I guess I'm a teacher now

So, as you likely know by now, I'm here to be an English language assistant. I work at two schools in a town called Miajadas, which is about a half-hour drive from Don Benito, where I live. Because I don't have a car, my transportation situation is quite complicated. Even complicated might be an understatement. My mentor has organized a network of five teachers, including herself, who bring me to/from school throughout the week. I also take the bus a couple of days a week, when I don't have to be at work until late afternoon. I only work 12 hours a week, technically speaking, but I spend many more hours than that at school, hanging out between classes or waiting for a ride.

You're wondering, "What does she do when she's in class?" Good question. Because I'm an assistant, I have no hand in developing curriculum, determining what we'll cover in class, grading or disciplining students. That fun stuff is left to the teachers. My role, in its simplest form, is to talk to the kids and get them to speak English. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth - understandably so, because it can be intimidating to converse with a native speaker. I know the discomfort. 

At the public school, I teach English, social sciences and math. I've got a pretty good handle on English, but the other two subjects are by no means strengths of mine. However, I prepare and improvise quite well. My students are in their first, second and third years of ESO, which would loosely translate to sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades in the U.S. My youngest students at the public school are about 11 years old. I think my oldest are 15 or so. To be candid, when I was assigned that age group, I cringed. They're getting acne. Starting to like girls. Getting clique-y. Reaching puberty. However, I'm happy to say I've been pleasantly surprised. The kids in the first-year ESO classes are actually quite cute, and they're under the impression that I'm funny. They might even think I'm slightly cool, but I can't say for sure. The older students are pretty good, too. In general, they haven't yet hit the "too cool for school age," although a few of them make it clear they'd rather not be in class.

At the Catholic school, I work with elementary students mostly, but I have a couple classes with first-year ESO kids. I only help with English courses there. It's hard not to notice the difference in maturity and behavioral control between the ESO students and the elementary kids, who are between 7 years old and 10 or so. The youngins have a pretty good understanding of English (much better than most children their age in the States), but they simply don't behave as well. It's hard to keep them focused, especially when they're just so curious about me. They don't want to read about Javier and Maria's trip through the forest. Rather, they want to ask me, the blonde alien, questions about where I'm from, my favorite sports teams, my favorite color and whether I have a boyfriend (I've been asked those questions a lot thus far in all of my classes). They want to tell me about their dogs, their cousins who live in England and their dad's cousin's uncle's cat's trip to the United States. I'm sorry for the sarcasm here. The kids are adorable, really, but they're just that: kids, and kids will be kids, whether they're in a public school or a private one in Spain or America. They're exploding balls of energy, and if their fuse gets lit, duck for cover.

My degree of control over the lesson varies by class in both schools. In most of them, the teacher tells me what is on the docket for the day, and I decide how I'll teach it. In the English courses, there's usually some sort of reading material to look over and discuss. The formula for the non-English classes varies a bit more.

In the social sciences course, for example, the instructor one day said she wanted me to teach about the geography of the United States. The textbook, which is in English, had a world map but no specific information about my country. So, I improvised. For an hour, the students and I looked at the map, determining where different points of interest were and how they related directionally to each other. I showed them California, Nebraska, New York and Washington, D.C. and explained how California was west of Nebraska, D.C. is east of Nebraska, etc. They told me what they knew about each place, which admittedly wasn't much We talked about the Rocky Mountains (I explained the mountains gave the Colorado Rockies their name), the Appalachians and the varying regional climates. I kept it interactive, making sure the lesson was as much a conversation as a teaching/learning opportunity.

In that class, I've also taught about feudalism. Yes, medieval feudalism. You can imagine how hard it would be to get these kids to care about hundreds-of-years-old work/live situations in Spanish, let alone in English. But it went quite well, actually. I asked for volunteers to read, and I corrected pronunciation along the way. I also stopped whenever I saw what may have been a tricky word, and I had students who understood the word help me explain it to those who didn't. After we read, I put the students into small groups - each group was assigned the role of medieval lord, priest or peasant - and they told me what their place would've been in society. Did they own land? Did they pay taxes? Did they work the land? It ended up being a great learning activity, and they had to talk. That's the most important part.

For a math lesson about multiplication, division, addition and subtraction, I used word problems to practice vocabulary and math at the same time. To teach about digit placement (ones place, tens place, hundreds place, etc) I wrote a MASSIVE number on the board. That number was the U.S. debt. I wrote each individual digit from the debt on a card and gave one card to each student. I then asked, "Who has the digit in the billions place?," "Who has the digit from the ones place?", etc. The kids had to recognize where the billions, ones, tens, thousands place was, bring their number to the front of the class and write "billions," "thousands," "ones," etc., above their digit in the correct column. It turned out to be a great interactive activity - and a quick lesson on American debt.

Next week I have to teach about medieval trade relations and the area of triangles and squares. Wish me luck, and let's hope a bit of creativity and inspiration hits me soon.

Anything you want to know about Spanish schools or about my job specifically? Ask me!

Buenas tardes,
Teresa