Practicing with Diego

As I signed in at school this morning (Tuesday), the Principal beckoned me into his office. He said he had heard from Maribel that I needed to practice all day with a student for some event. He seemed about as clear on it as I was! I told him yes and that I thought I would be able to work with him in the mornings and then have classes after recess. I couldn’t imagine 3.5 hours straight of reading over the same paragraph. Granted, we wanted this memorized and there was a Spanish version and an English version. However, I always memorize better by working for a bit and then separating myself from it and then returning again. Little pieces lots of times as opposed to big hunks.
I went to the 6th grade teacher to ask for Diego. Remember that at this point, no one knew what was up. I hadn’t seen these kids since the previous Tuesday. Diego came with me, I explained what was up and we began practicing. I realized just how right I had been! This was really boring. So we practiced first word by word on pronunciation. Then clause by clause more or less. Finally sentence by sentence. I then let him practice the whole thing. That took about 40 minutes, so I sent him back to his class saying I would come get him ten minutes before recreo to practice one more time for the day. In the next few minutes, I sent an email to Maribel asking her details: Where is the program? What time? How should we get there? Would Diego just be responsible for getting himself there? What should he wear? Etc.
I texted her so she would know she had an email and she called me back within a few minutes. She said that she and Ana Luisa would be making a visit to my school after recreo to answer all my questions and talk to Diego (and my suspicions were that they wanted to hear how he sounded, too). That blew my plan for teaching my afternoon classes. Time for plan b. I left Diego in his class until recreo, knowing I would need to be working with him when they got there. After recreo, I asked Guille to send him to me again. This time, the computer room (my office) was occupied by my less favorite first graders, so practicing pronunciation would be borderline impossible. I took two chairs from inside the computer room and set them outside near the play area.
This practice was still boring, but boring with a purpose. He was already at least a little familiar with the words and it was more about correcting pronunciation than introducing words.
About 20 minutes into our practice, my phone rang and it was Maribel. “Bad news,” she says. I realize she’s not coming. What she thinks is bad news I actually see as good news. The event for Thursday has been cancelled. This way we have more time to practice and it won’t be as high pressure.
We finished out the day practicing and I sent him on his way. I made my way home and got there about 20 minutes earlier than usually due to my random day.