ne: So I’ve now been working for two weeks, no? I’m starting to learn students’ names; I’m beginning to make sense of where things are. I don’t know if I can say that I’m getting the hang of things, because it’s half-true and half not-true-at-all. I see students once a week — for the most part — which means I’ve only had two classes with most of them. It’s interesting how much variety I end up with, as a result of all this — variety that’s somewhat nice, but also somewhat frustrating, since it makes it hard to play. If I had, like many teachers do in the US, 5 classes a day of the same subject, I could plan things out with them — but instead I have essentially 18 classes a week, all different. A few use the same book, but they need to go at different speeds.

Besides which, not all of my classes have books. On Wednesdays, I spend three hours at the Escuela Infantil, where I work with three classes — one of 3-year-olds, one of 4, and one of 5. Clearly, these kids are still learning to read (if that); they’re not about to have a book. We do have a book for them, however; it’s this ridiculous suite of materials called Cheeky Monkey. With them, I get to read stories (in English); I get to review things like colors and numbers, and try to get them to speak some English. It’s not an easy task. But they’re pretty adorable, and I like working with kids. So I don’t mind yet.

Escuela Infantil students play in the courtyard before school begins

Of course, I spend most of my time in the main school (note that here, and elsewhere, the links go to extra pictures I didn’t want to post in the main entry), where both the primary and secondary students are. I usually get off at the Esperanza stop, which is a simpler walk to the school although I’m not convinced that it’s any faster (I think it may be slower, since it’s one stop further on the metro). Here, most of the time I am just teaching from a book; in two or three classes we do speaking activities, in two classes we’re reading plays (well, sort of — they have The Tempest and Macbeth, but only in the sense that they have texts with those names; it’s actually a comic book sort of thing with paragraphs of description — not actually half-bad). In the first and second years of primary school, we’re essentially working with kids who speak no English, so we have very basic work with them.

I also have four hours a week of lecciones extra-escolares, which is to say kids who’ve signed up for more English each week. These classes I give on my own, which is vaguely difficult. I have two with primary students, and two with secondary students. The plan, at least, is to spend one class each week on vocabulary (we did music, this week), and one class each week on grammar. The difficulty is that I have to provide all the material myself — they already have two English books. And their language skills aren’t really high enough to be reading much. The secondary students are very good; the primary students are vaguely difficult to work with, and kind of roudy. They’re adorable, though:

some of the primary students in the extra lessons

In any event, it’s pretty good thus far; I have some planning to do before next week’s classes, but I’m actually enjoying this fairly well, I think.

I’ve also been hanging out with friends, of course. First off, I’ve been hanging out with my flatmates, who are all pretty awesome. Juliette’s boyfriend is visiting, and he’s cool; I’ve gone out with pretty much everyone except for Chloe, who’s been out of town a bunch. I like them, and they’re fun to spend time with. I’ve also spent some time with one of Aitor’s friends, Pier, as well as going out with Angie (we went to a bar with some of her friends), who I know from Haverford, and Emily and some of her friends. Emily introduced me to her friends Mateo and Ashley, who I really quite like; all three of them are also teaching in schools here. (As is Angie, actually, but she’s got a Fulbright.) I haven’t seen Aitor, and I’m kind of sad about that, but such is as things are. And, of course, I’d like to meet some Spaniards, but we’re working on that — and I’m becoming friends with my fellow-teachers, so we’ll see how that goes.

The other night, Emily, Mateo, Ashley, and I went to a bar Mateo likes, in Tribunal/Malasaña, called Café Manuela. It’s got cheap drinks, and board games; it’s a cool place.

Emily standing on the Calle de San Vicente Ferrer

We had some food, drank some (inexpensive) beer, and played games. We tried playing Cranium, but the games are (perforce) in Spanish, and although we understood them, our cultural knowledge of Spain is lacking. We couldn’t do the facts, much less the humming popular songs. So after a bit we gave up, and just played Pictionary. Which was tons of fun. I was doing very badly at first, but then I got on top of things, and although I still can’t draw, it was fun. It’s always fun to watch how once the game goes off-track (that’s a baby!) it’s almost-impossible for it to get back on-track (oh wait, no, it’s a crystal ball). For example, witness this last image (and I’ll leave you with it), of exactly that problem: Mateo with his fortune teller:

Mateo in Manuela's in Malasaña

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.