school visit to Concord Academy

So at this point in my teaching career I feel like I really haven't established a teaching style for myself. I see myself more like a big sponge than anything else because i just have so much to learn and I am just soaking up everything I can from whatever resources are presented to me. last wednesday the language department took off and went to visit Concord Academy in Concord, MA. Not only was the trip itself a great bonding experience with 3 other of the female teachers (Marilyn, my mentor, Lauren-a french teacher. she was an intern last year. and Sabra- french teacher from canada) but it was a wonderful opportunity to see different styles of teaching. Señor Cambria was by far the best teacher that I have seen yet. I visited both his spanish i and spanish ii classes. I guess what was so impressive was how well organized and high achieving the classroom was. when students walked into the classroom the first thing they did was go find who their class partner was for the day. apparently they switch partners every day and this partner is the person with whom they speak, correct homework and do other exercises. every class starts with dialogue with your partner about the segment of the Destinos video that was assigned the night before. Destinos is great program where students' learning is based off of a spanish telenovela (soap opera) called Destinos.through this telenovela they are exposed to multiple aspects of many spanish speaking cultures as well as all the necessary grammatical education. It is very interactive and useful and i noticed a stark difference with the level of the spanish used by the concord students compared with Emma students. These students were using preterite (past) tense as if they'd been doing it for a year. while I struggle daily to get full sentences out of my girls, these students were speaking with ease and comfort, seeming quite knowlegeable of what they were saying. it was incredible. also there was no whining or complaining about assignments or requests. maybe the class could be more disciplined because it was coed and unfortunately I think that the gender dynamics of the classroom definitely affect the atmosphere of learning. girls at emma are way to babied but they also would break down if I were to demand the same kind of performance, respect and discipline as the students at concord academy.
so the point is, that I learned a whole lot from this visit. I'm anxious to apply some of the ideas from Cambria's class to my own classroom. I'm feeling that I got no where to go but up and I am so grateful for all these awesome examples. this coming week I am going with the other interns to the NY state Beginner teachers' Institute in Rennsalaerville. it's a three day gathering and training of new teachers from all across the state. Seminars will be given to educate us on teaching tools and methods and also we will be able to discuss the experiences we've had up until now with teaching. it'll be a good experience but i'm a little upset because i am missing classes for it. tomorrow on my day off I need to make up lesson plans for both Spanish One and Two because Marilyn will be taking them over for me while I'm gone. It's funny because I feel like those students are my guinnea pigs, babies is probably a better word, and I don't want to be away from them for too long. I especially don't want them to get confused with the switching back and forth between teaching styles. good things is that I've been told by students and parents that my teaching style is very similar to marilyns and therefore the students haven't noted much difficulty when we switched from marilyn to me....

okay so now I'm getting tired and it's noticeable in this writing. what happened to the days when 11:30pm seemed early to me?