I'm back!

After a very long hiatus, I am back!  Since I have been teaching for about a month now, I think I can finally fill you all in on my adventures in teaching.  The Spanish education system is set up slightly differently from the American system.  Obligatory schooling only goes up through what we consider 10th grade.  After that students can attend prep school(which is free) to prepare for University, or they can attend a vocational school, or begin working.  The way the obligatory schooling is set up is with the primary school which starts at age 3 and goes through 6th grade.  Then they have secondary school which they refer to as years 1-4, instead of grades 7-10.  I  work with years 3-6 in the primary school and years 1-4 in the secondary school, and I'm with each class about one hour a week.  Depending on which school I'm in, or what teacher I'm with I have a different role.  In the primary school, the English teacher sits in the back of the room and I run the class for an hour.  In the secondary schools, I'm more of an assistant in the class and we're still trying to really figure out my role.

In Spain, there is a push to increase the mastery of multiple languages, and many schools have subjects which are taught in Spanish and English.  In some schools it's music, in others it's physical education and in my school it's art.  I work mostly in the English classes, but I also help in the art class in the secondary school. Fun fact: in Spain, art class also includes geometry.  I haven't taken geometry since freshman year of high school, so I'm a little rusty.  The students work on problems during the class and the teacher typically walks around the class and answers any of their questions, typically in English.  So that's what I am doing as well.  And while I can help them understand that regla is a ruler, I'm pretty useless when they ask me how to find the perpendicular line bisector using a protractor.  So if nothing else, I am definitely brushing up on my protractor skills and the properties of a triangle.

The English classes in the secondary school can be bit challenging.  Being a middle school teacher requires a certain type of personality, and if nothing else my first month has reinforced that it is not a viable career option for me when I return.  They can be very talkative and very difficult, so everyday you have no idea what to expect with them.  And in Spain, deadlines aren't as strictly enforced as in the US.  The first week I was teaching I made a simple powerpoint for the English classes for years one and two in the secondary school about myself.  It was very basic with pictures of my family, my house, my school, all in all maybe 8 slides.  We told the students they needed to bring in something similar about themselves the next week.  Fast forward 4 weeks, we still are not done, in year 2 half of them don't even have it finished yet, and while they presented the majority of them spent more time talking in Spanish.  But now I know, this is not something to continue with.  Live and learn, right?  In year 4 since they have a better grasp of the language, I did a presentation on Connecticut and then in pairs they all picked a state to present on.  Because of the way a few holidays fell, we've only had time for two presentations.  Both were well done, and I was very impressed with the presentation on Massachusetts since it went into a lot of detail about the state.  As I was reading the report they handed in, at first I was very impressed with their almost flawless grammar, but about two sentences in, I realized the grammar was a little too good.  Also, I can spot a wikipedia entry a mile away.  When I found the English wikipedia entry on Massachusetts, I realized it was word for word what they had handed in.  That was a little frustrating.

As frustrated as I get with secondary school, I love working at the primary school!  The students all listen to me for the most part and are very well behaved.  It's amazing the difference between the students in year six of the primary school and year one in the secondary school.  The students in year six are remarkably well behaved, and unlike the students in their first year, they will take the time to struggle through forming an English sentence whereas the others will revert back to Spanish once they get frustrated.  I think part of the problem is that the students in year one in the secondary school are more self-conscious now that they are older, and they would rather speak in Spanish than risk making a mistake in English.  But, the English teacher at the primary school has told me that her students love me, and they always ask when I will be coming to teach.  An even bigger compliment was when she told me that some students who won't participate in her class, participate in mine.  It was definitely encouraging to hear that, because I have no teaching experience so sometimes I feel really lost in front of the classroom.