First Week of Teaching!!!
Monday was my first time teaching here in Brazil. Alexa and I made a lesson plan and taught together. I think in the future we will each have separate classes, but for now we will be working together.
We arrived early at the school and had dinner and then went to explore a bit and found the room we would be using. When class was about to start, we headed to the room to wait for our first year English students to arrive from break time. All of them greeted us and were very excited to be having class with us. We introduced ourselves and then had each student introduce theirself. We then had them complete a short survey where we asked them questions about their learning styles and to self-evaluate their level of English language abilities. This was helpful in getting to know them and understand what the students expected to learn in the class.
After, we played Would You Rather to gauge the students' levels of listening skills. They had a lot of fun with this activity I think. Then I led them in a speaking activity. They each had a card with a different question on it (like "What is your favorite food" or "if you could go to one concert, which singer or band would you like to see?") and they had to go around asking each other their question and responding. This was a great way to see the students' speaking abilities. We then gave them a word search to do if they wanted to and then they were free to leave. Overall, it was a great class, the students were engaged and having fun the whole time, and I am so excited to work with them again.
Tuesday was a day for getting things done. We have to register with the federal police and also get a Brazil ID. It rained most of the day, but around 4 we were able to run all of our errands so we could get our ID (or CPF as it's called here) and so we could get everything ready to go to the federal police and register that we are here. Juliane also posted a registration for our conversation clubs. There are 25 spaces available in both mine and Alexa's and those spots were filled within 24 hours. Everyone seems so excited to learn English and it makes me even more excited to be here.
We didn't have an appointment, but on Wednesday, we went to register with the police. We took a bus for an hour and a half and then took an uber to the police station. Once we got there, we finally found the room we were supposed to go to and then sat down to ask if we could register. The guy said we couldn't do it today; we had to come back next week. I wasn't too upset because I had a feeling this would happen, so I made an appointment for Tuesday and then we left. With traffic, it took about 2 hours to get home so it was a very long day. I just relaxed for the rest of the day and made dinner.
Thursday we taught again. We found out that we had the class on Wednesday, so I was a little stressed about planning in time, but we decided to use the same lesson plan as Monday because we have a different group of students. We had second year English students for class. It went just as well as it did on Monday and all of the students were very excited to have class with us. Their English is very good and I'm excited to see how good levels three and four are.
We ran a lot of errands before class on Friday and our landlord, Antonio, seemed to be completing his To Do list as well. He had people come in to start planning to put up a wall connecting the outside bathroom on the patio to the house, another guy was fixing the wifi, and still a different guy was fixing all of the lights in the house and installing a light above a full length mirror in the hallway. It was a busy day for everyone. That night, we had class with years two and three. It did not go as well as the two classes before only because we couldn't get the printer to work. As Alexa printed, I went to the classroom to begin class. We started late and everything was just a little hectic. I think the students enjoyed class, but I hope we are never that unprepared again because it was a bit stressful and I don't think the third year English class got to see us at our best. We will make up for it this coming week though. Once we got home, two of our housemates spent the rest of the night teaching us card games. One was Sets and Runs, but the other one is called Truco and is very confusing. I'll need to play it several more times before I understand the rules.
Saturday we went to a pub with one of our new friends. He went to the University and just graduated a year ago. He speaks very good English so it was nice hanging out and speaking English with him. Besides that, I just made dinner and chilled the rest of the night.
Today we are having a barbecue with one of our housemate's family but this blog is long enough for one week. You'll get the details in next week's blog. I don't really have any pictures from this week to post, so enjoy the weather update and a throwback.
