already winding down! I remember being so worried about moving from high school Spanish to the Second grade in Mexico, but now it seems fairly natural. I have yet to overcome how chatty our Mexican students are, but it has definitley taught me a lesson in patience. You can never expect the whole class to pick up on instructions the first time (really at any level, but I have been taught this day in and day out here). I have also learned that young children are rarely the same one day to the next!

In high school, I could generally expect the same attitude day in and day out, but it seems as if the "problem" of the day rotates! There is so much to learn about younger children.

I have truly been enjoying observing how children learn in a second language. It is hard to imagine, even as a second-language learner and speaker myself, to know so much English at such a young age and to have almost 60% of your instructions given in English. It simply amazes me to watch how they soak up anything that I introduce that is not "textbook" English. I enjoy seeing words I have introduced to them, such as "pigpen", appear in their journals. This has taught me so much about how difficult and how rewarding it can be to teach others a new language. I believe that this has helped to instill in me the importance of teaching in practically all Spanish in my future classroom.

Otherwise, Elyse and I have had some interesting adventures! Not that I expected anything less! We have had many chances to simply go and spend time in places where Mexicans go to vacation and where Mexicans go to shop and relax. I think that when we "experience" Mexican culture, it is often through very American places. Instead of travelling to Puerto Vallarta, which is very American these days, we are going to Rincon de Guayabitos, where we hope to observe and experience a more "Mexican" vacation. This weekend we will be traveling to Guanajuato, which has continutally been compared to one of my favorite towns in Spain- Toledo. I am very excited to visit a city with a lot of history and culture!

Wow, it is so hard to believe that time is going by so fast! Teaching in a Mexican school has been such great experience for me to take home with me. While I was student teaching in the States, I worked with a combination class, and therefore my teacher had the luxuary of essentially ¨hand-picking¨ her class. Having said that, I had to deal with very little behavior problems. It was so nice to not have all these discipline issues that so many of my peers had to tackle, but at the same time I was worried how I would handle my first classroom, because my student teaching class was somewhat atypical. I got my chance to work on my classroom management experience while in Mexico, that is for sure!

My cooperating teacher here has been here for almost ten years and so she has a lot of experience working with these students and this culture. It was a difficult transition for me because they are so ¨chatty¨ to say the least. It sometimes felt a little disrespectful because I felt like had very little control of the classroom situation. It is also a little awkward going into someone else´s classroom where they have procedures set up and learning to do it in a way that is ïn-sync¨ with how they do things. Looking back, I see how much I think I have grown as a professional because I now feel more confident at taking control of a sometimes challenging classroom. My teacher here, Virginia, has been so supportive and encouraging because she knew that it was a little harder for me. She also said that I was coming in a hard time of year because the kids had just come back from vacation, so it is always a little difficult to get going again, not to mention the heat was beginning to get much worse! Hearing her encouragement has been such a help to me! All in all, these are some of the most loving and sweetest children I have ever met. The Latin culture is so much more affectionate than we are in the States and so this class has welcomed me with the most open arms and I am so grateful for that!

As of now, Mexico has provided me with not only an opportunity to broaden my teaching perspective, but also to confuse me! I never thought, in all of my years, that I would be placed in the situation to be teaching second grade. I have always thought of myself as someone who deals better with adults and teenagers than with small children. I still stick to my guns on the fact that I am not made to be a full out elementary teacher, although after having the students by myself completely (my cooperating teacher flew home to Canada for the week) I know that I am capable.

The part about Mexico that has confused me most is whether or not I should be teaching Spanish, or just working with Hispanic students. I have pondered working with English as a Second Language through this experience because I enjoy seeing students work through problems with a language other than their own--which also falls into the category of Spanish education! I know that with the lack of ESL teachers available I could end up in this sort of role.

This experience has definitley shown me that I am capable of so much more than I thought possible. Often at the end of the day, especially since having the students by myself, I shock Elyse with the stories I tell her about how I have interacted with them. My friends do not know me as a person who works with small children, let alone one who gets up in front of the class to have a little dance workout to get them pumped and awake for math (this happened, believe it or not).

Through everything that I have experienced here in the classroom and outside of the classroom, the one thing that has completely been instilled in me is my love for the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture. I absolutely love being immersed in it and having an opportunity to teach outside my spectrum has been an even greater experience. I look forward to the last few days that I have to work with my students and to see what other things I will pick up and bring home to my future classroom.

Last week we had Children´s Day at ASFG! Children´s Day is a huge celebration of children in Latin American countries and in Mexico. tThey celebrate on April 30th. This day was a half day for my students and for teachers, and it was full of nothing but fun all day! We had a talent show in the morning, followed by dancing, a pizza party, playing on big blow-up games, and all sorts of kid-friendly fun.

Apparently, a long time ago a lot of countries got together in Switzerland and decided that they wanted to have one day where they celebrate the children of the countries. Thus began Children´s Day! It was a really fun day at school, though slightly chaotic as well! There were lots of parents on-hand to help, which was really nice. I have actually had the opportunity to meet a lot of the mothers of my students, and they have all been very lovely and welcoming.

Children´s Day was followed by a five day vacation from school in celebration of Mexican Labor Day and Cinco de Mayo. Sara and I took this time to head to the beach and have a few days of relaxation before we head home this week! We had a great time! So many of the teachers at school helped us by giving us suggestions of nice beaches, clean hotels, that sort of thing. It has been so helpful to have so many people who are a wealth of knowledge about the area. We ended up at a small beach near Puerto Vallarta (but not quite as commercialized). It was very crowded, but we had a great time observing Mexican families on vacation. It was nice to immerse ourselves in their culture and not go to areas where we knew there would be more Americans. It was a great stress-free time of beach laying and sleeping.

We head back to school on Tuesday for our last two days. I can not believe that is almost done! On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week my cooperating teacher has set up for me to observe a kindergarten class and a third grade class (which is really like American fourth grade class). I am excited about these chances to go and see other classrooms in the school.

So my last week in Mexico will definitley leave me with a sweet taste in my mouth! I have just returned from a vacation at the beach due to the ¨Puente¨ or break we had from school. The break was a result of Children´s Day, Worker´s Day, and Cinco de Mayo. What a nice five day weekend! Elyse and I traveled to Rincon de Guayabitos for our time off, a small beach near Puerto Vallarta. We were expecting a much more relaxed and quiet atmosphere, since we weren´t going all the way to Vallarta, but we were wrong. Due to the long break, the beach was packed with families, vendors, and people trying to get us to pay for all sorts of rides and attractions. It was still a nice relaxing time, trying to avoid letting the Mexican sun get the best of us.

Our last night in Rincon, we stayed out and watched the sun set over the beautiful Pacific Ocean. It was a wonderful time to sit and think about all of the things that we have seen and done here in Mexico and to think about the fact that a week from now we will be graduated and off into the real world! I just hope that when I get a few months into real teaching that I don´t start to expect a nice six week vacation to Mexico! We have definitley been spoiled here and have had the best of luck with almost everything we have done--not without a few adventures, of course. I can´t wait to see how these last few days play out for us here in Guadalajara!

Today is the second to last day at school for us in Guadalajara. My teacher had arranged for me to spend some time visiting other classrooms in the school this week so I could receive an ever greater understanding of the school. Today I visited a Pre-Kinder and Kindergarten combination class for awhile. It was so incredibly different from a Kindergarten classroom in the States.

Here at ASFG, they use an Italian theory in their early-childhood program that is completely focused on exploratory learning. It was so interesting to see children in their center time this morning. They are actually quite calm and quiet and performed different tasks with such patience. It was very different from most things I am used to seeing.

I was talking with the teacher, Miss Stephanie, and she was telling me how she sends home a "Daily Journal" via email to her parents. It is some digital photographs of what the children did that day with some comments and short sentences telling parents what happened at school that day. She also poses all of the really thought-provoking questions to the parents and uses this journal as a means of keeping them updated and involved on what is going on in the classroom. She keeps a hard copy in her room and I read some of the entries. I love this idea! I would love to incorporate this into my own classroom in some way because I thought it was a great way to have parents really know about what is going on at school. It can also be used as a means of accountability because she has one for each day of the school year thus far.

Another thing I have noticed in my time here is how much the students are so much more free. They have more freedom than any elementary classroom I have ever seen at home. They do not typically walk in lines anywhere--to recess, the cafeteria, etc. However, they all always end up exactly where they are supposed to be (generally speaking) at the right time. Perhaps in the States, we should give our children more freedom within the school. On the other hand, ASFG doesn't have traditional hallways as classrooms open to the outside. This configuration lends itself to giving students more freedom, I think.

Now that we have started to pack things up and are beginning to wrap up our time here in Mexico, I realize how little I have thought about things from home since I have been here. The other day one of the teachers (who is from the US) mentioned something to me about the election, and it occurred to me that I could not even have a conversation about it because I have not heard about it in such a long time. I am anxious to get home because it is important to be able to answer those questions and have intelligent, thoughtful opinions.

I got back to my classroom after my kinder observation only to be "kicked out" because my students were working on a secret project for tomorrow, my last day. I am really going to miss this class because of how much they have taught me about patience and tolerance and understanding. They are so affectionate and I will miss their sweet smiles and hugs every day!

So today was my last day at the American School Foundation at Guadalajara. It has been a great experience down here in Mexico, and I can already see all of the ways that it will affect my classroom, my Spanish, as well as myself as a person. I believe that this six weeks has been the perfect amount of time for me to reflect on my decisions that I have made in the last four years about what I would like to do with my life.

Through working at ASFG, I have been able to discover that I am not completely incapable of working with young children. I have found out over the past six weeks that although I prefer to work with older children that I am capable of working with and enjoying teaching younger students. This is a very important addition to my confidence as an education professional.

I also hope to in the future work with the English as a Second Language program. I have come to this realization because I have truly enjoyed watching my students learn English and to work side by side with them through Spanish and English. It is a struggle that I personally know, learning a second language, and it is something that I can truly relate to after being in a completely immersed second language classroom.

My understanding of the Spanish language and Mexican culture has been broadened by leaps and bounds here in Mexico. From my previous study abroad experience in Spain, I believed that I knew what I was in for. But it has been a completely different experience being down here and being in charge of my own cultural learning and understanding rather than relying on professors and guides to help me explore. By living with a family and working directly with students here in Mexico I have been able to grasp the culture and language in a way that one never would be able to do with traveling as a tourist. It is an indescribable gem that I have discovered and will carry into my classroom.