Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Teaching English

Who knew you'd need to know so much Spanish in order to teach English? Oh yeah, I did!

I am liking this job so far. It's giving me a chance to practice my rusty Spanish while I teach someone else English. That's been nice. Since I've graduated from USU I really haven't had the chance to practice it with anyone. The kids of course always like to know vocabulary words in Spanish, but not conjugating verbs and carrying on conversations. Actually, I think Samantha would - she's weird like me that way. Poor girl!

I am going over to Brigham Monday through Thursday from 6-7:30 pm. The first time I went over I worked with both the husband and the wife and we met at the library. Originally I was told that neither one of them speak any English. Um...WRONG. The husband actually speaks a lot of English. He just needs to practice with a fluent speaker so he can get the pronunciations down. The wife I think just needs a confidence boost. I found out tonight she can read English! Sorry, but that's a far stretch from "She can't speak any English." So, tomorrow I am going to take sight words & fry phrases over with me as well as some simple picture books. Guess we'll start piecing words together to see if they make any sense to her. Their 4 yr old speaks English about as fluently as my own children. Hopefully if I can help her read English she can read to him. That might be a way off, I know. One might hope though, right?

The only thing I don't like is that it is at night. I didn't realize how much I liked having my nights at home. I keep telling myself it's only 4 days a week and it's only an hour and a half, so I can do it. It isn't even an hour commute - only 20 minutes! The other part that stinks about it being at night is that I have all 3 kids at daycare. Good thing Laura loves me & charges me what she does! ;) She does need more kids during the day though, so if you're lookin'....

Anyway, that's pretty much all we've been up to. Oh! I almost forgot. We have grass! It isn't a ton and it can't be mowed yet, but, we've got grass sprouting up. That's good enough for me! And, I haven't even killed it by forgetting to water it yet! Lets hope that trend continues!