Home Stretch: Almost A Real-Life Teacher

Alright people. 7 lessons down, only 1 more to go! I’m going to do this. I can’t believe I’m actually going to come out of this class and be a teacher. Granted, I have much more to learn yet, but I could feasibly be hired as a teacher, leave the country and actually work as a full-time teacher somewhere across the globe. 

When I was in high school, I took one of those exams, probably the PSAT or PLAN (the name for the pre-ACT in 2000) test and it also functions as a mini-aptitude test. My higher scores always came up as a teacher or manager. At 16 I was confused. I had no patience and had to work really hard in school to do well. I also saw words on the results such as Lawyer, Nurse, Doctor, and Researcher. I liked those words better and chose to remember them instead.

Since that time, multiple personality and aptitude tests have yielded the same results. I think it’s about time I begin to listen to the Teacher one. I think I may learn how to be good at it over time. I’m a good manager, which is a good coach, which is essentially a good teacher. Right? I believe so.

The reoccurring word for me here is “push.” I keep thinking how much this class has definitely pushes me. It’s a positive, monosyllabic word I can substitute for “holy crap this is really freaking hard.” It’s interesting because I hadn’t anticipated lesson planning or classroom management to be this challenging. It’s a lot of work and completely mentally taxing. I’m beginning to really understand just how much energy it takes for full-time teachers to commit their lives to this work.

For me, in this program, its all about trial and error. When try something with the class, it may or may not work. Many times it doesn’t. I look back at my lessons when planning new ones and think through the mistakes I made on the last lesson. The next time I try something new and it may or may not work. The cycle continues.

This whole process has both crawled its way to the final line and simultaneous zoomed past from start and straight to finish. This week is going by quickly. I have a lesson on Thursday and two remaining assignments to finish up for class. Then before I know it I’m on a plane at 7am Saturday morning.

On a slightly unrelated note, we’ve all been distracted this week looking for stars. They’re shooting a movie here this week in the city center near the Catedral. We know it involves a motorcycle and possibly Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise. This information comes straight from the gossip tree as few of my students are actually involved in the movie. With unemployment so low here, it’s incredible to have this chance to get paid to be an extra. It’s not much, but surely a few extra euros is nice. 50 euros a day they report, which is not too shabby!

Now I’m off to enjoy some more local vore! On the menu tonight: traditional Sevillan cuisine, tapas and sangria and a patio facing the river. Likely to be followed with a brisk shopping jaunt. Below are photos of my street where I live.