Reflection on Teaching in Quitumbe

Well, today was the last day at Quitumbe. The five days we spent with the Quitumbe students went by so much faster than with the America Latina students. The amount of love and appreciation I received from my students in Quitumbe was so overwhelming, but in a good way. I connected with the students a lot more because I spent more time with them outside of the classroom. I played with them during recess and learned their favorite recess game, Tazos. With six sections of 5^th and 6^th grade, I was responsible for teaching 240 students. I obviously was unable to form relationships with all 240 students, but I was able to get to know five students very well. These students were so nice and polite and did everything they could to make me feel welcome in their classrooms. I would speak with them in Spanish outside of class in order to make them feel comfortable around me.

At the end of the day today, my students surrounded me and wished me good luck for the rest of my trip and gave me small gifts- Tazos, which are the small disks that we played with during recess and a wristband from one of my favorite students, Benjamin. It was so hard to leave all my students, who eventually became little friends of mine! They were all so bright and worked really hard to speak English. Their work ethic inside and outside of the classroom was remarkable.

Though their English level was not very advanced, the little phrases they produced in English were enough for me. It was so rewarding to hear them say “I will give friendship” in English and then explain what friendship meant to them. The students loved being around native English speakers and showing off what they knew, even if it was very little.

Working at Quitumbe for a week was a great experience for me to see what it would be like to work in a challenging environment. I had to modify my lessons and change my style of teaching for this school, which taught me to be more flexible. 

My experiences at America Latina and Quitumbe have helped me shape who I want to be as a teacher and what I need to do to improve myself before I have a classroom of my own. The students in both schools had different dynamics, but they all had the motivation to learn and to become better at speaking English. I can’t wait to see what experiences I will have in the village of San Gerardo and what the students are like there!