Relentless Pursuit

The first week of teaching: how does anyone begin to describe this experience? It has been a long, harrowing week. On average, I get about 4 hours of sleep a night. This is catching up to all of us, I notice my spoken sentences garbling and my attention span shortening. I have only been at this for four days, and already I can see why the experience is like a drug habit: sometimes there are incredible lows. The hours are long, the rewards are far and few between, and everyone is so anxious. But occasionally, the last student you would expect shows up for extra help. Or the girl struggling at home gets a 100 on your quiz. Or you can see the excitement on a student’s face when they’re praised for “getting” your lesson. It’s on those few moments that I have the energy to write today.

Summer school has technically been in session since last Wednesday, but even yesterday kids were coming into our class with new rosters, needing to be caught up on the material. Our students are a varied bunch: some are completely solid on the basic Spanish concepts that we’re teaching, and are only in summer school because of attendance issues. Some of them are here because they didn’t pass the class. Some are freshman, some are seniors, and all need a foreign language credit to graduate. For this reason, a sense of desperate urgency prevails in the classroom.

Standing in front of a sea of faces on my first day was unlike any other performance of my life. Yeah, I’ve been on stage before, many many times. But I’ve never done a solo improv performance that lasts for more than an hour! Even though we spend hours upon hours lesson planning, all the details are lost when you’re in front of the room. And for me, they literally did get lost!

I started my first day with an “investment activity” that asked the students to look under their desks. Some of them found quotes taped there about why American students should learn Spanish. I had them read the quotes one by one, and the asked them: Who do you think said this quote? The answer was president Obama, and I showed the kids a video on my laptop of the speech I referenced. Somehow, in my adrenaline and shuffle of the activity, I lost my precious clipboard and lesson plan. Gone! Into the abyss of the classroom, my lesson plan was lost, and I was only in the first 5 minutes of my class on my first day.

I had a crucial decision to make. Stop the class and search, or march on. What if some kid had it? What if I couldn’t find it? I decided I would march on. Mustering up every once of “drama kid” in me, I began class. One by one, I hit the objectives. I went through all the activities I planned. My head began to relax: I remembered everything. Feeling good, I got ready to wrap up the lesson.

Then I looked at the clock.

8:35 !!!! 8:35 !!! I had only taught for 35 minutes! There were 25 minutes of class left, my lesson was lost, and I ran out of everything I planned. What was I going to do?

At this point I literally blacked out. I’m not even sure what all I did for 25 minutes. I know I was making stuff up, talking about expectations and telling them about my experiences. With 10 minutes left to go in class, I gave the helm over to my co-teacher to tell a story from his study abroad experience. When that horrid, slow hour had finally passed, I was a nervous wreck.

To my shock and delight, our mentor teacher was glowing. “It was wonderful!” She said. “So natural, you were teaching from the heart. And you didn’t even need your clipboard.”

Oh, if you only knew.

So many stories to come- peace and love.