Apparently, the answer to that question, when directed to me, is now yes.

On Monday, I spent the morning with Maria, working with secondary students. In the afternoon, I saw the primary students. Tuesday was mostly secondary students; today I spent the morning at the escuela infantil, essentially a preschool, and read The Gruffalo to the kids — a childrens’ book about a trickster mouse. Most of them probably understood nothing, but I used funny voices, and they were entranced — it was when I tried to do colors with them that they failed to pay attention. Any suggestions of songs to do with these kids? I don’t really remember any of my English songs.

The point of my being here is not to teach, per se, but rather to speak. I’m there to make the kids speak to me, to show them the right way of speaking and of pronouncing. The thing that makes this slightly difficult is that they’ve learnt primarily British English — television programme instead of show; rubbish rather than trash or garbage; rucksack instead of backpack. But I know all these words — I just need to remember to use them.

Let’s see: examples. With the first year of elementary students, Luis and I had them go through numbers, and color them, and write their names. With the sixth year students, we went over body parts and clothing. With third year high schoolers, we talked about good and bad habits. With fourth year high school students, I mostly answered English questions. The difficulty is with the classes where the students don’t really want to talk — I need to learn to draw them out. Part of the problem is that I’m not the primary teacher, so I can’t direct the themes of what we’re studying. I need to get a good idea of the order of things, and plan ahead slightly. In some of my classes, we’ll be following along with their book, which is easy for me but less effective, I think; in other classes, I have more leeway. And then four times a week, I have groups of children for extra lessons — each group twice — where I get to plan everything. This is the most difficult. Ideally, I’d go into a library and check out kids’ books for them, but I can’t do that.

I also have a lesson with the teachers who want to work on their English, on Tuesday afternoons, and my plan is to print them articles from the Simple English wikipedia, and read through them together. Making them read aloud is good; I re-read the passages so they can hear correct pronunciation, although I know that’s sometimes frustrating. And then hopefully we will discuss them; we didn’t really do so this week. (We read the article on Jimi Hendrix, or the very beginning of it.) I think this is fairly good for them — but these articles are too advanced for most of my kids. So the point is that I’d like to give them stories, but I don’t think there’s much at a good level for them; I could also teach them basic phrases and get them acting, which works better. I want to force them to speak in English — that’s the point — not just to listen. My role is to facilitate conversation, not vocabulary.

The thing that fascinates me is how many of these students are at the same level of English, even though they’re in disparate years. It reminds me of the fact that my Spanish didn’t really improve between 7th grade and 11th grade, or between 3rd grade and 7th. I mean, sure, I understood more, but for all those years — from 2nd grade on! — my Spanish was pretty miserable. I mean, I suppose it still is.

And eh, folks — I know people are reading this. Possibly even my flatmates (hi, flatmates?!). Comment! Especially today, when I’m asking for advice of songs and ways of teaching.