The best part

       I think it has become fairly obvious that I am in love with the Ticos as a people group.  When I began to teach them English and really get to know them, my affection grew even stronger.  They were eager to learn English and earnestly tried their best to grasp what we were teaching.  When it works and a student learns a new word, or they understand the concept of the grammar, it's like a lightbulb turns on and you can see it all over their face.  It's the greatest feeling to be a part of that learning process. TEFL provides free English lessons to anyone in the community who wants to attend, because we student teachers need to practice.  So, yes, those classes are free, but they might just get what they pay for. We are rookies, and although we try our hardest to be good teachers, sometimes things don't go as planned.
       The very first time I taught classes on my own, I was given the upper intermediate class two days in a row.  The lessons were very complicated and the grammar for both days was very close to each other.  I had my class plans laid out, and had practiced numerous times.  During the second day, in the middle of the lesson, I somehow switched back to the grammar from the day before.  They were so confused!  They finally figured out what I was trying to teach them, and they were very gracious about it, but I made it ten times harder for them!  I felt horrible and inadequate.  At my teaching assessment with Drew, I went in and told him what he already knew. "I had a grammar bomb go off in my class today." He consoled me and gave me tips on how to avoid it in the future.
        Not all classes were as serious as that one though.  As part of our learning process, in addition to teaching our own classes, we had to observe and fill out forms, assessing six classes taught by our peers.  We were instructed to sit quietly in the back of the room and "disappear".  The teacher and the students were supposed to forget that we were even there.  We observed in stillness as we watched the effectiveness of our peer teachers.  Part of our technique for teaching vocabulary was to show pictures related to the vocabulary word.  We would then ask concept questions about the picture to draw the word out of the students.  It gave them a chance to generate new speech on their own and let you know what prior knowledge they had about the subject. After doing this 7-10 times, we would have our bank of vocabulary words for the class. One friend's theme for her beginner class, was teaching about fitness.  She was trying to teach them about muscles and had drawn a picture of a huge, buff guy standing on a beach.  She held up the picture and asked, "What do you see?"  A student who was normally shy about speaking english, yelled out..."Steroids!" In the back of the room I looked over at Casey. Our eyes went wide and we looked at one another, trying to contain ourselves, as we wondered how he even knew that word!  We clasped our hands over our mouths, but it was no use, the noise of our laughter spewed out from between our fingers.

me teaching english.  check out the view from class

    

my beginner lesson about gerunds

Darcy captivates her students, as Heidi observes

I taught a conversation class to the upper intermediates
and got to ask ten questions
about living in Quepos. Fascinating!