Amazed

My students sometimes blow me away when I least expect it. I have four examples of their awesomeness within just the last two days... and I really feel like bragging about them. :)

1. My AP students had their first in-class debate. Prior to coming to class they had to research the pros and cons of going "paperless" as a school, thus each student having their own laptop. As it was their first debate ever in the history of their Spanish education, and it is still the beginning of the year, I had ridiculously low, low expectations. I seriously thought that the debate would last no longer than 5-6 minutes. After drawing names as to which side they would take, having 8 minutes to consult with their teammate, 25-30 minutes later... and I had to literally FORCE them from talking because we had so many other things to do the rest of the hour. It was all in Spanish with only a few made-up Spanglish words and hints of yucky grammar/pronunciation, but it was incredible... my jaw was nearly on the floor the whole time. They MAKE me look good.

2. At the end of each chapter in the textbook, my level 3 students have a difficult but cultural reading. The former Spanish teacher skipped over these readings as he said they thought they were too difficult, especially the ones that were poems. I debated whether to do the same or not, but these kids are so weak in the area of reading, I decided to forge on, despite the difficulty of the text. Plus, this first text was a poem by Pablo Neruda as well as his biography... and I just LOVE Neruda's poetry, so I couldn't pass it up! I created some accompanying activities to help make the text a little more "user-friendly," but still didn't expect too much from them as they were supposed to read the poem, read the biography, and then see how they could possibly parallel in some very obvious, but also some very abstract ways... which is difficult enough to do in English! I was blown away by their ideas... they came up with things that I never even thought of! It was so neat to see how they totally rose up to the challenge and conquered!

3. My two level one classes have been a challenge in that they are full of (too much) energy. These last few weeks have been really full of teaching them the routines of Spanish class and learning how to channel their energy for "good..." at least for the good of Spanish class! It has been fun, yet challenging. Needless to say, they keep me on my toes and I really don't know what to expect from them. However, they have taken the new challenge of a foreign language and tackled it mightily. It's amazing to me how quickly they have learned to love a language, as well as how many A's there are in my classes. One of my classes took a quiz today and 19/25 of them got A's, 5/25 got B's, and 1/25 got a C... and this is even with a harder grading scale than most schools, where a 91% is actually a B+!

4. Still bragging about my level one classes... the former Spanish teacher said over lunch today, "Mrs. Karly, I have a bone to pick with you!" I got a little worried because I didn't know where the conversation was going and was wondering what I had done to offend him. He then continued to say "Your level one students keep coming into my Bible class and they always want to speak in Spanish!!" Oh how grateful I am for their enthusiasm and love of learning.

Despite how busy I am, despite feeling frustrated that I'm not always teaching with excellence, despite the craziness of my freshman students, despite the challenges of teaching AP Spanish... I LOVE my job. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be here. Thank you for supporting us in this journey and this ministry; we appreciate your loving prayers and words of encouragement... it means so much!