Thursday, March 15, 2012

I'm a teacher. I speak the truth. (Usually).

You know that quote "I can only please one person each day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either"?


Well, that pretty much sums up yesterday and today.

Yesterday during a private class we were practicing numbers. Hard to mess up, right? I say how high to count, the student counts, and we're all happy cause we're learning English. Except until I asked the 8 year old to count de treinta a quinientos. (Since she had just told me that she could count up to 50, I wasn't expecting this to be very hard.) But upon seeing a look of horror and disbelief cross her face, I very quickly realized that I had not said cinquenta, for 50, but quinientos, for 500. She had honestly thought I expected her to count to 500! I'm not that mean, am I?

Then in the next section, we were reviewing shapes, and when the girl couldn't remember how to say 'rectangle' I quickly helped her by saying ' it's rectriangle'. 'Rec-tri-ang-gle', 'rectriangle'. She looked a little confused.
And then it dawned on me. 
I quickly tried to back up and say "no no no lo siento, no es verdad, se llama 'rectangle!" ("no no no sorry, that's not true, it's called rectangle!") but she continued giving me a confused look and just shrugged her shoulders. I guess I'll have to wait until next week to see if I just accidently taught at ESL learner a wrong vocabulary word.
Would that make me happy? .................Maybe.
I'm such a bad English teacher.

As for today, so far it's just been a waste of time. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to teach more incorrect vocabulary, since I just didn't really get a chance to speak at all during my classes. I always thought I would love to get paid to do absolutely nothing. Now I know better.

Stay tuned for my post about my weekend in Córdoba, soaking up Spanish culture and listening to 2 history nerds do what they do best: geek out on history to anyone willing to listen.
(Love you Aunt&Uncle)

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