Hello Teachers!

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

It’s so exciting to finally be starting my blog! It’s been a long time coming for me. I started teaching 7 years ago and every year it’s been a goal of mine to start a blog. I have always loved the idea of writing about my experiences teaching, but have been overwhelmed by the idea of creating and managing my own website! I’m sure many of my fellow teachers can understand that. The idea of adding ANOTHER thing to your plate sounds a bit scary. So here I am, 7 years down the teaching road, finally ready to go!

I started teaching the day after I turned 22 years old, and even looking back now I can’t believe how young I was. At the time, I was teaching a group of 29 fifth graders in San Francisco and I felt like an older sibling rather than the adult who was supposed to be in charge of their personal, academic, and emotional growth! I taught in a dual-immersion Spanish English classroom and my first two years were full of frustrations, breakdowns, and excessive hours in the classroom.

Luckily, with all the bad came the good, like the professional and personal growth I experienced, beautiful relationships with my students, and a deep passion to improve my teaching and be my best for my students.

My two years in San Francisco were guided by Teach For America. I have lots I could say about the positives and negatives of Teach For America, which I will save for another time, but for now I’ll say that the TFA organization most certainly enhanced my experience in San Francisco. However, I knew after my two years in SF that as vibrant as the city is, it wasn’t where I pictured the rest of my life. I have always had a curiosity for living outside the U.S. and decided that it was time to take the leap. Through a fortunate chain of events I ended up in a small town in Nayarit, Mexico on the Pacific Coast.

I finished my teaching job in SF and two weeks later I was all settled in Mexico. I told my parents I would be down here for a year, knowing very well that was most likely a lie. Spending the rest of my life teaching at an eco friendly, outdoor, bilingual school, surfing morning and evening, eating mangos off the trees, living 3 blocks from the beach, and catching daily sunsets didn’t sound so bad…

So here I am 5 years later, still here, loving this life I have created for myself more and more each day!

My LIFE IN MEXICO

There are so many things I love about living in Mexico. I love living three blocks from the beach and being able to walk down for sunset every day. I love living near so much green space and jungle. There is nothing more refreshing than the smell of rain in the jungle after a long dry season. I love my active life style that I live here, including running, surfing, and walking everywhere in this small town.

Most of all, I love the people. The kind hearted, helpful, and generous people that surround me. I think of countless moments where someone stepped in to help without even asking. Like the time I broke my ankle an hour from my home and a masseuse brought me to his house to see if he could help. Or the time I got a flat tire, and within five minutes a mechanic on his way home from work that day stopped to help me. Over the years here I have realized how at home I feel here, and I know that it has to do with the people that surround me.

TEACHING IN MEXICO

I’ll be talking a lot more about teaching in Mexico and particular aspects of my experience here in my weekly blogs. I teach at an eco friendly school. We prohibit single use plastics, do monthly beach clean ups, and students complete sustainability projects within the community. Our school focuses on project based learning as our main form of evaluation. We are also a bilingual school, students do half the day in Spanish and half in English.

I teach the 1st and 2nd grade English classes. I am in charge of teaching English language as well as content in English. I focus specifically on reading, writing, and science with my students. Over the years I have worked with several different curriculums for teaching reading, writing, and English as a Second Language (ESL). I have noticed that in terms of ESL curriculums there are pretty slim pickings. A lot of the curriculums that I have tried feel incomplete. Lessons are not well connected, they move the students along too quickly, and there isn’t enough repetition to allow for mastery and deeper understanding.

After experiencing quite a bit of frustration in regards to curriculum, I have decided to take on the task of developing my own! Throughout this upcoming year I am going to be launching my ESL curriculum unit by unit. I’m excited to share it with the teaching world and get some feedback!

Let’s Connect!

I can’t wait to launch this project and blog! I am going to be sharing my teaching resources, teaching tips, and all about my teaching life in Mexico! I really want to connect with other ESL, dual language, and lower elementary teachers! Introduce yourself below, share your grade level, teaching experience, and a hobby that you love!