Southpoint Academy

Celebrating 20 years of teaching – some takeaways

/ antonioyrocinante / 2 Comments

This year marks my 20th year of teaching. It has been a total blessing. I have talked a lot about it here, but there should be at least some celebratory comments.

The first observation is that teaching is a vocational endeavor; if your heart is not in it, you will struggle and not be the best teacher for your students. I have taught almost 50/50 in secondary and university settings with brief stints in Middle school, and even primary school! (Read about it here.) My observation is that most teachers do it because they love it —we don’t do it for money. If you do not know if teaching is for you, try it out!

I have said this ad nauseam: all teaching is relational. We learn from a place of trust, that trust comes from the teacher-student relationship and that relationship comes from the teacher being open, better yet, vulnerable (within boundaries, of course), and honest.

Just because students are not masters of the subject matter does not make them stupid; they can see right through the teacher if you do not know the subject matter, regardless of your teaching style. So know and prepare your material, and if they ask something you do not know, get back to them with an answer. This recently happened to me, no shame in it.

Something that always motivates me is thinking of who I consider to be the best two teachers in history: Socrates and Jesus. They did not have hi-tech classrooms, which makes me always ask myself: Could I teach this with just a stick in the sand? If the answer is no, then I must rethink my lesson plan. Everything else on top of that is glitter and show…

I could probably write a book about this, but for now, I hope you liked this blog post.

So while not every moment of my 20-year teaching career has been easy, I am looking forward to the next 20, let’s go!!

Southpoint Academy

/ antonioyrocinante / 1 Comment

Last fall I was privileged to teach Spanish at a Kindergarten and Lower School in Durham, the next town over, where that other university is.

Southpoint Academy is the school where my Course Coordinator of last semester sends her son. They needed a Spanish teacher on Thursdays – my day off last semester, and although I was a little nervous at first, I soon fell in love with the kids.

I taught three sections of half an hour each. The Kindergarten class with 17 5 year old students, then a 1st and 2nd grade class with 12 students aged between 6 and 7, and a 3rd and 4th grade class with 9 students aged 8 and 9.

Our classes were very intense and we had a great time learning Spanish! I loved the diversity and enthusiasm of the children! The school is conveniently located across the street from the mall, so after class, if I had time, I enjoyed having lunch and walking around the mall! Another great incentive if the weather was nice was to ride old Rocinante! It was only a fifteen minute ride, but it is better than nothing.

Unfortunately this semester I received an assistantship from the university to be a Graduate Research Consultant for my Thesis Director’s undergraduate literature class, so I had to give up my teaching at Southpoint.

Southpoint Academy

Southpoint Academy