Atenas

Alas, I am an English teacher!

Last week was my first week of work.  Before starting my job, I had to, obviously, get a teaching certificate.  As mentioned in previous posts, I was in Quito for about 6 weeks.  During that time I took a month intensive course (every Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 6:45 p.m.) for my TESOL certification.  Upon completing that, I moved to Ambato, Tungurahua (also in Ecuador) where I was to start teaching English at a K-12 school called Atenas.  The school year actually began in early September meaning that I missed about a month of school.  Because of this it would have been next to impossible to let me step in as a ''real'' teacher.  What I mean to say is that I don't have my own classroom...I still am an actual teacher, haha. 

My official title is ''English Tutor'', but I am doing more than just tutoring.  I'm not actually going to get my own traditional classroom per say, but I am going to be teaching solo in what we call tutorial rooms.  So I'm assisting the teachers but I'm not an ''assistant'' teacher.  Does any of this make sense? 

Explanation: The ''colegio'' (what they call high school) students, from 8th grade to 3rd year I.B. (11 year olds to 18 year olds), are going to come to me once or twice a week during their regular English class hours.  I coordinate with their actual English teacher and he or she gives me the topic of the lesson and we split the class into two groups, one of which comes to me.  The other group stays with their regular English teacher.  Basically, I'm a conversation teacher and we use their regular topics to converse in these tutorial rooms.  All of my classes are anywhere from 6 to 12 students, which is awesome!  We split the class up in order to give them more practice with their conversation skills.  The overwhelming part about it all will be coordinating with the English teachers.  They are going to plan my lessons for me.  On one hand it is nice because I don't have to worry about planning lessons, but on the other hand, I won't know what I have to teach until a few days beforehand.  This means that if I don't know the subject matter, I am going to have to do a lot of research and at least pretend to know what I'm talking about when I attempt to teach it.

That is it for now!  I hope to start updating more frequently once we get internet set up in our apartment!

LOVE!