Evan Isaacs '11 - OVERWHELMING! This is the first word that comes to mind when I think about my first ever teaching experience. On our eight minute walk to Collegio Emilio Uzcátegui I had no idea what to expect. I am not involved in the teacher education program at all and have never had any teaching aspirations post Wabash. 

I walked into a small classroom with Jon Funston, Chris Pearcy, and Jake German; the group of teachers more commonly known as “The Dream Team.” We had discussed earlier that day that our lesson plans should revolve around simple conversational sentences that the students would have to write out. For instance, “My name is ___. I like to play ____. My favorite food is _____. I am ____ years old.” 

We were told months prior that our students would have a pretty good grasp of the English language, however, after the first minute of being in the classroom I knew we were in for an interesting night. These students knew little to no English, which made it difficult to teach because my Spanish speaking skills are not as fluent as one would think. At the beginning of the period we decided to break up the class of 22 students into two different groups where Chris and I took half and Jon and Jake took the other half. 

The teaching was off to a rocky start because we expected the students to know more English than what they did, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say we were feeling more confident about teaching as time went on, or at least we thought. Then, before I knew it, we had 45 students in this small classroom. 20-plus students walked in up to 30 minutes late. This is where the OVERWHELMING feeling started to kick in. 

Chris and I were teaching on a one-on-one basis with the students. I really felt that students were getting a lot out of this, but at the same time I knew they were not getting as much done as what they could have. Some were really self-motivated, while others needed to be pushed. It seemed like every time I turned around and looked at the class five more new faces appeared in the sea of students. Every time I saw a new face, I knew I would have to start moving faster, student to student. 

When the class ended all I could do was try to comprehend what had happened in that hour and a half blur. Teaching is one thing, but teaching to a group of students who speak another modern language is a completely different story. Before class I was pretty excited to get to speak in English for the majority of class, but my excitement level passed as my OVERWHELMING feeling kicked in. Though I am not fluent in Spanish I was able to comprehend and teach in Spanish (I know, this is astonishing). The only problem that I didn’t realize until later that night was that I spoke too much Spanish than what I should have. The students NEED to hear English. Although I feel like I let them down to an extent, I think my Spanish improved at least 5% (possibly 7.5%). I will not make the same mistake again tonight! English all the way (or at least most of the way).

This experience blew my mind, but it surprisingly left me wanting to teach more. I obviously have a better appreciation for modern language teachers because of the language barrier. The patience that goes into teaching a different language is one that is hard to match. A teacher can prepare lesson plans all day, but until you are standing at the head of the classroom full of 16-20 year old Ecuadoreans and have 45 pairs of eyes glaring at you (most in space), you never know how ready you are until you start teaching. [Note to self: Teaching is nothing more than being flexible at all times!]