Introducing: Jessica

Hello all. I am Jessica. My apologies for being so delayed in my posting; I hope you can forgive me, and allow me to introduce myself:

I am twenty-two years old. I was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan, moving to East Lansing in the fall of 2007 to begin my freshman year at Michigan State. After changing my major just a few times, I graduated in May 2011 with a B.A. in Spanish. Although the thought of being done with college was thrilling, somewhere in my senior year I began to worry that a Bachelor’s in Spanish was not exactly going to set me apart from the thousands of college graduates out there. I began exploring my options, looking for a way to further my education and strengthen my credentials. Thus, I found Michigan State’s Master’s program for Applied Spanish Linguistics.

And here we are. I have just completed the first of two years in my quest for higher education. Along with being accepted into the program, I was offered a teaching assistantship to teach two sections of 100-200 level Spanish courses; this past fall I taught Spanish 102, and Spanish 101 in the spring.

As for my teaching style, well in the Romance and Classical Studies department they just sort of throw you right in. When I began teaching in the fall I was handed a textbook and a syllabus. From there it was up to me to plan the daily lessons and to teach the students everything they needed to know for the exams (The homework is predetermined and the exams are made for us, since there are multiple teaching assistants all teaching the same course). Needless to say, my first year involved a lot of trial and error, improvisation, and last minute lesson planning. I am still very much a teaching rookie. I have a lot to learn and hope to take a lot away from this course. I know that I have been fairly low-key so far and I promise, it is just because I am sitting here like a sponge taking in as much as I can.

On a more personal note: in ten days I will be leaving for Cordoba, Argentina on a three-week study abroad. It is a graduate program through Ohio State University, meant for Spanish teachers. The goal of the program is to learn how to get away from textbook learning and how to bring the real world into the classroom so as to use the language in a more natural context. I am very interested to see how the materials from our current course will overlap with this program, and to take advantage of both programs to improve upon my teaching.