Education in Chacraseca, Nicaragua

As many of you know, I spent my last semester of undergraduate study working at a high school in rural Nicaragua. I wanted to share this experience with you guys by posting some images of my time there. I hope that this will also serve as a learning experience as you will be able to compare and contrast your educational experience to to these students experiences.

Every morning the students that attend Alberto Berrios Delgadillo in Chacraseca, Nicaragua and their teachers get up early to catch the bus to school, some coming all the way from the nearby city of Leon--particularly the teachers. The bus is not exclusively for students, but serves the entire community. Teachers and primarily female students cram inside of the bus,--teachers given preference to the bench seats along the sides while everyone else stands in the aisle-- while some male student pay a cheaper fee to ride on the roof. On the inside of the bus passengers hold handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to avoid inhaling the dust that enters through the bus' windows.

The students that live in the opposite direction from school that the bus comes or that cannot afford to ride, arrive at school on bikes or walking. Usually two students ride one bike, with one pedalling and the other riding behind on the seat. During the day students leave their bikes parked in the courtyard, and then return home on them when school ends midday.

Once all of the students have arrived at school they line up by class to hear the daily announcements, sing the national anthem and pray. As you can see, students wear uniforms; boys wear blue slacks and white dress shirts and girls wear blue skirts and white dress shirts. (The same uniform is worn throughout Nicaragua.)

Students then go to their respective classrooms where they sit in desks made in the community, often by the very students that attend the school. Unlike most high schools in the States, students at Alberto Berrios stay in the same classroom all day and teachers move from class to class. Students receive instruction in Spanish (literature, writing, grammar), Math, Science, Social Studies, Computer Science, English (language) and PE. There are no electives. Each student typically has a spiral notebook and writing utensils. There are no textbooks. The only resource that the teacher has is the chalkboard, and students diligently copy down what is written. There is a short break in the middle of the morning so that the students can get a snack at the school canteen and hang out with their friends. The school day ends at noon or when the bus arrives to take students back to their homes.

Students often stay after school when the library is open to work on projects, as it is their only means of getting access to books. The library stock is very limited, consisting mostly of teacher textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries and maps. There is no Internet access at school and though students can travel to Leon to use the Internet, most cannot afford the trip and the price of access in the cities cyber cafes, which are primarily used by tourists.

How do these students' educational experiences compare to yours? What is the same? What is different?

For more information about education in Nicaragua check out the following sites:

http://www.photius.com/countries/nicaragua/society/nicaragua_society_education.html

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/clas/nicaragua_proj/education/post-sandinist/Educ-PostSand.pdf

http://www.fsdinternational.org/?q=ntlopps/country/nicaragua/youthanded

¿Cómo es?

This week students began to learn how to describe more permanent characteristics of people using the verb 'ser'. The lack of continuity between this topic and 'time' which we have been learning about for the previous two weeks is obvious, but thus are the issues inherent in curriculum based on grammar driven text books. The point of connection is the verb 'ser' which is used in both telling time and describing people.

On Monday I presented the different forms of the verb ser that accompany different subject pronouns, and introduced students to vocabulary relevant to describing peoples physical characteristics and personality. After the initial presentation we did some practice activities, which we continued on Tuesday.

As this is Thanksgiving week, we planned a low key day for Wednesday, anticipating high absences for family trips and high student energy. Important content, however, was not sacrificed. We began class with an activity in which students engaged each other in 30 second conversations and had to return to their seats if they spoke English or failed to speak at all. The end result was that most students spent 10 solid minutes speaking Spanish! A feat that was exciting for both them and me. We then spent the rest of the period reviewing the vocabulary that we have learned since the beginning of the year through picture bingo (I circle pictures on the overhead and they cross out the corresponding Spanish word on their paper).

On Monday we will continue to practice describing people and begin to learn about how to explain what people like and why. Next week will be my last week, with the final exam on Friday, and hopefully some time to close up the analysis of immigration issues that we have been conducting throughout the unit.

El fin de paso 2

Thursday we had our quiz and I have spent the past few days grading and reviewing them. The average for both classes was a B, though it appears that most students have a pretty firm conceptual grasp of what is being covered and are simply loosing points as a result of consistent spelling errors (something that is very important in Spanish as it often changes a word's meaning). Consequently, I feel relatively comfortable moving into new material on Monday.

Friday was used as a transition day, and we spent the entire period discussing immigration issues and studying the topic as expressed in music and poetry. I felt that this was really important for the students who have been analyzing a number of articles on immigration over the past week or so, and making very insightful statements in their reflections, but have not yet had the opportunity to express their ideas and ask question in a whole class discussion. I continue to struggle with the divorce between this topic and what we are covering in the chapter, and I wish that we could dedicate more class time to a critical analysis of this issue, partially in Spanish, but I am dealing with the compromise as best I can.

In the coming week we will be beginning the third and final section of the Chapter which has to do with describing people and things, and expressing and explaining likes. As this week will be short, I plan to introduce a portion of the chapter that can be covered in two days, as we will spend Wednesday doing a number of fun review activities before the holiday weekend.

¿A qué hora es?

After spending a few days of the basics of telling time, this week we moved into explaining at what time events occur. The difference, as in English, is very minor in Spanish, and very similar to English, but has still proven a bit difficult for some students to understand. Consequently, after realizing that we were having some difficulties yesterday, I revamped our schedule a bit so that we could spend another day on this distinction today, before the quiz tomorrow. I have also decided to make the quiz shorter, testing only this concept and reviewing previous material, rather than covering another aspect of telling time that I was hoping to include. Tomorrow after the quiz I will introduce this new concept, and we will spend Friday discussing immigration issues, before moving into new material on Monday.

¿A qué hora es?

After spending a few days of the basics of telling time, this week we moved into explaining at what time events occur. The difference, as in English, is very minor in Spanish, and very similar to English, but has still proven a bit difficult for some students to understand. Consequently, after realizing that we were having some difficulties yesterday, I revamped our schedule a bit so that we could spend another day on this distinction today, before the quiz tomorrow. I have also decided to make the quiz shorter, testing only this concept and reviewing previous material, rather than covering another aspect of telling time that I was hoping to include. Tomorrow after the quiz I will introduce this new concept, and we will spend Friday discussing immigration issues, before moving into new material on Monday.

El tiempo y una prueba

After introducing schedules on Tuesday, and learning how to describe the order of our classes, we moved onto time on Wednesday. Though a bit complex in Spanish, time tends to be a particularly fun subject, as we get do to things like play with foam clocks and draw. Today we had a short quiz to do a quick check on the information that has been introduced over the past few days and allow me to get a better understanding of the students comprehension. I reviewed these this evening and was pleased to see that most of the kids seem to be doing pretty well, though there were a few apparent areas of concern which I will be sure to clear up as we further develop these concepts next week. The kids that struggled with the quizzes will be given the opportunity to meet with me in individual tutoring sessions and then retake their quizzes if they desire, which serves to make tests a means of formative evaluating learning and aiding in the educational process, rather than a sort of punitive summative evaluation. I tend to frame education in such a was as to assume that if my students are not learning, it is likely because I am not teaching them properly, as teaching is necessarily defined as the production of learning. I do feel that students must play a significant role in the process by exerting effort, but I am willing to meet them more than half way in attempt to cultivate in them a love for learning which will hopefully continue to grow after they have completed my course. Accordingly, all students will be given the opportunity to meet with me personally so that I can tailor education specifically to their individual needs, allowing the whole class to move forward together in the educational endeavor. I only hope that the students will take me up on this offer.

Next week we will learn how to say at what time events occur, specifically classes, keeping on with the theme of schedules, and we will have another short evaluation at the end of the week. On Friday I am planning a more realized educational day in which will explore the issue of immigration through poetry, music and music videos.

Overall things have been going very well, and I am very excited to continue working with my amazing students.

La Inmigracion

In accompaniment to our study of Mexico this unit, we are also investigating the issue of Mexican immigration. One reason for this is that this has been a very hot topic recently with the elections taking place, but the primary reason is to get students to start to think more critically about the complex issues that exist in our world and develop informed opinions so that they will be capable of making informed action as adults. We began our investigation into Mexican immigration over the weekend, as the students were assigned to locate an article on immigration and write a half-page summary/reflection on it. They brought these articles to class on Monday to share with their classmates which kicked off our first class on the topic. The majority of the class time was dedicated to viewing a documentary that presented immigration as a human rights issue, exploring both the economic roots of immigration and the current abuses taking place on the border as a result of militarization. I explained to the students that the documentary took a rather liberal perspective and that they should keep that in mind while viewing. Last night students were asked to write a reflection on what was discussed and presented in class on Monday (the students were also provided with some handouts of information about NAFTA, Operation Gatekeeper etc. to inform their reflections). Having had a chance to reflect on what they had learned, we began today's class with a short discussion on immigration. There was a great variety of opinions expressed during the discussion, and I was overall very pleased with the students' effort to critically analyze this complex topic. Particularly in 3rd period our discussion got rather heated, but students were overall respectful of each other. I eventually pulled discussion to the end, letting students know that we will have many more opportunities to discuss immigration throughout the month.

The second half of class was spent on learning how to describe class schedules using class names and sequence words. (The distinct divorce between this topic and the immigration discussion is a natural result of the grammatical organization of the textbook that I am working with, which makes it difficult to discuss "real" issues). I began this part of the class by describing a model schedule to the students and then asking them some true or false questions about it. Students then participated in a group activity in which they were asked to figure out their partners classes (each student had been provided with a class schedule) using what we had just practiced. Finally, students were asked to write out their class schedules using sequence words and appropriate vocabulary, which is very similar to what they will be asked to do on Thursdays quiz. No surprises :).

Tomorrow we will begin to lean about how to tell time. I will be bringing out the foam clocks!

Bienvenidos a Mexico y Capitulo 3

On Wednesday we began Chapter three. As it was my first day teaching I began by telling the students a bit more about myself and my background. We also had a discussion around the question: why study Spanish? Many of the students expressed how they wanted to learn Spanish, to travel, get better jobs, talk to their friends and family etc. Overall, I think the discussion helped the students to gain a better understanding of the relevance of Spanish to their lives, which is a really important means of increasing their engagement in the class.

We then began our discussion of Mexico, which was greatly facilitated by many of the students who have spent time there on family trips. We talked a bit about the differences between Mexico and the States and also watched a film about the products, people, culture and indigenous communities of Mexico.

Today we did a number of activities to prepare students for the film that the textbook provides to introduce the chapter. For homework the students did an activity with a reading in their books that summarizes the video and today in class we read the dialogue in groups to practice pronunciation. We also worked a lot with the vocabulary of the first section, which has to do with classes and sequences.

Overall, I felt that the class went more smoothly today than yesterday. Hopefully things will continue to improve as I get more experience.

Students also turned in their first reflections today. (I am having students write reflections throughout the unit, in order to learn more about them and what they are taking away from the class). I really enjoyed reading these and was impressed and pleasantly surprised by what they came up with. As this is a new thing for the students, some are still a bit confused as to exactly what is expected of them, but hopefully they will become more comfortable as I continue to provide them with feedback.

Tomorrow we will begin to talk about class schedules and hopefully spend a lot of time doing partner conversational activities.

Dia de los Muertos

Today we celebrated Dia de los Muertos (The day of the Dead) in class. Dia de los Muertos is a predominantly Mexican tradition (though it is also celebrated in some of the Northern Central American countries) in which people celebrate and pay tribute to their dead ancestors. Though the holiday is traditionally associated with Halloween it is actually a celebration that takes place over a number of days culminating on November second. During this time Mexicans partake in a number of events including cleaning and decorating the graves of their dead relatives, making and eating a number of traditional foods, and dressing up in costumes and holding festivals.

In class we began by having a short discussion of the roots of our celebration of Halloween, and then watched a video on the Day of the Dead celebration. We ended with a questionaire to help the students to better process the information in the film.

Tomorrow is my big day! The beginning of the unit that I will be teaching, which will last through November. I am really excited and a bit nervous. The book that we work with focuses on a different part of the Spanish speaking world each two chapters, and in this chapter we are headed to Mexico. Accordingly, after a bit of general transition work, tomorrow we will be learning about Mexico and hopefully get an opportunity to hear about the experiences of some off the students who have traveled there.

End of Ch. 3

This week we finished off Chapter 3. Monday we will have the chapter test. (We usually try not to test on Mondays, but it just worked out that way this time.)
We focused mostly on expressing needs and wants and also introduced numbers 30-100. The week was a bit crazy due to the cold season. I was absent on Tuesday and then had to step in for Lynette on Thursday, when she was sick. Several of the students are a bit under the weather as well, changing the energy level in class quite a bit. Hopefully everyone will get a lot of rest over the weekend and be ready to go for next week.
Monday we will test and Tuesday we will celebrate "El dia de los muertos" (a predominately Mexican tradition intended to honor those that have died).
On Wednesday we will start the section on Mexico, which I will be teaching. It will last until the beginning of December.
Hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful autmn weather and getting rested!

¡Vamos a leer!

Have you ever happened upon a magazine that had a really eye catching picture only to find out that it was written in Spanish? Well don't let language barriers stop you, Spanish has many cognates (words that are very similar in Spanish and English) that make deciphering it much easier than one might imagine. Examples include el arte, los colores, entratenameinto etc. Additionally, think of all of the things you can learn in a magazine just by looking at the pictures and making inferences.

This was what we did today in class. Using descriptions and pictures of magazine covers in our books, we made a list of all of the cognates and another list of all the words that we had already learned in Spanish. It is amazing how much students were able to understand after only a few months of Spanish.

We also introduced vocabulary and expressions from the third section of the Chapter which we began today. Tomorrow we will continue to practice this new information.

Classroom Expectations

Learning a language is a new experience for most of the students in our class. All students have had math, English, science etc. since the beginning of their educational experience, but most are studying language for the first time in our class. Consequently, we feel it is important to explain our expectations for the class, so that students will have a better idea of what it takes to succeed in Spanish.

In order to learn a new language, it is absolutely necessary that one practice it daily. It is for this reason that we place so much emphasis on participation in our classroom. Almost every day there is at least one partner activity in which students are asked to enter into a dialogue in Spanish and a number of other spoken, listening and written activities. In order for students to fully benefit from these activities they must pay careful attention to the directions provided and do them properly. Many of these activities come from students textbooks and workbooks, making it necessary that students come to class prepared with these, as well as a pen or pencil each day. We also encourage students to actively participate in whole class discussions, as all opinions are desired and welcome. We can almost guarantee that if students are willing to put in effort, they will be successful in our class and quickly acquire Spanish skills.

For these same reasons, it is vital that students attend class regularly, each time students miss a class session they miss several opportunities to hear Spanish spoken (the most important aspect of learning a new language) and to practice speaking, reading and writing it. Students with unexcused absences loose their participation points for the day and students who are tardy only receive partial credit.

Students have daily homework assignments which are listed on a monthly calendar which is distributed to them. Homework is also listed on the board each day and available on basmati. Consequently, late homework is often not accepted unless a student has an excused absence which may include an extracurricular event. We are, however, very flexible with students that actively attempt to change patterns of non-participation, and usually allow makeups in such cases. Our overall goal is that students learn Spanish, and we generally make this our first priority when making decisions about grading logistics.

We try to cultivate a feeling of community in our classroom, and consequently do not tolerate poor treatment of individuals. There is absolutely no excuse for discriminating against anyone based on ethnicity, 'race', sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, parental status, language ability, learning ability etc. We think that it is our responsibility as educators to prepare students to be positive contributors to society, and we do our best to cultivate in them a firm ethical foundation. We feel that this responsibility extends beyond the interpersonal level and immediate community, and attempt to create in our students a sense of global community.

Finally, we encourage open communication in the classroom. If any student or parent has a question, concern or comment they should feel free to contact us. Students are always welcomed to ask questions or voice concerns during class, at break, or at lunch, and can find Lynette and I in either the Foreign Language department or Lynette's office during first period and after lunch. Students also have Lynette's home phone number and are welcome to call her at home with questions about homework, notice of absences, etc. My contact information will also be available to the students beginning in November when I begin my unit.

quizzes and projects

Wow! What a crazy week! Well, while I was taking the day off Wednesday, most of the students were testing. Sorry guys :(. It sounds like everything went pretty well, though, and that there were some very interesting senior presentations.

Thursdays we spent some time reviewing for the quiz on Friday and Friday we took the quiz after a bit more review and a game. After going over the quizzes, I worry that somehow we are not doing a very good job about teaching certain concepts to the kids, though some are doing excellently, quite a few seem to be struggling a lot. We will continue to work on this as the semester progresses. I have found that working with students individually is very helpful, though that is often difficult as there are about 35 students in each class.

I spent last night and this morning grading projects, and really enjoyed seeing the students work. Though some students obviously put very little effort into the project, most did very well and some displayed amazing creativity. We will likely display these in the classroom after we hand them back for the students to review.

Monday we start the final section of the chapter and will be having our chapter exam at the end of the week. I will do my best to help students who are struggling to catch up, but encourage them to come to me when they feel they need help. I am available in the mornings, during fourth period in room 13 and at lunch. I can also make special arrangements for meetings if necessary. The success of my students is really important to me.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend as autumn sets in.

Bienvenidos

Welcome to my blog site! This site is intended to keep students, teachers, and any other interested individuals updated about what is occurring in Lynette Williams' Spanish I classes at South Eugene High School. I am working in her class this semester as a preservice teacher, and will use this page to keep everyone informed about what is happening in class each day and important events that will be occurring including tests, projects etc.

For those of you new to blogging, a blog is basically a simple website that is much easier to manage. My specific blog has a number of sections intended to provide you with information about Lynette and my Spanish I classes. You can easily navigate through these sections by clicking on their links in the right hand column of any page on the site.

In the "A bit about me..." section you will find a short biography explaining who I am and what I have been up to for the last few years, specifically concerning education. There is also a section explaining class expectations, which reiterates much of the information provided in the class syllabus and explained at the open house. The homework link will bring you to a page that lists the homework assignments due for the month, of which students also have a personal copy. "Today in class" is the main section of the blog, where I will post brief overviews of what we are doing in class each day.

You will also notice that at the end of each posting there is a link entitled comments. If you click here a page will open where you can leave comments about a specific post. But remember, everyone who has access to the blog will be able to read your comments, so please do not post personal information and please be appropriate.

I hope that you all enjoy the site! Let me know what you think.

projects in

Today projects were due. It was interesting to see the variety of "dormitoros ideales" (ideal dorms) that the students came up with. It was particularly fun to get to see the more artistic side of many of the students.

We are getting further into the content of section two of the chapter, which seems to be passing rapidly with the odd schedules of the past week. We are still learning to describe the contents of bedrooms and beginning to tackle more difficult topics such as verb conjugation. The students seem to be understanding the content well, but I we will have a better idea of overall comprehension after the quiz on Friday.

Tomorrow is a testing day, so there will be no classes.

First Project

What a crazy week! I have been sooo busy between working at South and attending my classes at the University that I am just not having time to do an update for Wednesday and Thursday. Sorry for the delay.

Wednesday was unfortunately a little slow. As it was the first day in a new section there was a lot of input (teacher lingo for teaching new information) which seemed to prove a little boring for the students. We will work to find a better way of beginning sections that are a bit more interactive.

Thursday, in contrast, went great. We did a lot of activities using the new information we had learned and got the kids up out of their desks to practice speaking Spanish with their classmates. There was lots of good energy and everyone seemed to be much more engaged than the had been the previous day. At the end of the day we presented a the first project of the year to the students. Each student is being asked to pretend that they are heading off to college, or moving into their firs apartment, and that they are being given the opportunity to design and decorate their room any way they like, with no economic restraints. The idea is that students will use the section vocabulary (furniture characteristic of a bedroom) to label the items they choose to put in their dorms or apartments, though they will also need to locate many words that the chapter does not provide them in order to Desirae their contents of their ideal dwelling. Many of the students seemed pretty excited about the project so I hope they have a lot of fun doing it. I will provide them with a good opportunity to develop their creativity, and hopefully allow us to see another side of our more artistic students.
As there is no school on Friday, the students will have extra time to work on the project, and we have also made it due on Tuesday, so that we can use Monday to answer any questions that they may have come up with over the weekend.

I cannot wait to see what they come up with!

First Project

What a crazy week! I have been sooo busy between working at South and attending my classes at the University that I am just not having time to do an update for Wednesday and Thursday. Sorry for the delay.

Wednesday was unfortunately a little slow. As it was the first day in a new section there was a lot of input (teacher lingo for teaching new information) which seemed to prove a little boring for the students. We will work to find a better way of beginning sections that are a bit more interactive.

Thursday, in contrast, went great. We did a lot of activities using the new information we had learned and got the kids up out of their desks to practice speaking Spanish with their classmates. There was lots of good energy and everyone seemed to be much more engaged than the had been the previous day. At the end of the day we presented a the first project of the year to the students. Each student is being asked to pretend that they are heading off to college, or moving into their firs apartment, and that they are being given the opportunity to design and decorate their room any way they like, with no economic restraints. The idea is that students will use the section vocabulary (furniture characteristic of a bedroom) to label the items they choose to put in their dorms or apartments, though they will also need to locate many words that the chapter does not provide them in order to Desirae their contents of their ideal dwelling. Many of the students seemed pretty excited about the project so I hope they have a lot of fun doing it. I will provide them with a good opportunity to develop their creativity, and hopefully allow us to see another side of our more artistic students.
As there is no school on Friday, the students will have extra time to work on the project, and we have also made it due on Tuesday, so that we can use Monday to answer any questions that they may have come up with over the weekend.

I cannot wait to see what they come up with!

quiz day

Today we had a quiz on the first section of Chapter 2 which covers the information we reviewed yesterday (school supply vocab., indefinite articles, singular subject pronouns and the verbs, querer, necisitar and tener). We spent the first part of class doing activities to review the information to be covered on the quiz and then spend about fifteen minutes on the quiz. I'm hoping everyone is getting more comfortable with the quiz format and the idea of a new language and scores will be good. Our primary concern is that the students are learning Spanish, and the quiz will provide us with a chance to see if the students are comprehending what we have been covering and what we need to clarify. Also, we will have a better idea of what particular students are and are not understanding.

Tomorrow we begin section 2! We are currently working on designing a project to bring the content of this section to life.

New Seats!

We began class today by placing students in a new seating arrangement. We (my cooperating teacher Lynette and I) feel that it is important for students to have new partners every few weeks so that they become comfortable speaking Spanish to a variety of individuals and gain confidence in their communicative skills. The new arrangement seemed to work well.

After we settled in to our new seats we began to reviewed for the quiz over the first section of Chapter 2 that we will have at the end of class tomorrow. We began by going over the section's vocabulary which focuses on school supplies. We then practiced using the verbs "necesitar" (to need), "querer" (to need), and "tener" (to have) as well as the indefinite articles un, una, unos and unas, (a, and and some in English) and discussed the need for gender and plurality agreement between Spanish nouns and indefinite articles. Throughout the class we did a number of written, listening and partner activities giving the students an opportunity to practice the concepts that we discussed.

Tomorrow we will review key concepts that will be covered on the quiz again and attempt to clear up and fuzzy areas.

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pg. 10

A bit about me...

Hello,
My name is Monique Weaver and I am currently working in at South Eugene High School with Lynette Williams. I'm a preservice teacher, currently earning my degree in Middle/Secondary education at the University of Oregon to be certified as a Spanish and ESOL teacher.

I am passionate about education for social change/justice. I actively work to implement a variety of sources, topics and viewpoints in my classroom, all aimed at cultivating the critical consciousness of my students. My goal as a teacher is to teach my students how to think--to give them the capacity to critically analyze the world they live in and take informed actions within it--not what to think. I am open to all opinions and encourage active dialogue amongst the students and myself.

My educational background is a bit unique as I did not attend a very traditional university. After spending a year at George Fox University studying Writing/Literature, Philosophy and Spanish I transferred to Friends World Program, which is an international studies, experimental education program run through Long Island University. With this program I spent one year in London studying Peace and Conflict Regulation--conducting case studies in Northern Ireland and the Former Yugoslavia--amongst other topics. I then headed to Central America where I focused my studies on "education as a means of social change" (my area of focus, equivalent to a major at most universities). I spent the first term in Costa Rica getting acquainted with Central America, researching alternative education models, working in an elementary school (see photo) and environmental issues (which Costa Rica is famous for). My second and final term I headed to Nicaragua to conduct an action project in a rural community outside of León where I lived with a Nicaraguan family and co-taught English at the local high school.

As a consequence of the nature of my studies my Spanish knowledge is less grammatically based, as I gained most of my skills through interactions with Spanish-speakers outside of classroom settings. To compensate for this, however, I feel that I have a wealth of experience and a unique perspective to offer to my students. I also have an intense passion for the Spanish language which will aid in the development of my more formal skills. Additionally, I feel that at the beginning levels of Spanish it is more important for students to hear Spanish spoken correctly (something that I feel relatively confident about) than to focus too much on the grammatical aspects of the language, which they will be more thoroughly exposed to at more advanced levels. Hopefully my experiences will prove beneficial for my students as I teach them what I know about speaking Spanish and work with them to improve our Spanish skills.