Teaching

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So far teaching has been great, challenging, tiring and fun! I have two classes that are Monday through Thursday. One is an hour long and the other is an hour and fifteen minutes. The only other class I have is on Saturday and it is four hours long. In total I teach 13 hours a week. I know that this does not seem like a lot, but we also have to plan all of our lessons. Planning the lessons may actually take longer than teaching them. So we probably spend about 30 hours a week between teaching, planning and trying to get all of our materials together. This has been especially difficult without Internet in my apartment. We only have Internet at the school, and even that can be unreliable. We also have to bounce between locations a lot. The program that I am teaching at has three locations in Cuenca and they are all in different parts of Cuenca. We are always having to go to the main location to use the internet and get different resources, but we teach in a different building. Teaching includes a lot of running around like crazy, at least during the first few weeks.
In my first class I teach a group of teenagers, five students to be exact. They are beginner level, but they are a really great group of students. In my second class I have ninos (children). This is a little more challenging for me because I have never really taught kids, but it is a good learning experiencing. It is also nice because I only have three kids in that class. On Saturday I teach another teenage beginner level course. This one is a little more difficult because it is four hours long. This class has eight students, which is really nice. In the States I am used to teaching 20 students or more, but when you have 3 students it is hard to do any group activities or pair work. It might just take a while to get used to.
Other than that, the school is really nice. There are actually books and different resources (cd player, dvd player, markers) for me to teach with. Each classroom has tables, chairs and a whiteboard. I know that this may not seem like much, but there are a lot of teaching abroad programs where teaching materials include four walls and a dirt floor.
I am also really enjoying the other teachers. Some have been there for 3months and some have been there for three years. They are all very welcoming and they all have advice about teaching and living in Cuenca. Oh, and the other day I met two teachers (a brother and sister) that actually lived in Portland, OR before coming to Ecuador. I was so excited!
Other than that, I just had my first Spanish class yesterday. The teacher only speaks in Spanish during class so that we can learn Spanish quicker. We had to take in a lot of information. I think that it is going to be difficult, but I think it will be good. I am excited to actually get out and start using some of the Spanish that I learn from class.
Just added a few pictures of my classroom and the view from my classroom. I will eventually take pictures of the school itself.

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