Pretty sure experience should be required for this...

I finally have MY SCHEDULE in hand for the next year! It's not bad, it could be little better but it's not bad. (Actually, it's pretty spectacular, I'm just complaining since I hate mornings.)

The way the school works is a little confusing: There are 350 kids total, and of those kids, about 100 of them are in the school's bilingual program. There are 4 levels in this program, and each level has 1 class. For these 4 classes, all their subjects like math, biology, physics/chemistry, social sciences, and of course english, are taught by bilingual teachers and will have our help for the next year. Their "extra" classes like cooking, art and music are taught only in Spanish, and include the rest of the school. So Eli and I will be working with roughly 15 teachers and 100 students. Not bad.

Then it breaks down further when it comes to our schedules. Eli chose to work with the 1st and 4th levels, which means I have the 2nd and 3rd. I will be in each of the classes for my levels once a week. So for the days I have class sometimes I'll just be there helping, but other times I'll have to come up with my own lesson plan. 

My schedule turned out well, I work Monday-Thursday with my longest day starting at 9:15 and ending at 2:45. So not that strenuous. My shortest day, Thursday, I work from 9:15 o 12:45, with a tutoring session after that. I'm especially pleased about the Fridays off part, since we have 3 long weekends with Monday and Tuesday off, which means I'll have some 5 day weekends to go traveling!

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that everyday there is a half hour break at 11:15 when all the teachers go across the street to get coffee. I think I could get used to that lifestyle :)

I also volunteered to tutor a couple of the teachers during my breaks, so I'll be making extra money.

I really really hope this year turns out well, I'm starting to panic and wonder what I got myself into, since I've never had any experience teaching or doing private lessons, but I feel as though they expect me to know exactly what is going on. And I am completely lost. The application made it clear that only minimal levels of spanish were required and that absolutely no teaching experience was required, but I am wondering how on earth you would survive this job if you didn't speak spanish, and how I am supposed to survive with no experience in front of classroom. I feel totally and utterly unprepared for this, as I am sure a lot of others are probably feeling too. There seems to be a lack of communication between La Junta and las escuelas.

SO.

This should be interesting, wish me luck.