I went to see Maria tonight after dinner. I told her I was fine but a bit tired, because preparing for classes is a lot of work.
I still can't decide whether she jumped to conclusions or she is seeing me more clearly than I am. She said, "you are agobiando". It means something like you are freaking out/stressing out/worrying too much. She said she had a friend that could help me, and she was going to give me this friend's number. Then she got on the phone and called up the friend. Said friend is cathedratica de Ingles at the University. The other night we had a discussion as to what cathedratica means. I think it must be "dean" judging from how they described it to me. Anyways, Maria said, "now I'm going to pass you over to my friend Ana. Toma, Ana" (take the phone). So I end up talking to Julia, who is really lovely, and I tell her I think I'm doing okay but Maria thinks I'm agobiandoing. Julia spent quite some time with me, asking me what I was teaching and my experience and what the problems were. Then she simply reassured me that I'm qualified and have experience and I'm a native speaker besides and that she's sure I'm an excellent teacher, and that if I ever have any problems, I can come over to the university and meet her, and she can introduce me to her colleagues who know more about applied linguistics, because she really teaches the history of English, and hasn't actually taught the language for a long time. She says there is an Irish fellow who has all sorts of methods for teaching, and so on.

My class went very well today again. Maria probably is right though. I am spending an awful lot of time, because I am solely responsible for this, and I need to do a good job. I am motivated, it interests me. But I truly am overwhelmed sometimes. Textbooks don't try to teach what I'm teaching. I can't simply pick one up and follow it. The trouble at the moment is I am trying to remember or rather collate from scratch, rules for pronunciation based on spelling. I think this has gone out of vogue in schools, for native and non-native speakers of English alike. They taught me some simple rules that have many exceptions, when I was in school. They actually are helpful. The reason they don't teach them is because there are so many exceptions. But my students today were thankful. If there is a double consonant, it means the vowel in front of it stays "short" rather than turning "long" due to the added e (or other vowel) after the double consonant. That is why "letter", is pronounced with the same e sound as "bed" and "meter" is pronounced with an "ee" sound. Why cat and sat sound one way and gate, fate sound another way. Nobody teaches these any more, and especially not for ESL students, who desperately need anything they can get their hands on for indicators of pronunciation. Anyways, when you start getting to double vowels, there are some that are complicated, because they don't really follow the rules. Still, there are a majority of words that are pronounced either of two ways, when there is an "ea" in the middle of a word, or an "ai".
I think these people that don't bother are just lazy. There is no good information gathered in one place on all this, on the internet, so I am trying to figure it out myself. Then I am trying to make up exercises (I don't make them all up; the one below isn't mine.)

Today I made them all go "rrrrrrr" "deh.... deh.... deh..." "vvvvvvvvvvvvv", because they can't do good r, d or v sounds. Especially not when r and d are combined at the end of a word, like "bird". That is very hard for them.
Bid, bed, bud, bead, board, beard, bard, bared, bird. You take these sounds for granted!
Each of those gets assigned a number. They try to tell the other guy their phone number, by saying the word that corresponds to each number. All of them had at least one mistake, more like 2 or 3. Spanish speakers can't distinguish well between bad and bud or beard and bird (and a few others, but mostly those).