To be or not to be...

In about 20 minutes the ladies for my English class will be arriving.

 My coffee is ready to brew and the cookies are ready to be put out on the plate. My lesson is printed off (with the help of Brady who likes to grab the papers out of the printer) and my whiteboard is set to go.

A picture from last year's class

Is my brain ready to think and explain things in English?? That is another question :-) Sometimes when the ladies ask me WHY we say things a certain way in English, I say...I don't know! We just do! But I know that is not a good answer! So then I write down the questions and study them up in the week to be ready for the next class with some sort of answer.

The good thing is that most of the ladies that come have a good enough English that they can have a decent conversation already. They have all studied it in school (much the same way we would have studied French in school back in Canada) but feel like they need help with certain grammar aspects and mostly just need practice having conversations. So we have a lot of conversation time! I generally pick a topic for each lesson and then we do games, grammar studies, or take turns having conversations about specific topics.

Brady and his friend playing in the backyard while the moms learn English

I would have to say that I do not enjoy the prep part of teaching, as I have never learned how to teach English. I often don't know what I should be teaching or what they need to learn, and I often call up my mom who is a professional and ask her!! It helped a lot that when she was here visiting last month, she did a test on all of them to see what level they were at, which helps me know what they need to learn yet. And it has also helped that I studied Spanish grammar so I have somewhat of a handle on how grammar works, even though in another language.

But I do enjoy the actual class time so that is good. The class is made up of a neighbour, moms from our kid's school, and another friend of a friend. Even though they didn't all know each other before, we have a lot of fun together

So why am I teaching English though?? Well, we look for ways to connect with people and get to know more people, as I said in the last post. And guess what, soooo many people here want to know English! It's not just for fun, but it really is something that gives them advancements in schools and work, as there are many American business' here in Guadalajara. It is a big advantage to people to know English here. So I keep at it because it's a need that people ask me for - I haven't advertised or said I wanted to start a class, but rather they have all asked if I could teach them, and it also is a good way of building relationships in a smaller group, which we pray will lead towards sharing with them God's plan of salvation!

All right, 10 more minutes...time to heat my own coffee in the microwave left from this morning :-)