So through the middle of April, I
finished observing in the primaria. This was a little bit hectic because when I
got to school on Monday, I was told that two of the teachers had switched
classes they would be teaching – one of the teachers I had already observed, so
I was going to see the older classes twice and the younger ones not at all.
Because of this, I really worked with 3 teachers that week. But it was fine, I
got to see all of the classes except for one (because the teacher that I had
already worked with didn’t come one day and I couldn’t’ make the schedule work
out to get to that class).
The next week I started observing
in the colegio again. That was a little bit of a stressful week because I was
also going back to the primaria to meet with the teachers to give them
feedback. While I was a little nervous about this, it went really well. I
started with telling them the things about their teaching styles that I thought
were really good, then I gave them some suggestions. Most of these were in
regards to class management or activities for the different learning styles
(auditory, visual, kinesthetic, tactile). For one teacher (the one who was
switched to the younger kids), what will help his teaching the most is if he
improves his English. He really can’t speak with me, even though I can tell he
knows a good bit of vocabulary. So I offered to him that I come and work with
him, and he seemed open to it and willing to meet with me. But when I came to
meet with him the following week, he didn’t come to talk to me. I didn’t want
to embarrass him in front of the other teachers in the teacher’s room (aka the
library – don’t get too excited, all they have are textbooks), so I said that I
had some English materials to talk to him about and kind of showed him the
papers I had prepared. I sat there for another couple of minutes, but he didn’t
really show any signs of wanting to talk, so I said – I’m going to go to the
cafeteria and when you want to talk, just come meet me. He never came. I don’t know if I’m going to have to be
more direct or what. But hopefully once I’m working there for the end of the
trimester, I can get a schedule set with him that will work.
The following week brought my first
shift of working with the aftenoon teachers. Again, I came to school on Monday
only to find that one of the teachers, Porfirio, was not going to be working
there anymore because an older teacher who had left the school 3 years ago to
get another government job had lost said government job and was coming back. Oh
the perils of the Panamanian school system. So I basically just worked with one
teacher that week. I think she is one of the ones that I can help the most –
her English is alright, but she’s already taking advantage of me as a resource
which is great – and she was also already asking me to help her lesson-plan. I probably should have
just observed her instead of giving her tips on how to teach, because then I
didn’t get a full picture of what she normally does, but I think I got a good
enough picture because she still had them do a lot of copying, even though all I
suggested were interactive activities. I even helped with one class and did an ordinal
numbers activity – I printed the ordinal numbers out, one for each student (the largest
class has 44 students?!?!) and had them get in order. It worked pretty well, so
that was a good success, though it could have been a lot more involved.
That brings us to this week, my
last week of observing. I’m working with the returned teacher as well as one
other. We didn’t have school on Monday, then yesterday one of them wasn’t
there, so I spent the whole day with the returned teacher. Hopefully as this
week continues to progress, I’ll be able to see the other teacher’s classes as
well.
I’ll also be helping one of the
teachers I’ve already observed work with her classes on spelling. They will be
participating in the spelling bee for English Week in June, and she wants me to
help prepare them, I’m planning on focusing on phonics since that will help
them the most with spelling, I think. If anyone has any suggestions, as usual,
I’m open!
More updates will come soon about
some of the weekend adventures I’ve had over the past few weeks. ‘Till then!
Besos.
No comments:
Post a Comment