Halfway There

Friday we had our midpoint evaluations with one of our instructors. The one-to-one attention is valuable as they have a chance to dig into what we're doing well, what we need to work on, and even give us a sense of how it's going to play out in the next couple of weeks.

As I looked at previous evaluations of my teaching and listened to what my tutor was saying, I had an "aha" that shouldn't have been this long in the making.

This experience is strangely similar to my Spanish immersion experience in Ecuador a couple of years ago. We had a small class that was equally as diverse as this one in experience, interests, and plans on what we'd do with our newfound language skills. Most of us were living with a family in homestay situations. We had very long days. I don't remember this much homework in that experience but we were practicing every time we tried to hail a cab or get some food!

But the biggest similarity for me is that when I went to Ecuador I had a limited knowledge of Spanish. Along with a friend, we butchered the language without hesitation as we tried to make our way to the school, make some additional plans, etc. We walked the streets with a sense that we had a clue what was going on around us.

Then we took the class. Then reality set in. We were busted. Oh, how ignorant we found ourselves to be.

And what happened? We stopped practicing on the streets quite as much. Embarrassed by how little we really knew, shamed by how badly we had been expressing ourselves, we slowed it down. We almost quit, but didn't. Ultimately, the experience was definitely a learning one, but we came in with a bang and out with a whimper.

Fast forward a few years and I walk into the classroom as a trainer in training with the same sense of knowing a bit about what I'm doing. And once again, as I grow in my knowledge of what is supposed to be happening as opposed to what I'm doing, and I hit a wall. I get mentally fried just trying to download a simple procedure and apply it. I'm convinced that I'm butchering these folks' language experience and I slowed down.

But once again, I haven't quit. And I have no plans to.

I do, however, plan on getting this blasted 1) illustrate meaning, 2) elicit the item, 3) concept check, 4) oral highlighting, 5) oral ICP, 6) written highlighting, 7) written ICP down if it kills me.

Halfway there and contemplating embarassment, shame and terms such as "kill." Yep, I MUST be learning something!