Changes

This last week has brought a lot of changes.  I have taken on new responsibilities at work, stepping into the role of literacy coach/tutor in addition to teaching the Spanish classes.  I really enjoy meeting with the teachers and having the chance to focus on students one-on-one. 

Today in Spanish we had a guest speaker visit to speak with my high school classes about the Guatemalan civil war.  This war didn't happen all that long ago, ending in the 1990s, so the speaker was able to combine his knowledge of Guatemala history with his own personal experiences of the conflict.

I think I was pretty nervous about the guest speaker...I'm not used to organizing something at this level (combining my classes, getting them excused from their other electives, meeting with the speaker beforehand and making all the arrangements for his arrival).  It was definitely outside my comfort zone.  My worry even showed up in my sleep last night...I dreamed that my students were rude to the guest speaker so he decided not to speak about the civil war after all.  Instead, he showed a super-violent movie about apartheid in South Africa, and all I could think about was whether the content of that film was going to get me into trouble with parents or administration.  :-)

Needless to say, my fears were unfounded.  Everything went smoothly.  The students were interested.  The guest speaker was very interesting, and other students and staff joined us for parts of his lecture as their schedules allowed. 

The only odd part was that, towards the beginning, we had a small tremor.  Usually I don't even notice them, but this time I was sitting down.  For some reason they are more noticeable when sitting in a chair.  As I felt myself sway back and forth and back and forth again, I heard some muffled laughter from the students, but other than that, the discussion moved on.  I thought it lasted an unusually long time, and I found out later some of the classes had gone into "earthquake drill" mode.  We just continued with the lecture (though I did watch the walls for a few seconds, wondering if the tremors would get any stronger).