1st grade

When I was weighing my options for Casa Achoy (I'll not know what the future holds until after class this afternoon, but that could still change), Marielos had mentioned I could cut back my teaching load in order to have the right amount of hours.  How appealing it sounded to get rid of those difficult first graders!  Yet my conscience wouldn't let me.  I felt that was quitting.  As if they knew what had gone down yesterday and in my thoughts, today was AMAZING with both first grade classes.  1A is always a little better than 1B, but they both were very well behaved and involved in what I thought was a lame lesson.  In 1A, I got everyone's name memorized, though I told them I would have to be reminded again on Monday.  After two days of other students and a weekend, I don't have confidence in my memory.  But I was proud of the ones I knew without a doubt (at least 75%).

I also noticed today, while having them repeat my English, that I'm giving a northern accent to lots of things.  I'm typically very aware of my southern roots and I'm decent at covering up the deep south accent when I meet new people (it comes out rather quickly once I'm comfortable in the group), so I didn't want to make my Mexican students too too southern.  However, while teaching clothes with fourth (hat, sneakers) and family with first (dad, mom), I noticed that I sounded like my Cincinnati aunt.  Maybe not quite so dramatic, but much more like a northerner than a southerner.  It made me laugh.  It's hard, though to teach someone to speak correctly, and to be thoughtful of not giving them any accent.  Impossible.