First Official Day of Being a Teacher!

The gringas first day officially teaching in Costa Rica!! Kim (1st grade student teacher), Kate (4th grade all the way!!), and Tricia (Special Ed. and Kindergarten and Basketball Coach... that's the latest title anyway)

Alright, so this morning before the students arrived, I seriously was ready to puke. My mind was going a bajillion miles a second and I was absolutely sure that I wasn't ready for this huge responsibility.

Then the students arrived and I was totally in my element. I was directing the students on where to go and what to do and how to do it. I knew all their names within the first 5 minutes (I had a head start of meeting most of them in May!), except the twins, whom I kept mixing up all day. (I didn't know I had twins... Another teacher mentioned she thought they were cousins... Are they just pulling my leg?) We took a "classroom tour" with all the supplies and posters and then did a crazy five minute "student search" to mix up the new students with the old. We filled out this map of the world with where we're all from... I'll have to take a photo of that, because it's amazing. My class is from all over the U.S. and Latin America! I love it!

Then I drew a map on the whiteboard like a football play illustrating our class bathroom procedure. Ha, I should have taken a photo of that, but I already erased the board! The boys were so into that explanation... I find it absolutely necessary to make connections to their world... and football is the way to do it here in Costa Rica.

I came up with my fastest Spanish sentence yet this morning! I was taking all my students to their MEP and Spanish classes, and all of them go to different teachers for this time... It's a leveled curriculum, so each Spanish teacher has a level. Anyway, it was madness in the hall because all the kids are flustered, wondering which class they go into, and one teacher came out into the hallway and asked "Donde esta su estudiante Bayley? Si, ello es su?" and I said "Si, Bayley es en mi clase, pero no aqui hoy." What?? Where did I learn to think and speak so quickly?? I hardly had time to celebrate my victory, though, as 7 more of my students were like, "Miss Siscoe, which room do we go in?"

I'm excited about this school year. Genuinely excited.