3. Teachers, when did you start feeling confident? And what made you stick it out?

Teachers, when did you start feeling confident? And what made you stick it out?

Hi there and thanks so much for responding! What in your opinion made those first years so difficult? For me, student teaching was really tough because of behavior management but also because of curriculum. There aren't a lot of really good Spanish resources out there (not that I can find anyway!). With the new proficiency guidelines, a lot of the stuff that I could find like fill in the blank grammar worksheets weren't going to cut it. I felt like I was constantly having to re-invent the wheel and I'm still not too gung-ho about IPAs and the focus on authentic resources because it kind of leads you to reinventing the wheel. I felt like I could never get ahead with making materials, and they probably weren't very well-tailored because it's hard to make longer-term curriculum using authentic resources IMO. You have to really analyze authentic resources and scaffold the hell out of them for students to get them!

I've also realized how important rules and procedures are, and how there should be a procedure for everything : sharpening pencils, turning in papers, asking to go to the bathroom! I thought that high school students were mature enough to kind of just do their work but now I realize that they really need those rules, procedures and routines to feel safe and stay on task.

I think one of the most frustrating things about student teaching was instructionally, I felt like I learned nothing about teaching Spanish. My CT was a sweetheart but very set on the grammar-translation method and shot down TPR when I tried it. I also didn't have a projector and my teacher didn't really understand the need for one, so staying in the target language was really difficult. I got push back from different levels: the upper students got really freaked out by hearing Spanish and some of them had just 'checked out' and saw Spanish as a blow-off class. So I think some of them resented it. Some of the lower level students kept asking me why they had to translate all the time and they got frustrated, but my CT didn't want me to change her plans.

Anyway, it's great to hear that you love your job most days and that you feel that you are getting into a groove :-) After student teaching, I was ready to jump into another field (speech pathology) but I realize that field has problems too and I might actually like teaching if I give it another go....

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