Classes start today!

Today I will have my first class through Intercambio de Comunidades. It will run twice a week through March 9. I'm pretty excited about the opportunity. They try to keep their classes small, which means I will have 2 to 5 students. It's going to be a lot different compared to the classes I taught in Barcelona, where we generally had twelve, and sometimes more, students per class. However, I can see how the smaller class sizes will be excellent for the students, and provide a lot more one on one attention.

I've looked through the book I've gotten from the program, but haven't had a chance to read all of it yet. I think it's very interesting. The teacher book has the complete student book as well, so that's really helpful to see exactly what the students will have. The first few classes will be review, which will be helpful if my students are at different levels- we can get them all sorted out together.

Since my teacher training was 1.5 hour classes divided into 45 minute chunks, it will be an interesting adjustment to be responsible for teaching the entire time, instead of just half of it. I remember the two classes I did teach the entire time, and I just sort of combined two 45 minute classes into one! I think the transition is helpful for students, since an hour and a half is quite a long time to have to concentrate on learning a new language!

This afternoon I'm going to go through and make a lesson plan. The book is pretty thorough in what is to be covered in Day 1, but I think I still want to plan it out, since I'm used to doing it that way, and it's now been a couple months since my last English class. I'll post more after my class tonight, since I know I'll have much to write. Cheers!

Introduction

Thanks for reading my blog! I am a novice teacher of English to speakers of other languages, and have created this blog to catalog my experiences, share resources I find, and generally document all the things I learn through this experience!

A bit about me: I have many years of teaching youth in sports and various subject matters. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics and was first exposed to the TESOL world by a class I took at the University of Colorado. In September of 2009 I took a certificate course for Trinity TESOL in Barcelona, Spain. Soon, I will be teaching English to learners in Longmont, CO through a non-profit, Intercambio de Comunidades.

I think self-reflection is crucial in the teaching process, and hope to keep this blog updated as I learn, and also as a place to store information I would think helpful to students or teachers of English. I look forward to you sharing this journey with me!