My First Day of Teaching...

Peace be with you! Today was my first day of teaching at Colegio St. Francis in the English Department of the Primary School. At 7:30am I celebrated Mass and Morning Prayers with the friars. After Mass and Prayers I ate breakfast and then went over to the school with Fray Walter. I was so nervous to meet the Director of the Primary Schools, to meet the teachers, and of course to meet the students. Thanks be to God it was not as bad as I thought. The Director was very nice and helpful. The teachers were very welcoming and excited about my presence in the primary school; actually 5 of the professors in the Primary school went on the trip with me to Nicaragua. I think the students were glad to see me as well, but it was also their first day back from a long break and it was a Monday.

My ministry at the school is to work with the English-Conversation classes for grades 1-6. Since every student is expected to learn English as well as to continue their studies of Spanish, there is a class dedicated just to conversation in English. Each grade also has English class where they learn grammar, spelling, and such. I will help the teachers to encourage the students to speak and practice their English. I will be teaching or conversing each day with various grades from 8:25am until 2:30pm. There are breaks throughout the day so I am not teaching constantly. On Mondays and Wednesdays I will go to Spanish class from 3pm-5pm and on Fridays I will go to Spanish class from 1pm-5pm.

An interesting observation I made today was that in Spanish a teacher is called maestro/a or profesor/a, but in the Primary School the teachers are called teachers. I thought that this was only in the English Class, but I found out that even in the Spanish Class the teachers are called teachers - the Spanish translation of the world is not used.

Well until next time....ciao!