It has been nearly a full month now (hard to believe), and I am now feeling pretty settled into this wonderful little country. There are definitely things that are still new and challenging at times, but I feel that now I can navigate, communicate (sorta) and have adjusted into a routine both at school and in my daily life. I am feeling much more confident every day at all of these things, which makes me proud of myself and my independence, and that really helps me to be able to enjoy everything even more.

I am now taking on a more active role in my 8th English classroom. I would say that about 50% of the time, I am taking over complete instruction whereas the other 50% of the time I am in a co-teaching role. In the upcoming Poetry Unit, my cooperating teacher plans to have me take over even more by leading classes and facilitating my own lessons. It is really great how much my opinions are respected at this school, as my Mass Teacher Education has left me very prepared to discuss and even answer the questions of experienced teachers here relating to Assessment, Accommodations, Common Core, Project Based Learning, etc.

After coming from a student teaching experience where I worked with Juniors and Seniors from low-income, urban backgrounds, my present experience working with 8th graders from very affluent backgrounds in another country has been a complete 180. Since I do not have a lot of experience working with this sort of population, it has been an extremely humbling and eye opening experience. I definitely feel like my perspective on education has broadened thanks to my current exposure to international private schooling. There were certainly challenges working with students from the urban districts that I am familiar with, and I think I had a false idea that working with wealthier communities would be easier. In some ways, I was not wrong, but I definitely had some misconceptions about what teaching here might be like. Classroom management and motivation is an entirely different beast with these groups of students, and I am learning a lot of different strategies that I haven’t had to use before. On the other hand, it is impressive how much students know here and especially considering that all of this learning is taking place in their second language.

Fun fact: Rather than fire drills/evacuation plans, we have done earthquake drills. We even had to put those drills into practice thanks to a 5.2 magnitude earthquake that hit Guayaquil last week. I didn’t even feel it from where I sat alone in my classroom, but as a precaution we all had to cover our heads and move to the athletic fields where there were no buildings or structures around us. The kids were completely unfazed by this routine, still laughing and playing futbol throughout the entire experience.