My apprenticeship has been full of fun and games. In addition to my street vendor work, I am helping out at a school called Teodoro, where my host brothers go to school. At the school, I have been helping teach English. I have been teaching the kids new words and phrases in creative ways. For example, I used different colored balls and encouraged them to say the name of the color when I tossed it. I have also been helping out with the pronunciation of words through songs and conversations. The teacher that I am working with is super nice and does a great job of teaching her students. The upper elementary students have to copy a phrase about the history of their school in English and recite it to the entire class. For homework, the students usually have to memorize different phrases that they have copied off the board. There are about 30-45 students per class. The English teacher only has about one hour per week to teach the students English. I usually help out with three to four classes and end my day about 12:10, when everyone goes home. I have been working in the school three days a week. When my English teacher has an exam or other projects, I help out with the physical education class. This class mainly consists of doing exercises and futbol. I will have an opportunity to introduce a variety of new activities pretty soon.
After returning home for the main meal, I spend my afternoons helping to teach dance. So far, I have taught basic hip-hop and inspirational dance. I have also tried to teach the students to be creative and think of dance as a form of art filled with emotions and movements, rather than an exercise. I think my students are starting to finally understand this. Most recently, I introduced choreography and we have been working on dancing as an entire group, rather than solo.
