Miss Jessica's First Try at In Person Teaching

As international teachers, we get the amazing opportunity to spend time traveling the world, trying new cuisines, meeting interesting people, and experiencing life in a way that is so different from anything we had ever dreamed of. And, while this is usually what we focus on in these blogs, we are teachers and therefore spend even more of our time doing that.

With our move to Ecuador, we have finally become in person teachers for the first time. This is

one of the things we were most excited about when we arrived, and although our last blog was about our life transition, the school transition has been even more stark. As I briefly explained last time, this is my first ever try at in person teaching. Our entire last job was online, and I did my teaching credential online as well. While most teachers, like Nolan, got to do in person student teaching with an experienced teacher as a part of their teaching credential, I did all of that online with my last job. So, when I started out on the first day of school, it was my first day ever being in a classroom as a teacher.

To say I was a little overwhelmed at the start of this job would be an understatement. I felt like I had come all of this way to be the worlds best teacher, but currently felt like I was at the bottom of the list of great teachers. My biggest and most immediate concern was with classroom management. Classroom management is one of the most crucial parts of teaching. At its core, it shows how well a teacher can manage the behavior of the students to have a productive classroom. This was my first try at in person classroom management. I had 22 students in each of my classes, and no assistant teacher in the classroom. It was all on me.

Every teacher I had ever talked to told me over and over again, set up routines in your class so that your students have more responsibility and if you do this then you will not have to do much discipline because your classroom will be a joyful, peaceful commune of sunshine and rainbows. It sounded perfect to me! So, I established some routines, such as a coming into class routine, a turning in papers routine, an early finishers routine, and a quieting down routine. I thought I was set up to have the best classroom on campus.

By the end of the first day, I knew I was immediately wrong. Maybe I just need more routines, maybe I needed to implement them better, but creating these routines did not create sunshine and rainbows. Because all the teaching books said that creating routines basically rid yourself of the need for discipline, I had no discipline plan in place, and I think these students knew that.

Ecuadorians are culturally big talkers. Nolan has told me he has seen locals holding two conversations at the same time. Even in meetings with other Ecuadorian teachers, it is hard for them to stay quiet. So, my students wanted to talk. For the entire class.

The first three weeks of the school year went a lot like that. The students wanted to talk, they didn’t want to listen. And I had no plan other than to use our quieting down routine over and over and over. I would yell, “HOLY MOLY!” They would yell, “GUACAMOLE!” And then nothing would change. They would keep talking.

This was very frustrating. Everyone had told me that I would LOVE in person teaching. They said that it would be a million times better than online. But HOLY MOLY, I missed my mute button! I felt like I didn’t know how well I had it before. It took everything in me to not get home, and immediately pour some tequila into my fresh watermelon juice (even though some days, thats exactly what I did).

The other big struggle I had with teaching dealt with the amount of time I had in my day. Every day, the bus picks us up at 6:53 and drops us off around 4:25. During that time at school, I usually only have two prep periods where I have time to plan, but I only get one of those planning periods in my classroom because the counselor or learning support teacher will come into my classroom to teach my students there. Between planning, prepping materials, emailing parents, grading, and a whole slew of other tasks, I just felt like I had no time. On some days if I had recess duty, I would go three or four hours without the time to even go to the bathroom. This tiny amount of planning and break time really started to weigh on me. On top of that, most days I would get home and have to do about another hour of work to keep up. The whole process really just felt overwhelming.

Now, even as I was having all of these struggles, it wasn’t all bad. Most of my students are amazing. They are so funny and endearing and I love getting to talk to them. Ecuador is also a very touchy culture, so it was a little shocking to have a bunch of students constantly coming up to me to give me hugs. However, this quickly became something I would look forward to. I also love not being on my computer all day. I am constantly walking around the school, during recess I am out in the sun, and unless I am in prep, I am never looking at a screen for longer than a few minutes. These benefits were what really kept me going when I was having a hard time with the students.

And, unbelievably, I also started to learn. Within two weeks I realized that I needed something to give my students an incentive to do their best. I came up with a team competition where students can gain benefits like picking the music we listen to or going to recess first if their team is doing well, and if they aren’t, then their team will be separated and if all else fails, they will need to write a note home to their parents. This team competition keeps our class fun but also keeps the students on task.

I also started to get to know my students better. I learned which students work well when they have more responsibility, and which students just need to move around a little bit more. I learned which students I could trust to hold their peers responsible, and which students thrived with less responsibility. After learning more about them and how they do their best work, I learned who I needed to push, and who might need a little more of a break.

All of these lessons were also aided by the amazing team I have in third grade. I have an unbelievable coordinator who is always doing her best to support me, two other third grade English teachers who share their knowledge and ideas, a coordinating Spanish teacher who has the same students as me who always gives me great ideas for classroom management and support with the parents, and countless others who have taught me so many lessons and are always there for me when I need help (or a bathroom break).

After a few rough weeks of trying to get the hang of everything, I am happy to say that my class is

working smoother (almost) every day. I am also finding ways to reuse the same activities so that I don’t have to plan too much at one time. With this extra time, I am able to spend time hanging up lots of beautiful student work all around my classroom. Seeing the work on the walls, and seeing how happy the students were with it up gave me a huge sense of pride around my teaching that I didn’t have before.

Clearly, I am still only a month and a half into my teaching career, and I have such a long way to go to get to where I want to be with my teaching skills. Although it has been harder than expected, I am happy with my in person teaching experience. There is nothing like the hugs and the gratitude and the learning that I get to experience every day.