Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Yesterday I began my volunteer work with "English Opens Doors," a program created by the chilean ministry of education. Native english speakers (such as university exchange students) are assigned to chilean public schools to help the English teachers with their classes. I'm going to be helping out between 4 and 5 hours each week on Thursday mornings.

So I woke up at 6:30 yesterday so I could get to the school around 8:15 and be able to talk to the teacher before she started classes at 8:30. I left my apartment at 7:30, and went searching for the first bus stop. 15 minutes later, and after asking about 5 people, I got there. To catch the second bus, I went searching for stop #9, but couldn't find it anywhere. I spent probably about 20 minutes searching for this imaginary stop, and when I decided to take out my notebook where I wrote down the directions to show someone where I was going, I unfortunately realized that with the route I was taking, I was actually looking for stop 3, which I had past by at least twice. I ran back to that stop, and waited for the bus. At this point it was 8:30. I walk into the highschool right across the street from the bus stop, and go to the office. Someone walks me to the classroom, and I introduce myself to the teacher saying that we had talked on the phone the night before. She doesn't recognize me. Her name is Cecilia, I'm actually looking for Maria Luisa. Turns out i'm at the wrong high school. Oops. The good news though, is that the correct high school is just next door. I get to the right high school, and find out the woman I talked to isn't here today. So I get walked to another class. By 9, I finally make it to where I was supposed to be.

I helped with two classes of 1st years (probably 13/14 years old), and it was pretty cool because the teacher kind of let me work with the class (she gave the things to do of course.) I played about 50 games of simon says. We wrote all the names of body parts in english and in spanish, and also added some verbs such as to laugh, to cry, to dance. I've always known that english is difficult to learn and pronounce, but being in the classroom I actually got to experience it firsthand. For instance, the sound "th" is really difficult.  The word "mouth"was hard to understand. The word knees, not only is the fact that it starts with a silent "k" make it complicated, but while "e" in spanish is "eh" and "i" makes the ee sound (as in knees). In my second class, they asked how to say "mejilla" which is cheek, and "dientes" which is teeth. For me, the words don't sound very similar, but for the kids, the couldn't hear the difference, which for me was really interesting.  I tried exaggerating the sounds, but in the end decided to avoid both words in general. They recognized the words shoulder and back really easily, but knees and eyes were a lot more difficult. We ended the class singing (ended up with me singing) the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" about 5 times. Both classes were relatively well behaved, especially since I had been warned that they usually didn't behave at all. It was probably because I was new. Although I did get whistled at in the hallway at some kids at the back of the class told me they loved me, I think it's the fact that I'm younger than most of the teachers and don't look very chilean. Those things don't bother me as much as they used to, and overall the kids seemed nice, and were enthusiastic about playing simon says with me, which made everything a lot easier.

If anyone knows of any english rhymes or games good for beginner beginner english, let me know! It seemed like she expected me to come prepared with something yesterday, and I had not, so maybe it'd be a good idea to think of some things for next week.