The beginning of a BIG future

Bilingual classes are more and more common everyday in many contexts. Yet has anyone considered expanding a bit more?

Nailea Couoh tells us about her experiences on this topic

As always check them after the break

The beginning of a BIG Future

Trilingual classes. This is our experience teaching in Tixmehuac and Sisbic. Can you imagine using three languages in your classroom?


In the first issue of this newspaper we (Mirna, Nancy and I) talked about “The future is BIG in Sisbic”. We told you about what we faced at the beginning of our social service in the Sisbic and Tixméhuac communities. We found kids speaking Maya and Spanish who are also learning English at school. We’d like to tell you what happened next. We developed short classes to teach some English to those very special kids.
It was, by no means, a “usual” context of education. Most of the kids, especially in Sisbic, speak Maya most of the time. This might be seen as a disadvantage, but we saw it and took it as an opportunity. We prepared trilingual classes for them: we used Maya and Spanish to teach English.

We had a short time and we decided to teach the kids some verbs, animals and parts of the body. But first we had to think about the exceptional opportunity and the context in which we were about to teach. We didn’t have a classroom, we were actually teaching outside, with no facilities but we had the most important element: students willing to learn.
We knew the kids already; we’d played and talked with them. We knew about their needs and their willingness to learn. So, we prepared a class based on that.
We made our activities as active as possible with psychomotor, contextualized and meaningful exercises. We used what we had: pictures, games, and posters. In each class, we tried to use the three languages so the kids relate the English language with those languages they already know and use fluently. They also had the opportunity to teach us, we learnt Maya with them and we consider that it was a great motivation for them. Maya was just as important as English in our classes.
It was amazing to teach those kids.
The children were not obliged to go,
but they were very enthusiastic and eager to learn as much as they can. Some of the younger kids may not have learned English at all, but they learned to be part of a collective learning environment.



The experience was great and very meaningful and made us think about the great deal we’ll face in the future as language teachers. The kids are ready for you. Are you getting ready?

Reporters: Mirna, Areli & Nailea, 8° LEII