Here we go!

Well, I'm still trying to figure out how to edit my first post "blah blah" which was only meant to see if this thing called a blog was working. I'm finding out that as I re-enter the teaching world 11 years after leaving it, that technology is one of the biggest hurdles I have to overcome, the other being...
Spanish!
So, to give you a bit of background here, I was a teacher for four years outside of Washington, D.C. The school I taught at had 700 students, grades K–6, and was the "International School" for our district, which meant all ELL's went to our school. Spanish was the predominant first language, but there were a lot of others in there too. There were 2 ESL teachers for the whole school. Only one was fluent in Spanish. After her, I was the next most fluent adult at the school - which wasn't very fluent at all. I did what I could, but as a classroom teacher with 25–30 first graders of my own (and no aides or volunteers), that wasn't much. I could occasionally translate, but even at my own conferences, the children often had to act as translators for their parents. At least, I could tell that what they were saying was what I had said...
After my first daughter, and then my second and third daughters, was born, I quit my job, moved to Madison and stayed home with them for the past 11 years. Now that my youngest is in kindergarten, it's time for me to head back to work. To get certified to teach in WI, I had to take 6 credits. So, I began looking around for something good, and I found the ESL/bilingual program at Edgewood College. I took my 6 credits this past summer, loved the program, remembered how much I love Spanish, realized that I need to be able to speak, read, write and understand it, and began studying it.
I took Spanish all through high school, and into a semester of college to get those retroactive credits. Then, tired of it, and wanting a new challenge, I switched to French and took that for 3 semesters. Biggest mistake of my academic career. While I loved French, it completely messed up my Spanish, and by not using the Spanish, I lost most of it.
So, upon beginning to re-learn it this summer, I was very happy to discover that it was still in my brain somewhere, hiding. Things were coming back pretty easily, and then, school started for the year. My plan for this year was to substitute in Verona, where we live and my kids go to school, while finishing my ESL license. I wanted a bit of flexibility to be able to help out in my daughter's kindergarten class, as I did for my other two daughters, and also some flexibility to study for classes. (I was also hoping to continue to freelance for an educational publisher, but that's another long story...)
Nearly all of my jobs as a substitute this year have been in Verona's K–3 bilingual classrooms. I've been working typically 3 or 4 days a week, and teaching in Spanish while doing so. The experience has been amazing, and amazingly difficult, and my Spanish has improved greatly. But more on that in the next post...