La Teacher de Inglés*

Though I was in the vast minority of professors, I started class today. My enrollment list for each class is over 20, but I only had 5 students in each class. My 3rd semester class met first, and I was happy to see a couple of students who came to my English club last semester. We did introductions and went over the syllabus, and spent some time getting to know each other. With the handful of 8th semester students who showed up (by the way, all 5 I met today have excellent English), we chatted for about 20 minutes but then decided to call it quits and begin for real at the next class meeting next week.

Here are a few reflections on my first day of the semester:

•Though I might have looked spiffy in a pencil skirt and high heels, today was probably the only time this semester I’ll don that outfit. I was reminded of my dear Spanish professor from Lee, Dr. Ortega, who looked like a million bucks every single day in her dresses and stiletto heels. I don’t know how she made it through even 10 minutes on her feet.

•The semester’s off to a good start when one of your students gives you an apple on the first day of class :)

•I’m going to love the room my English 8 class meets in. It’s a little too big for comfort, but it’s on the corner of the second floor; large windows panel two sides of the room, and an enormous palm tree is right outside one of them.

•White boards that are actually white, and erasable, make me very happy.

•I LOVE TEACHING ESL. Yesterday I spent some time looking through ESL resources at a bilingual library, and seeing all that’s out there in the field confirmed my interest and made me want to learn, practice, and grow more in teaching English. But even more fulfilling is stepping into the classroom and connecting with real live students. Each one of them has his or her unique background, interests, personality and goals, and I truly look forward to getting to know them.

*The blog title comes from a new telenovela (soap opera) airing here in Colombia. It’s seriously called that, and people have been kidding me about it for the last few weeks. I watched one episode, and it’s the same old same old of soap operas to me. Mildly entertaining, but predictable and overly dramatic.