Bonus post: Ser and Estar review

Ser and estar are taught many different ways. If a student has a method that works for them, they should use it! At our school, the Spanish 2 teachers have agreed that we will offer the same memorization techniques. The standard technique is:

SER:
TOPPNIC
Time
Origin
Possession
Profession
Nationality
Inherent Characteristic

ESTAR:
HELPS
Health
Emotion
Location
Progressive tense
civil Status

When I was in school, SER and ESTAR were taught differently, and I offer this technique to my students as well. I was taught that SER is used for things that are mostly permanent and that cannot be changed or only with tremendous difficulty, and ESTAR is used for things that are mostly temporary (with 2 notable exceptions). I know you can argue these and find all sorts of reasons it doesn't work, but you just have to go with it!

Using the TOPPNIC and HELPS categories to provide examples, you can see how this works:

TIME cannot be changed, it goes on its own merry way
ORIGIN is where you are from, can't change that
PROFESSION is hard to change, requires training, learning curve, whatever.
POSSESSION is hard to change, what's mine is mine
NATIONALITY is hard to change, you'd have to move, take a citizenship test, learn another language, etc.
INHERENT CHARACTERISTIC short of surgery, hard to change. Even though you can color your hair, it still grows out in your natural color. Change can happen very slowly on it's own time, you can't do anything to move it along. As I always like to say, "once an idiot, always an idiot."

HEALTH changes quickly, you get sick you get better.
EMOTION changes very easily, especially in the teen years.
LOCATION is one of the exceptions. In some ways, location is very temporary, I get up and move easily. But estar is also used to locations like Denver is in Colorado. Denver is not going anywhere, but it's a location so it uses estar.
PROGRESSIVE TENSE by definition is changing, it is happening right now but subject to instantaneous change.
CIVIL STATUS is the other exception. This means anything you could get a certificate for the government for: birth (being alive), death (being dead), married, divorced.

I hope that helps! email me with questions.