After posting a short and late comment on Steve's blog about field trips, I realized I haven't mentioned on my blog that not only am I an unemployed book designer, a beach bum, a wine drinking machine and a globe-trotter... Now I can add to the list of my trades 'Spanish Teacher'. Yup, now a days I find myself teaching for a wee bit of cash. In a harsh world of economic woes, it is nice to see that parents are still interested in stimulating their young kids minds during the summer.

I've been teaching Spanish for a week now, which is nothing! But has proven quite challenging for many reasons, let me elaborate on that. 

I started with three kids (ages 10, 8 and 6...) and after the first class I lost the interest of 8 year old Nils (A boy, in case you're wondering). Mainly cause he said Spanish was too hard. But I think a lot had to do with the fact that I knew very little about how to handle a class with a 6yr old that's just learning how to write, and speaks 'Spanglish'... and a fully bilingual 10 year old girl who's going on to 6th grade! Obviously class had to be tailored for all of them, but proves quite difficult when 20mins into an exercise Andrea (my 6yr old) is still writing her name on the sheet of paper!

Regardless, it's been quite the amazing experience! In a weeks time I got both Nina and Andrea to conjugate present tense verbs and the rules, count to 100, and enough vocabulary to speak what I call 'caveman' Spanish. So as a reward for being excellent students all last week, I took them both to Whole Foods on a tiny field trip (to the produce section) to review our fruit and vegetable vocabulary. Little did I know this would prove a test to the teacher, more than the students. When encountered with an eggplant and a zucchini, I totally drew a blank! I made a mental note about it and quickly corrected my mistake, as soon as we got back into the classroom.

But today, well it was the most challenging day yet! Apparently I have developed some sort of allergy to who knows what, and have been suffering of itchy eyes, itchy nose, and unstoppable sneezing attacks... I thought it was a cold, never knowing that it might be something treatable with an allergy pill. Oh well! So of course as everyone knows, kids have that weird 6th sense where they can tell you're having a shitty day and they just attack you! Well both girls were just simply OUT OF CONTROL today... I tried everything from guilt to multiple test sheets, nothing seemed to work, they were just rowdy beyond my patience. So finally, I threatened. Response? They laughed! Bratty kids... so I put my money were my mouth is and delivered a 'punishment' boot camp style!

I made them do jumping jacks, a hundred of them, while counting in Spanish, if they got a number wrong, they had to start again. Get this, it worked!! So the next time they tried being all funny about stuff I simply said, 'Would you like to do another 100?' I know, I'm a bitch, but what was I supposed to do? I was at my wits end!

It's funny to see how I deal with the whole being a knowledgeable 'role model' to them, while still trying to be the cool young teacher. But, more often than not, I find myself cracking up at my own last resorts... Like when one of them is presented with a question and she simply isn't paying attention. So I stop, I stare until she looks at me... and when she realizes I was actually talking to her I say as loud as my voice can get 'Well Hi!! Welcome back!' of course this makes them crack up, and me with them!

So to finish this loooong post about my new hobby (ha!) I'm still all stuffy and not having a fun time, so tomorrow I'm making them watch a movie in Spanish. Hope this keeps'em entertained for at least 2 hours, and me not turning into Sergeant Carla!