Me...Teach?!

Right now I am living in a small pueblo, near Turialba, of about 800 people in the mountains of Costa Rica. Life in Turialba is beautiful, the people here are so sincere, I love it! All the people in my community are family. My father here is one of 22 sons and daughters, all from the same mother and father!! So incredible, I am still amazed by this! I am teaching English to 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th graders. All the students in my class are relatives and there are only 2 last names in the high school.

When the principal first picked me up from the bus station on Monday I had no idea what to expect. However, my professor of this program told me that my time here is more about living with the people, than doing work. So I had the idea that I would only be "helping out" in a school. Yet the principal brought me right to the school, introduced me to the other teachers and my classroom. Here he gave me material and basically left the rest to me to teach the class starting the next day because he wouldnt be there to teach for the rest of the week. .....WOAH talk about being overwhelmed. I have never taught before let alone in a different country and language. I tried not to be too caught up over it. I just kept thinking about when I was younger, I loved playing school with my little sister. I forced her to play school with me and of course I was the teacher....with these memories and my desire to be a teacher in the future, I told myself, "it couldn't be too bad."

And I was right! Its not bad at all! Besides the few nerves that I had for the first day and the little bit of instruction that I had, I love it here! The school is great! It's only a high school of about 75 students and 4 teachers. The kids are all well behaved and I love interacting with them in and out of class. I try to make class fun for them, so I have to be creative and come up with different games that they can play incorporating English.

It's only my 3rd day teaching....but so far so good! : )
Let me tell you, it is really weird to be in the teachers position. All this time I have been in school I was always in the students position and now here I am assigning homework, creating lesson plans and telling the students when class is over! Its really weird and I'm not sure if I can get used to it anytime soon.