Teaching English While Learning Spanish:

I sort of got a promotion from my internship last week to work in an actual school to teach English! ...Well be the assistant to the teachers who are teaching English.

There are two classes that are I help out in. One is a half hour with the pre-school aged children who are quite the handful. We were teaching them colors the other day and they kept running around the classroom trying to find something that was "bwue" and kept grabbing at my blue shirt. To get them to sit for more than 30 seconds is a challenge. 

After, I help out older students that are around 4th-5th grade depending on the day of the week. It's tricky since it's the end of the school day and everyone is so tired that literally is the worst time to try and understand a second language. I was actually surprised at how many English words they knew! There are a few cuties who are kiss-ups and try to be all sweet! There are also other ones who I think Satan gave them a malicious heart. Well maybe not that bad...but they are the ones that understand you, but say they don't know English and attempt to run around the classroom while taking everyone's pencils...

I love this because I am able to understand more Spanish when the students have problems and ask me in Spanish. Also it is fantastic review of basic vocabulary that I really need to improve. The teachers I work with are amazing and so fun to work with. They constantly make me pronounce things for the class and correct grammar just to make sure it's right. I feel bad sometimes because they say things with a British accent and then feel like they said it wrong. My goal is that by the time I leave this school will all have American accents in English! 

I also love how the little ones try to pronounce my name and will randomly start cheering my name saying "NAN-TH! NAN-TH, NAN-TH!" It's like I have my own fan club! 

While it is an amazing experience, at the end of every day I am usually exhausted and happy that I am majoring in Secondary Education! 

I also got the chance to read/act out Little Red Ridding Hood for my one English class! While usually my accent makes kids wonder and excited, these kids were pretty scared of it at first. (That high five I am attempting in that picture got denied.) That was a wonderful experience too to see how important it is to start teaching another language at an early age. Children are smarter than you think! 

I really hope the US encourages other languages to start being taught at a younger age instead of "We speak English he'e in 'Merica". While most of the world speaks some bit of English, I think it's important to have the ability to connect at a higher level than barely climbing the language barrier. Maybe one day I'll be teaching pre-schoolers an English class in NY! (Though probably not after how tired I'll be by the end of this internship!)