Teaching in Tandem

Two teachers are better than one. This past week, my eighth grade students were at a class retreat called Caritas so I had the great opportunity of sharing the lower grade classes with Sra. Zapata, who usually teaches the grades by herself. I had covered a few of her classes for her in the past and the only thing I remember about that day is that when combined with my regular two classes, the extra work barely gave me enough time to eat lunch. This week, however was different.

We started off giving lessons to the 3rd, 4th and 6th graders. I was especially grateful to get to see the 6th graders because I'd never had the chance to interact with them before. My schedule is such that I always teach the 8th grade when Mrs. Zapata is with the 6th graders. During our time with them, I showed them pictures of my trip to Spain to try and entice them into traveling. They were quite and attentive and asked great questions. I'm looking forward to teaching them next year.

While I was sharing her classes, Sra. Zapata gave me many ideas that I'm now thinking of implementing in my own classes. For example, she begins each class by asking two students to come up to the front and lead the class in an "Our Father" prayer in Spanish. I confess that I still haven't memorized the Spanish version of the prayer so reciting it with the lower grades helped me learn it better. After the prayer, Sra. Zapata and I took turns teaching Christmas vocabulary to the 3rd and 4th grade classes. We went over some words like "arbol," "estrella" and "la chimenea" and then passed out a worksheet for the students to label and color.

While the students were working on the vocabulary sheet, Sra. Zapata re-introduced an assignment that they'd done in the past. Her students were to watch or listen to 2 hours of Spanish and log their hours on a Spanish log that we handed out. We brainstormed together the different media the kids could use and came up with 1010 AM radio, On Demand en espanol, listening to conversations with family members who speak Spanish, and watching an English movie in Spanish. I made sure that the students copies all of our collective ideas on to their papers because I wanted to teach them the importance of note-taking. Having two teachers definitely helped because while the students were working, Sra. Zapata and I could both go around and offer our help. She only gets thirty minutes with each class and has to use each minute wisely.

The most important thing I learned from her this past week was the concept of providing an incentive. In the lower grades, she had a policy that if the students were quite and on task, they earned points. If the students reach 50 points, they get to play Spanish bingo. The 3rd and 4th graders were especially excited about this and I'm sure that if I made this my policy in 7th and 8th grade, the students would be just as pumped to try and accomplish this goal. I understand more and more now how important incentives are.

On Friday, Sra. Zapata was sick so I covered all of her nine classes. I had never dealt with first graders, second graders and kindergarteners by myself before so it was indeed a new experience. I never expected so many questions and quickly learned to never say that I might know their brother or sister because then the class would rapidly continue to ask who else I might know in the upper grades and we'd never get any work done. I learned that although the kids in the younger grades were energetic and cute beyond all belief, I'm right where I belong teaching the older kids. Hopefully this week, I'll be able to memorize the "Our Father" prayer and implement a Spanish bingo policy with my 8th graders. Everybody loves bingo, right?