3rd-week fears

Spanglish was the language of the day. I need a way to keep my Spanish up over the weekend.

Just when I was losing control of my class during a game of numeric order, a coworker knocked on my door with three of my boys. She'd caught them, she said, when they crashed into her table while running back from the bathroom. I glared down at them, and all three broke out in frantic streams of unintelligible Spanish.

Although not really a bad day, today was kind of discouraging. My kids are so low, and I'm falling behind in my lesson plans trying to get them caught up. I've started using restroom breaks to review addition and subtraction; we have so much to cover and very few hours in our days.

I haven't felt like this in a while, like I've a task before me that I may be unable to accomplish. College presented some challenges, but nothing that a few late nights couldn't overcome, really. Now I've been given 22 students, some of whom still cannot read, and I'm told to get them caught up enough to pass a challenging test in 6 months. Gah.

And what about the language problem? I'm not doing my job when I resort to Spanglish. How long will it take for all those verb conjugations to come naturally and for my academic vocabulary to be sufficient for what I'm teaching? Also, this week I begin administering a diagnostic reading test to my students. Do I really speak enough of their language to accurately assess their abilities?

And now I come to the part of the post where I say, "but it's not as bad as I'm making it sound." And no, it isn't as bad. I'm quite sure I'll figure it all out; I haven't a choice. I'll get classroom management under control, I'll learn how to teach around the language struggles, and I'll find a way to bring my lower students where they need to be. Still, the possibility of failure is an unpleasant sensation.