First day teaching

On Wednesday, I taught my first English class. My TEFL instructor offered me a short-term job teaching a series of review classes to a group of Colombian professors who teach at a bilingual school here in Cali called Colegio Berchmans. After the school changed the class schedule on us three times, we finally had our first meeting yesterday.

I woke up to a bird staring at me. We don't have any window screens in the house; everything is open to the outside, and secured with metal bars or grates. So, the occasional bird finds its way into the house. This one had gotten into my room sometime during the night I suppose, and was perched on the rod supporting the window curtains, staring at me as I slept. I don't know if waking up to pigeon poop on your bed is typically a sign of good luck, but I think it was for me because the day went really well.

I got up, did some signature Amie Davis abs and buns exercises, showered, and ate breakfast. I walked to La 14, which is a big supermarket/general store to buy some food and make photocopies for my class. I spent the afternoon relaxing, going over my lesson plan, and studying. I'm apparently not very good using the self-timer on my camera, but here is the best picture I could manage of myself, on my way out the door to teach.

I took the MIO to Colegio Berchmans in the afternoon and taught the class from 3 - 6pm. After teaching so many semesters of Intro Bio at UCF, it was nice to have adults as students for a change. The teachers (aka, my students) were all really friendly and participated well in the class. We spent the first half of the class working on speaking and pronunciation activities, and the second half on reading, writing, and grammar activities. I was worried about filling three hours of class time with constant activities, but the time worked out perfectly. It's a big change from teaching bio labs, where the students largely work at their own pace and my job is to facilitate as they go. Now I am responsible for planning out every minute of class time. Our next class is Saturday from 8:30am - 12:30pm, so now I have to figure out how to fill a four hour class. Thank God my TEFL instructor has been really helpful.