New respect for old teachers.

No matter what time my day starts, it is hard to get out of bed in the morning. I had 2 back to back lessons to teach starting at 12:30 this afternoon, and it was still difficult for me to get up to the sound of my alarm. After rolling out of bed and putting on my most professional-looking attire (new boots included), Sean and I hopped on a bus, metro, then bus again to arrive at our first lesson of the day. We were lucky to have each been scheduled to teach at the same place, same time (different classes), as it makes travel throughout the city a lot easier when 2 people are trying to find a new location. Or, more so when Sean tries to find the location and I just ask if he is sure. Once we arrived at our destination, both of us had a nervous, unfamiliar, yet familiar feeling. I say this because today was our first teaching experience in...a public high school. This has been a fear of mine since I began my teaching career, oh, 2 months ago. I almost felt like I was going back in time to my high school as a nerdier version of myself. I desperately hoped the students were easy to work with, weren’t bored and didn’t say bad things about me in Italian, knowing I had no idea what they were saying. As we walked up to the campus, there were groups of teens all standing around smoking and looking as cool as could be. Seeing 14-year olds smoking on campus was disturbing in itself. I thought ‘what’s the fun in that, if you are actually allowed to?’ Our presence did not phase any of them and they had no interest in who we were or what we were doing there. This made me feel better, since my goal getting dressed this morning was to not look like another student. We found our classrooms in the mix of a million students also looking for the correct classes to be in. Sean and I parted ways, wishing each other good luck. I walked into my room, which was a classroom just as I remember from my days of being in high school: teacher’s desk in the front of the room with a chalkboard behind it, and about 20 small wooden desks facing the board. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was, and instantly thought about all my past teachers who must have been going through the same emotions on the first day. Instead of a class of 3 or 4 bright-eyed, eager-to-learn 8 year olds, or a class of a couple adults who just want to converse in English, I was met by 12 teens, smelling like cigarettes and adolescence, forced to be there against their will. I tried my best to make each lesson somewhat interesting and relevant to their young lives. My nerves washed away after about the first minute and my goal was to just teach - teach past simple tenses and future continuous tenses with material that made sense to them - sports, friends, movies, dating, music, etc. They were all actually very sweet and seemed to enjoy my class, aside from the 2 girls in the back who were annoyed that I kept interrupting their conversation. I had the other students laughing and joking with me and showing interest in answering my questions, all of which I saw as a good sign. The 2 classes ended and I was exhausted - from speaking and standing and sweating for a good 3 hours straight. I will teach the same students every Monday until the school year is over. Luckily most of them were nice, aside from a few minor kids who would rather have been making out with their boyfriends or smoking cigs. When I asked the students to tell me what they want to be when they grow up, most said they want to be professional futbol players or coaches, famous dancers, actors, etc. When I asked what job they would hate to have, 2 students agreed that they would never want to be a teacher. Oh man! I tried to tell them teaching was cool too, but they didn’t buy it.