First Visit to Colegio Cuernavaca!

Today we visited the school where we will be student teaching! It was a very exciting day. We met with the director, Leti. Leti is hilarious and wonderful. I can't even begin to explain her energy. She is extremely enthusiastic and has a super positive attitude (so basically she is my kind of person!) We also met Leti's mom, also Leti, who is the founder of the school. She has the same infectious energy that Leti the daughter had. I can't wait to work with them both! We had a mini orientation and we found out our placements! 

I will be teaching in 4th and 6th grade! In the mornings from 7:15-11:00am, I will be teaching either of the two sections of 6th grade (so the same class every other day.) In the afternoons from 11:00am-2:30pm I will be teaching the one section of 4th grade! I am beyond excited. I think it is so amazing that in my one semester of student teaching I will be teaching three different grade levels. Such a unique experience. 

I haven't met my cooperating teachers yet but usually they have no idea we're coming until the day we start...they don't really have student teachers here in Mexico. Both of my cooperating teachers are new teachers at the school. This could mean two things. One, they're just new to the school and have taught before. Two, they are brand new teachers and are usually between 18-20 years old. Here in Mexico it is much easier to get a teacher's license! They take a course for a few months and they have a job, versus us spending four plus years and praying we get hired! And to be an English teacher here is just as easy- you don't really need to know English. I've already learned so much about the educational system here so I am excited to see it in action. 

In addition to teaching from 7:15am-2:30pm, we will be helping with after school tutoring from 2:30-3:30. Leti also likes to give student teachers from Edgewood additional "projects." Sometimes it's creating a whole new curriculum or rewriting a school-wide English test and testing the whole school...so BIG jobs that they use for years to come. We learned that one of our projects will be to set up, organize and implement a new reading program through Scholastic in order to improve reading comprehension scores. I am very excited for this because I focused a lot on literacy this past year in class as well as my work study at the campus school. 

One more week of classes and I will be student teaching! Yay! 

¡Hasta la próxima!

Estefani


P.S.

I just found a video of Colegio Cuernavaca on YouTube! Check it out! (It's in Spanish but you can at least see parts of the school!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf7PvMotkXg&feature=youtu.be