Adventures in babysitting

February 18, 2008 by · Leave a Comment

So, I like to think of my job as glorified babysitting. I have kids as young as 11 who have no concept of discipline. They’re a bit like monkeys sometimes. Because most of the kids aren’t encouraged by their parents, most don’t want to learn and prefer to talk or sleep. Despite this, I’ve had some really good discussions (like about Physician Assisted Suicide) or kids who are really interested in what they’re learning.

**After I showed kids pictures of Chicago, one of my younger students went out and bought a Chicago Bulls backpack. I smile everytime I see him toting it through the hall.

**We planted trees in one of my classes, and the students invited me along. I got to be the pne who held the tree in the ground as two other students covered it in dirt, and the tree will apparently have my name associated with it. That’s pretty kick ass.

**On Valentine’s Day, I was talking about conversation hearts and the kids had to come up with their own in English. On the board, I wrote “xoxo” meaning hugs and kisses. Apparently that shorthand means “pus$y” Well done.

Hard to believe they let me be alone with young minds, eh?

Filed Under: Auxiliar Program, Auxiliares Norteamericanos, IES Heliche, OOPS, teach abroad ·

All the small things and Thanksgiving without a turkey

November 25, 2007 by · 2 Comments

Have you ever had a moment in your life where you just feel happier than ever, like you could just burst because you’re so full of emotion? That you’ve finally realized that things have fell into place, that every single moment is being encapsulated in your brain? That you can finally let go of all the crappy things, all the plans you’ve made and just let your life take its course? Geez, I sound ridiculous, but I have done an incredible amount of smiling this week. (An incredible amount of working and partying, too, resulting in seven hours of sleep between Thursday and Friday nights, but anyway…).

I had one of those moments on Thursday evening. I met my boss Elizabeth from WLS at a bar for a coffee and we sat for a while waiting for David, my other boss. I could have been using that time to sleep (which I really needed), workout, clean the house…but I was happy to have a friend and drink a really strong cafe con leche. I completely forgot about the millions of things that needed to get done by the start of the next week, and it seems I’ve adopted the “mañana, mañana” attitude of the Andalusians – I’ll do it tomorrow.

WLS was collaborating with FARBEN, a cultural integration company run by a German man named Mattius, and helping out at a short film festival in the town of Sanlucar la Mayor, about 10 miles outside of Sevilla and just a few south of Olivares. David’s mom drove the three of us, plus two little Ecuadorian boys she babysits, to the venue. Sitting scrunched between David and the little boys, Michel and Carlos, listening to Spanish pop music and Elizabeth singing them, staring out the window at a beautiful country with beautiful people, I was instantly happy. Something inside of me just felt right, like everything in my life had finally started to add up. I had a rough summer, but I made the right decision in coming here because I can finally push those things out of my mind. Here, I’ve established myself and have numerous friends. I love my job, good and bad things. I delight in the little things, like being able to sing the words to a Spanish song in the car or in a bar. People at bars and shops know me from my frequent visits. Every single day brings a new person, a new place and a new reason for me to be happy. I couldn’t imagine not having done this. Working a real job is not for me at this moment; I can work later.

Speaking of the future, I met with my coordinator, Nieves, last week to discuss how things were going at IES Heliche. Martin often feels that his students aren’t learning anything because they’re so noisy. He asked if I had the same problem, and I do to an extent. He then proposed switching classes and schedules at the end of the term next month. I won’t let him do it. I’ve started to feel really comfortable with my students and the teachers, and I finally understand their level, how to plan an effective lesson and how to find the classroom I’m going to. I have to say I’m lucky – I get to teach in a small town that’s SO Spanish it’s really Spanish, my coworkers are supportive and funny, and I’ve found it’s a really good fit for me. I mentioned to Nieves that I’m dreading the end of the curso because I’ll have to go back to the US, at least until the start of the next year. She gave me a puzzled look, and I told her that I was heavily considering coming back another year and resuming my job if they’d let me come back. Really, I want to delay the real world another year and be Spanish a bit longer, and I want to see how the bilingual program plays out. Nieves gave me a hug and said, “Yes! Yes! We’ve been so impressed with you and Martin and the students love you both! Please come back!” Why would I go anywhere else? Even with the long commute, often before the sun comes up, I look forward to going to work. Why would I want to break up the flow I’ve got going?

road to the fort that sits off the coast of Cadiz, the oldest continually inhabited cities in Europe

After an all night party in Huelva after a Thanksgiving dinner with chicken, Eva and I went to Cádiz, braving 12 degree weather and a rain storm to see the coast. It amazes me that it was her first time outside of Sevilla in three months or so. I’ve already been to two other countries and several other cities! I was happy to spend time with her, though, because I really will miss her when she goes back to Germany next month. And it was wonderful seeing Cadiz – it’s just two hours from Sevilla, but it feels worlds away. More exotic, more laid back, more colorful. Spain is a country that’s much more complex than people imagine. Just as the US changes character from north to South, East to West, Spain is the same. The differences between Castilla y Leon, where I studied, and Andalusia, where I live now, are endless. But I like the change. That’s why I cam to Spain in the first place – a change and a challenge.

All week, I taught my kids about Thanksgiving. I joked around with them that I was thankful for sunglasses because Spain is sunny and manchego cheese because it’s three times as expensive in the US, and they laughed. But I am incredibly indebted to Aubree for letting me know about this program, lucky to have a great piso with really great roommates, to have a family that supports me through this even when they miss me, to have found some really nice friends, to be able to travel and experience new things and let go of all of the negativity I had all summer. In the four months between graduating college and moving here, I always saw the coming year as a big wall. I didn’t know what was on the other side, nor who. It approached quickly and grew bigger and bigger. There was a lot of uncertainty in whether or not I would be happy here and whether or not I made the right decision. But it’s clear now that I have. I have to take the good with the bad, deal with the dog poop on the street and questioning my Spanish skills constantly, adapt to not having an oven or hair that behaves. If nothing else, it makes for a kick ass story.

Filed Under: holidays, teach abroad ·

Little Victories

November 9, 2007 by · 1 Comment
When you’re a TEFL teacher, or even just a language assistant in my case, you come to learn that the little things make your job really worthwhile. And in a place like Olivares, where a survey to poll favorite classes ends up failing because the kids don’t like school or see its importance, this is especially true.
Yesterday, I had two classes of 4ESO to teach. Both classes were working on past simple irregular. I was so excited to (cheat and) find a great song with a ton of examples of past simple irregulars like “found” and “woke” and “was” to use. The song is an old favorite of mine, Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss” as it reminds me of my first boyfriend, Nick Pohl. I downloaded the song, put it onto a blank CD, copied the lyrics into Word, blanked out the irregular past simple verbs and came up with some warm up activities. I was ready to face one of the tougher groups – the young groups don’t behave, the older groups don’t participate, and 4ESO doesn’t behave OR participate.
The activity went like this: In class, I asked the students if they like American music. They all screamed, “YES! YES TEACHER!” I figured as such, as most music on 40 principales is American pop. I then asked what American singers or groups they liked. Most came up with Rihanna, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake. “Good,” I said, “all good examples.” I wrote the name of the band on the chalkboard and asked if anyone knew them. They didn’t, so I told them they ere a very famous group from the 1990s, then played the song. In the cloze activity, students were to listen to the song once through to get used to it, then listen a second and third time and try to come up with the words for the corresponding blanks. For example, “When I _____ (to wake) up, the raining was pouring down.” I then gave the students a little time to check their books or ask their classmates for help before we went over the song as a group and decided which verbs were irregular and why. I still had some time left over, and, being a super prepared teacher, I asked them reading comprehension questions. But something as simple as, “What happened to the girl?” Are too much. I need to break down the question into, “How many people are in the song?” and “Where are they?” for the students to begin to understand that there is a car accident. Since this group of 4ESOC is a bit more advanced, we even got to talk about driving safety, since they are about 16 or 17.
In 4ESOB, we didn’t get quite that far. I’ve found that if things are a bit off from a rule or exception, there are a million questions. Most of the time, I don’t have the answer. And when I asked what happened to the girl, it took me 5 minutes to solicit an answer of “She died.” I got everything from “Ella le dio luz a un bebe” (She gave birth) to “He killed the man in the other car” before Silvia stepped in to help. I practically rejoiced when the students understood.
When I only get one hour every other week with students, it’s really hard to measure their progress. But my job here isn’t to produce fluent little students – it’s merely to help teachers establish a curriculum and to practice their English. I’m fortunate to have 7 hours in the classroom actually working with students. And I love that they ask when I’m coming or come up to me and say one simple sentence and run away giggling. It’s fun. In some ways, I wish I could just travel and pick up odd jobs and meet new people every day (which is why traveling alone is so freaking fun). Here in Sevilla, I’ve got a contract and I’ve got to start a life and worry about making rent and keeping up with friends when it costs 53 cents a minute to call. But I like the stability and I like being established. In fact, I got an internship with We Love Spain, a student involvement group, and my pet projects will be talking to volunteer orgs and setting students up with opportunities to get involved while they’re here (can we say, my thing exactly?). I think it will also give me the chance to meet new people, even if they’re only here for a little while like Jost.
For the December puente, I’m off to Brussels, Belgium for a weekend because I found 4 tickets, roundtrip, for 106 euro TOTAL. For four of us. I love Ryan Air. Maybe one day I’ll be rich enough to buy every airline and provide low-cost tickets to everyone to any destination because this world is too big to only see part of it. For now, I’m just fine wandering.
And now, I leave you all (in particular Matt Kyhnn) with a picture of a swan from Galway as big as a smartcar. Un abrazo.

Filed Under: Auxiliar Program, Auxiliares Norteamericanos, Language Assistants Program, teach abroad, TEFL ·

Spain and (a lack of) Discipline

October 25, 2007 by · Leave a Comment

I love my job. I really do. Even when it’s a pain  to plan lessons that teachers won’t let you give and you waste an afternoon looking for an internet cafe that’s actually open, I look forward to taking the bus in the morning with the students and arriving to class late (as the buses, like everything here, are quite unreliable) and getting poked in the hallway so students can say, “Hello, CAT!” to me. It’s fantastic. Really, really fantastic.But things in Spain are so different. Yesterday, in IBach, which is like junior year of high school age-wise, we talked about the students’ favorite subject. Naturally, none of the students liked English best, but when I asked them why (an ESL’s teachers favorite question), they said they have no choice – they have to take it. They could care less, which makes me feel like I’ve been failing IES Heliche because I can’t finish lessons. I spend a lot of my time going over directions several times or waiting for replies. I’ve resorted to using the attendance sheet to just call on people so I don’t stand up front looking like an idiot all the time. Most of the time I can’t understand them due to the echo anyway, but I think they probably make fun of me a lot, too.Today, no one bothered to inform me that the 4ºESO, aka the only level I teach today, has some kind of field trip to Sevilla to see a museum or a play or whatever. So, in my first class, half the alumnosgot up and left. And the teacher didn’t tell me until afterward that they had some activity planned. Apparently half the teachers didn’t know the activities department had been planning this trip for 4ºESO kids with good behavior (though I think walking out on a teacher while she’s in the middle of a lesson is NOT good behavior and rather rude). I had another class later with no students, so Angela took me along to her 2ºESO class. I hadn’t prepared anything, but she wanted me to teach them requests. Ok, fine, but I need some kind of prompt or at least a three-minute review of what I have to do. I may have a journalism degree, but I know NOTHING about grammar. At least not how to introduce it. I know Spanish grammar rules because they were actually taught to me, whereas English I just…learned. But it was impossible for me to teach anyway because the kids in the class are like monkeys. I tried to teach them a sign that would tell them to be quiet, and they loved it. The first time. After that, it was hopeless. Kids were fighting and hitting and calling each other names and walking out of class, and Angela didn’t do anything. I don’t think that she’s necessarily apathetic, but she knows it’s a cultural thing. In Spain, children are revered and thus able to do anything they want. Angela has been called out several times for raising her voice in class to calm the kids down, but this is outside the teacher’s code she says. Rosario, a girl who should really be in 4ºESO but hasn’t passed her classes two years in a row, came up to the chalkboard and banged the hard, wooden side of the erased against the board several times. The noise was obnoxious, but it shut the kids up for a while. It was then that I heard at least the same noise in at least one more classroom. I’m not the only one with this problem. Stupid hormonal 14 year olds.Thank goodness for Halloween lessons next week and a long weekend (aka IRELAND!!!!)

Filed Under: IES Heliche, teach abroad ·

Instituto Carcel Olivares

October 4, 2007 by · Leave a Comment

I think my school looks like a gigantic jail. Ok, so the school only has 1000 kids, and it’s not scary or unsafe and there aren’t any gangs, but it seriously looks like a penitentiary, Martin and I decided during the longest bus ride home ever. The first things you see is a low wall full of graffiti, followed by a seven-foot wrought iron gate. Since Andalucía is so hot and dry, there’s hardly any vegetation inside the gates. You have to be buzzed in after school hours to both the school grounds AND the school door. No one has keys but the grounds keepers and the lady who works in the cantina. Nieves, my boss, assures me that this is for security so no one breaks into the school (to what, steal the 12 computers that are inside?) or vandalizes the property.

IES Heliche draws in students from three different towns, like Olivares and Albaida, and some other one I can’t pronounce. There are 1000 kids, aged 12-16, then some in the bachillerato program up to 18. Eighty teachers, then Martin and myself. They’re all quite nice, including the administration class. Martin and I were done after out 11:55 department meeting, but we stayed another two hours introducing ourselves to everyone, from the art teacher to the man who writes our checks, Paco. The English department is wonderful: Charo and Asun speak brilliant English with British accents, Nieves is so sweet, Sylvia is very beautiful, Angela is funky, Miguel is fascinated with the United States, Valle is nice enough to offer me rides, Rocio is quiet but always smiling. Martin and I round out the bunch.

Today, like yesterday, I didn’t know what to expect. I had to get up super early to be at work by 830 since there was no direct bus. I didn’t bother to look at the times until about 20 minutes before the bus came, so I ran part of the way to get there on time. Like all things in Spain, the bus was late. And because I didn’t know where to get off since I took the wrong bus, I was nervous about missing the stop since it was still dark out. Luckily, I quickly realized that all of my fellow passengers were students and Rocio. Success. I was able to make it in time to my first class with Angela, a second year group.

Olivares is a very traditional Andalusian town, and many parents don’t encourage their children in any subjects, much less English. I could tell this right away in the class because the students all had low marks on their diagnostic test, had to be told multiple times to sit down or be quiet or write down notes, and hardly spoke my language at all. They were so confused how I could live in Spain and not speak theirs (I was told not to tell them I spoke Spanish so they could practice more). Even though they are in the second year, we just reviewed possessive pronouns and how to form questions. The most confusing part to them was not having a question mark at the beginning of a sentence to mark it as a question. Or why the tu and vosotros form is the same. Either way, I wasn’t nervous (the students thought I looked bored, but I was really exhausted), and I’m looking forward to planning lessons and teaching. The difficult part is that some classes I will only be in every other week, or sometimes even every third week. This will inevitably make it difficult in some ways to be consistent, even within levels.

I had some “planning” time in which I had some coffee, paced around the box that serves as the English department office, leafed through some books and kind of just stared at the wall until Nieves and Martin joined me so we could talk more about the curriculum. After the recreo, we had a department meeting. It was actually hilarious how they would start talking in English, then switch to Spanish and the Charo, the department head, would make a random comment in English. But it was here that I learned how dire the education system is in Spain. These poor people deal with bureaucracy, students who aren’t motivated by parents, many whom fail year after year, and low pay. They’re expected to implement all kinds of new programs, but don’t have the money to make it happen or the time to plan it. It’s very frustrating to them, and I’m now happy to have the education that I have. Tomorrow we do get some reprieve and we have to go to a mandatory meeting right in Cartuja, about a 20 minute walk for me. Then it’s on to Huelva to see the girls for their housewarming party!!

Filed Under: Auxiliar Program, Auxiliares Norteamericanos, IES Heliche, teach abroad ·

First Day of Work at IES Heliche

October 3, 2007 by · Leave a Comment

The past few days were quite the adventure. After skipping out on orientation yesterday with my new friends to go explore and eat (seriously, I was ready to dive off the balcony head first, I was SO bored), I settled into my new apartment. Apparently my Spanish roommate is not here, the German girl has found a second job and is gone all day, and my apartment has been taken over by a smelly woman who is staying in Melissa’s room while her husband has surgery. After I moved all of my things in, I walked around the city. It was about 7 pm, so things were starting to get dark and the lights were coming on. Triana is amazing. This is where the gypsies and the poor fisherman once lived. It’s colorful and mysterious and almost magical. My apartment is in close proximity to a lot of things, and a walk to the bars on C/Betis takes 5 minutes. It started to rain as I walked home, but I loved getting drenched. Who said the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain? NOT TRUE!

I started my job as an auxiliar de conversation (language and conversation assistant) at IES Heliche today. I hopped on bus M270 just a few blocks from my place and rode the direct line into Olivares ( or so I thought). It’s incredible how much the city changes when you’re outside the center. The towns are all centered around a roundabout off the highway with no shoulder, and each one was a different hue – from white to yellow to burnt orange. The hills, covered in olive trees, spread out any direction, only broken by small, crumbling farmhouses. It made the trip go much faster. I asked the bus driver to let me off as close as possible to Heliche, and she slammed on the brakes (I was the only one aboard anyway) and told me, “BÁJATE, BAJATE!” So I got off and walked along the highway for a while like a campesino until I found an open cafeteria. I couldn’t understand a word the nearly toothless bartender was saying, but a very nice woman with a heavy accent was kind enough to tell me I was not even in Olivares anyway, but in Albaida. They’re next to one another, but I would need to walk a long way. So I set off, having 40 minutes to just walk up to the plaza, hang a left, wind around til I got to the health center, turn left again and go through some gates to the school. I wasn’t even two blocks away when a horn honked and the woman opened her car door and offerred to take me. She said it was obvious I was a foreigner.

I walked around the dead streets for a little while, just taking in the beautifully decorated exteriors of the white churches and the barred windows guarding “moda” inside that looked like it could have come from the 80s. I mistakenly wandered into the private gardens of some little house, thinking it was the other gate of the school since they have an extensive garden from what I’ve read. A man in a wheelchair with an even more thick accent told me I should leave, but then asked me how my day was going, so I don’t think he was mad.

At about half past 10, I followed a teacher past the gate and into the school. You’d think it was a penitentiary from the way there’s so much security! The woman had me sit on a bench next to an older man with wavy blond hair. As it turns out, Martin is the other auxiliar. He’s a forty-year old psychologist from Amsterdam, but his English and Spanish are impeccable. He’s on sabbatical until next June, kind of like myself. I just don’t know what I’m taking sabbatical from? Anyway, a wonderfully short, yet friendly lady named Nieves showed us to the English department office, a small room with just a little light and a broken computer near the school’s main entrance. Apparently our job is not what we expected (not like I went to orientation anyway…). Martin and I will be spending half of our time in the classroom helping the teachers and helping to establish an English curriculum, and the other half will be only in conversation with the teachers in a lounge. Some of the teachers will be teaching English, while the others just want to improve because the school will become bilingual in the future. I work every day but Tuesday, making travel difficult, but many of the teachers live in Sevilla and offered us rides. They’re all so nice. They make such an effort to test out their skills and are interesting in their own right. Thursdays will be my busiest day – I start at 830 am and teach/converse for three hours before the 30 minute break, then attend a teacher’s meeting. Very exciting.

As it turns out, Martin is very nice and bought me lunch in exchange for letting him use my Internet. I think we will be pals. Ok, out to explore. It’s beautiful out here, and I need to find out where I’m going on Friday!

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Filed Under: IES Heliche, teach abroad, TEFL ·
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