Seño Leslie Strikes Again

Teaching is frightening. Standing in front of a room full of people who have no particular obligation to listen to you or to need what you offer, holding forth on topics whose importance you believe in but acknowledge is subject to debate, prodding and snuffling about to find the most palatable way of presenting a language so that it seems useful, rewarding, and worthy of effort, all the while listening to your own internal monologue and realizing intimately how underqualified you are... It is humbling, to say the least. That said, this week had a decidedly upward trend. On Wednesday I had my first observed teaching session, in which Neil, my mentor (and the brilliant inducer of Scottish-Guatemalan accents in all our students), watched to give me some feedback. I was terrified. I had little or no appetite, I obsessively checked and rechecked my lesson plan in every spare moment of the day, and as I began I sunk my teeth into the tears that approached and instructed them firmly to STAY PUT until the lesson was over. They did, but barely. It was raining, which is dreadful in any class but worse in a wall-less classroom with a tin roof, as it sounds a bit like falling through a steel drum being flicked with rubber balls. And of course my lesson plan was largely speaking-based, involving a lot of drilling and some conversation, and I could hardly hear the kids in the front row, let alone the back. I stumbled through, rotating from table to table and doing essentially minilessons with each group, thanking the teacherly powers that be that I had two assistants to try some dialogues with the tables I couldn't reach. When they left I hunkered down in the corner and ushered out the tears that had so considerately waited til then. I spent the night wondering what I was doing here, whether every day would inspire such deep panic, whether I could even maintain two months worth of such frustration and uncertainty. Neil had reassured me, told me I'd handled the rain well and, when he saw how shaken I was, said my nerves hadn't shown, but I couldn't argue with the adrenaline crash that sent me to sleep at nine that night.

Then Thursday came. I was to teach another afternoon class, this one on telling the time. Now, telling the time and I are not traditionally friends. Telling the time gave me more trouble in elementary school than multiplication tables and the difference between right and left combined. Telling the time still eludes me despite three years of wearing an analog watch. And yet. This lesson was a dream. I could see problems as they come, I could joke with the kids and still regain their attention, I could give instructions they more or less understood, and even when I made mistakes (which I did, amply) I didn't freeze or melt but stayed more or less in my usual demisolid state of matter and came up with solutions. I was GIDDY afterwards.

And now I'm cutting myself painfully short, without telling you about climbing the volcano Pacaya and touching lava with a stick yesterday, or talking for two hours with a friendly gentleman in a cafe this morning, or about seventeen other stories well worth telling. I must scurry off to join the day's adventure (the nature of which is still a mystery), thereby perpetuating my writable experiences. Secretly, my dearly beloved friends, I do these things for you.

Ish.