Primates and Celebreties...Not a Good Combination

So today started out being a fairly normal day, except that I only got four hours of sleep last night due to all of the smoke in my house. The children were a little wild, which worked okay because I planned for some active lessons today, and I played off of their excitement.

However, in the middle of puppet making (it was tied to my math objective, I promise!!!) in walk the Dual Immersion celebrities into my classroom and take a seat. I thought I might have a panic attack then and there, but I ignored them and continued with my class. I passed them my lesson plans so that they knew all of the cutting, pasting, paper on the floor, and puppets on the hands linked to my objective. I had Ofelia Wade, the state Dual Immersion representative (and a good friend) in my room, which was intimidating, but okay. She and I know eachother and I feel very comfortable with her, but still wanted things to be PERFECT. But, by her side was Greg Duncan, a NATIONAL Dual Immersion representative, who spends his career training other districts and states in foreign language instruction all over the United States. In the education world, he is famous. It's a good thing it didn't really click with me WHO he was until after he left, because I might have peed my pants.

They were both there with my principal for about 40 minutes, and they even questioned the students to see exactly what they had learned. The bad news is that my students were acting like monkeys today. They were hitting, poking, arguing, teasing, talking, calling out... and it looked like I had very little classroom management going on. Well the truth is, I know how to manage a classroom! I just didn't want to tell a sweet, innocent-looking first grader, "You stand up, sit in the back of the room and put your head down until you can decide you're ready to act like a first grader!!" in front of the observers. After multiple offenses, I did start whispering into some of their ears that if their behavior continues, they will never have recess.... ever again, followed by a "Ok princesa?" and a smile.

After what I thought was a very rocky lesson, I got a chance to speak with the celebs in English about my lesson. I got many compliments, to my dismay. I was expecting a "Well that was nice" and a quick exit, but they said some nice things. Ofelia wants me to share some of my ideas and activities with teachers in our trainings. Duncan complimented my room and how it was decorated. He complimented me in my modeling and how EVERY one of my students successfully completed their tasks in Spanish. He loved how I integrated literacy into my math lesson and also used it to teach a lot of vocabulary. He loved how engaged the students were. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that they must see a lot of first graders, and that many of them must look and act like monkeys. I guess I can forgive the lil' munchkins and hope that next time a man with white hair and a nice shirt and tie walks in, they'll realize he's probably a celebrity, and they'll stop with the monkey business.