The joys of being a teacher

That's not sarcasm either!

Seriously, teaching can be so much fun. I was really hard on the kids the first few days because I wanted to set up the procedures in my classroom. And now, it works like clockwork. They know to come in and start the warmer. They are even there 5 minutes early most of the time and when a student comes in on time they say "dance, dance!" (I make them dance if they are more than 10 minutes late). So it's cool that they want my class to start right away. It really pays off to stick with the rules until it sinks in for them and they just do them automatically.

Because once they are actually focused and listening, we can have fun. And I try to make my classes really fun. Yesterday in advanced we compared and contrasted being a loser vs. being popular using the "popular" song from Wicked and "loser like me" from Glee. They really like when I expose them to different kinds of American music. And today in my intermediate we worked on texting slang. I made up some random text messages and then interpreted them. They thought it was hilarious learning words like "wacko," "rocked," and "Def!"

But it is still super hard to teach out of the book. Today they wanted me to teach comparisons. That I can do. But they added in comparisons with past participles and the students had no idea what a past participle is. But I didn't know they didn't know that so I hadn't prepared a lesson on it. It's just a dumb book. And it's unfortunate that so many teachers only use the book.

This weekend was fun. I found out I can kind of watch the games online if my internet is running fast enough. There were so many upsets!! Now my bracket is terrible, but at least OSU is still in it!

One of the gringas from Ambato left today. She got a job with Teach for America and has to be back early to start training and stuff. But another gringa came. She is really nice and I like her a lot.

I'm starting to seriously consider staying in Ecuador another year. I can't think of any reasons not to. I have to make up my mind soon though.

Tomorrow some vols are coming up to Ambato to celebrate another vol's birthday. Should be fun! Except a bunch of them teach at 7am (thank goodness I don't!) so we won't be able to really celebrate. I guess that will come this weekend.

Other than that all is well in Ambato. Happy travels.