Teach to Teach: Training Women to Teach Spanish

If you picture our Spanish teachers in a classroom teaching grammar, you’d be dead wrong these days. As part of recent workshops with local teacher Chrissie Ellison, our teachers are out and about learning new and different ways to keep students engaged.

Students were giving us feedback that classes weren’t applicable to their daily needs in Peru. When you need to ask for a glass of water or say you will be late for dinner, because you are living in a homestay with a family with whom you share no language, memorizing the alphabet or six verb tenses isn’t immediately helpful, they told us.

With Chrissie, the teachers have developed a new lesson for new volunteers and tourists, based on a walking tour of our historic Inca town. Teacher and student visit the market, nearby ruins, a 12-angled Incan stone, the artisan market and other landmarks. Their local knowledge allows them to teach the students new things about the town--like demonstrating the Incan stone that appears to "bleed" when scratched with a rock! Recently, they took volunteers from our partner organizations to test out their new lesson plan, and students loved it so much that several signed up for classes right there! “This is the best class I have ever had,” said one “guinea pig” student, an older volunteer with basic level Spanish. “I have never taken a class where I didn’t feel rushed or nervous, but this class made me relaxed and happy!”

In another lesson plan they have developed, teachers bring in different local fruits and other foods for the student to taste and discuss. Whatever the student’s level, he or she can have challenging conversation practice with the teacher. They discuss the name and geographic origin of the fruit, and its uses and seasons. “This was quite possibly the noisiest session we’ve done!” Chrissie reported, “Participation was enthusiastic, motivated and fun. It brought out the confidence in knowing that they (the Spanish teachers) were planning a lesson using vocabulary that they inherently know.”

We also have gotten feedback from basic-level students that the teachers, none of whom speak any English, struggle to explain concepts in ways the students understand, without using Spanish to do so. To teach the teachers how to explain concepts to basic students, Chrissie taught an entire class in English! Using a ball and a box, she taught them prepositions in English without using any Spanish to explain. By the end of the class, not only did the teachers better understand how to use gestures and very basic words to teach concepts—they also are very good at prepositions in English!