School of Leadership Students First Day of Teaching English

My dad has always told me “Matthew you’re not nervous, you’re excited. It’s the same emotion it just depends how you look at it.” I’m here to tell you; NERVOUS was definitely what I was. Today was our first day of teaching the English program that we came up with to students at a local school in Mexico. We had already visited this school about a week ago to play with the kids and get to know them, but today was the day we were going to put all the time of planning our classes into action. I had so many things running through my head, “What if we screw up?” “What if they laugh at us?”  “What if we fall flat on our face!?” Anything possible that could go wrong, I had thought of it believe me.

We all walked in and put up a map of North America so that we could explain where each of us lived to the students. After me and Em Cost introduced St. John’s NL we stepped aside so the rest of the lesson could be taught by our fellow SOLS. Watching the kids pay attention to the rest of the lesson was phenomenal. They were so excited to have us in there; kids were screaming out, “Hello” “Goodbye” “How are you” all over the place. The pure excitement in their voice as they would scream the English equivalent to the Spanish word made everything worth it. By the end of our time, I was not nervous at all but truly excited with what we had presented to the school, and can’t wait till next week when we move onto colors!

~ Matt, a School of Leadership student living in Mexico for the next 3 months