Hooked on Phonics and Coconuts

The other night I had this dream that 7 or 8 brand new students came to my morning Adulto Nivel 1 (beginner adults), shredding the lesson planning and dynamic of the class. I tossed and turned the rest of the night, half-awake and half-asleep, unable to figure out if I needed to get up and start reformatting my lessons. I also blame part of the inability to sleep on the fact that I won't sleep with my air conditioning on (this is a non-profit after all and electricity's expensive!). I turn on the air for an hour or half-hour or so before bed and then turn it off very last thing as I lay down. If I'm lucky, I drift off before it starts to stifle. I sleep with the screen door open sometimes, but the neighbors are so close you can literally hear them sneeze.

Other than this silly dream, I'm pleased to report 2 weeks into classes, that things continue to go well. Classes are getting easier as I'm getting a better read on what the students know and what they need to learn. The difficulty in the classes here is that with so much tourist influence, we have a huge number of "false beginners" of English. They've picked up basic phrases like "Hauw aire yeww? I yam fiine, tank you," and they're pretty solid on colors and numbers. The issue is that they have learned some basic vocabulary, but have not had the opportunity to pick up the fundamentals to put that vocabulary into context. I hope to impart that through classes this cycle!

The other relative novelty I'm facing with classes is that the focus of the school is intensively on spoken English. Unlike many of the students that I've worked with previously for tutoring, etc., who need literacy or academic English skills, the focus here is entirely on making someone functional in conversational English. This is completely understandable, given the location of the school and the economic impetus to learn spoken English in Isla. It makes some aspects of preparing for classes easier, but it also makes it harder to find multiple ways to impart information or review to the students. We have very few worksheets or reading activities (if any), and so I just hope I can find engaging ways to continue to present new material.

Since all of my classes are very low-level beginners, I spend a lot of class explaining instructions or English grammar/phrases in Spanish. It really has been great for my Spanish, though find myself making mistakes all the time. The encouraging thing I'm discovering about my mistakes, however, is that I hear when I'm making them and am self-correcting. I think on the scales us language dorks would use, it puts me somewhere between "Intermediate-high" and "Advanced" speaking. Looking to hit "Advanced Plus" soon! The one thing I really need to do is learn how to respond to prepubescent snide comments in Spanish. There's this one 12 year old who throws them out after I tell her to "escucha." I can't catch what she says each time, but one of these days, I'm gonna have a really good comeback. The latest new word I've learned is "mamitis," applicable to my 4 and 5 year old Kinder class. It would translate to "Mommyitis" and it's symptoms include crying for one's mother when she leaves you alone with the teacher and the other students. It's happened a few times with one student, but it luckily doesn't appear to be highly contagious.

These first few weeks have been heavily intensive on the most basic of vocabulary and phrases. Lots of personal information, like "Where are you from?" "What do you do?" and lots of numbers, colors, and the alphabet. Much of the repetition in the class has focused on phonics as well. One of the things my students are getting caught on is the "th" sound, in "thirteen" or "birthday" or "they." It doesn't exist in Mexican Spanish, so they end up saying "firteen" or "dirteen." I stand at the front and wildly exaggerate the sound for them: "tthhhhhh!" It's pretty funny, too, because you have to stick your tongue between your teeth to make the sound, so I'm more or less razzing them to make the point. I encourage them to razz back.

As I'm getting to know them and they're getting to know me, our classes are becoming a lot more fun. Now that I've taught some really dry stuff like subject and possessive pronouns, and "to be," I think it can only get better!

Anyway, since I started my weekend today, it's been pretty low-key all day (not that any day is terribly straining). Our gardener, who tends our backyard coconut palms and orange tree was over to, you know, garden. He brought along his machete and chopped down a few of our young coconuts for us. He then made quick work of turning them into giant cups and plunked a few straws down inside. Voila, drinking coconut! (Please see example of such below.) I've since finished drinking mine, but it's time to get back to eating the rest of it, and to being outside enjoying a relatively cloudy (and subsequently cooler) day. Catch you all again soon!

I was trying to think of some pithy caption for this, but I think it more or less speaks for itself. My life rocks...