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Published: November 3rd 2015
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Back Part of My School
Sorry--don't have a picture of the front! Let me back up and explain how I’m living in Spain legally. Believe me, it was a hassle and a half to find a “stable” “job” teaching English in a Spanish-speaking country. Eventually I found this program, which is called North American Culture and Language Assistants Program or the ‘Auxiliars’ Program.
It’s run by the Spanish government, and the roles are mostly similar to English Program in Korea (EPIK). The main differences are:
-it’s about a third of the pay (factoring in Korean bonuses like flights and apartment rent); I’m essentially making a sacrifice with money and professional development to be more immersed in Spanish
-we’re only required to be at school for 12 hours/week (whereas in Korea you typically have to be at school 35 hours even if you only teach 12 hours)
-this program doesn’t require an interview or teaching experience and does nothing to help with professional development (in contrast to EPIK’s week-ish orientation + the opportunity from the Daegu branch when I participated to earn my TESOL certificate)
-this program assumes you speak the language—you’re not given any assistance in getting set up here (in contrast to in Korea being
Poster in My School
A quote from Malala Yousafzai bussed to meet coteachers on the first day, and coteachers helping with social security number, banking, apartment setup etc.)
Similarities are:
-we should only be assisting in classes, not teaching—this can become a bit of a blurred line at times
-we can only put preferences for places we’d like to live and ages we’d like to teach, but applicants may end up in a very different situation than they imagined when they applied
-both have a lot of school holidays and possibilities to travel
-lots of ‘expats’ and especially Americans in the programs
-strong Facebook presence for members which makes it relatively easy to find information and make connections
So, to focus on me again . . . my school is in a pueblo (small town) in the province of Lugo, about 30 minutes from Ourense. I could have lived in that pueblo, in the small city of Monforte de Lemos, or the city of Lugo, but in the end I chose Ourense because of its size and the availability of coteachers to drive me to school. Luckily, my schedule is only to go to school Tuesday, Thursday, and
Halloween Pumpkins
My Galician students made the best pumpkins I've ever seen! a half-day on Friday. There are so few people in the area that my school (called a CPI) goes all the way from 3 year-olds to 16 year-olds in one building. Each grade has only one class, and there are between 7 and 20 kids in each, depending on the grade. I work with the 3rd to 6th grade kids twice a week, in English class and in art class (‘Plásticas’), and then the junior high/high school kids from 7th to 10th grade (‘ESO’) just once a week, in English class.
Some of the kids live in the town, but others live in the surrounding countryside in ‘aldeas’, which are villages of just a few houses. Farming plays a huge role in many of my students’ lives. Enjoy the following tidbits related to farming:
-the first week, with the fourth graders, we talked about what they want to be when they grow up. Out of a group of 4 boys, 1 wanted to be a pilot, and 3 wanted to be farmers (each one wanted to specialize in pigs, cows, and goats, respectively). There are few places in the world that kids think it’s interesting to
become farmers, but Galicia is one of those places.
-there’s
a (only one) vending machine in the town. It only sells milk.
-a fifth grade boy told me last week that the day before his family had bought a black pig. After further inquiries, this is in preparation for the matanza (‘the killing’), a traditional pig slaughter/feast at the beginning of December. That pig needs to get fat for the future.
-during the ice-breaking ‘Two Truths and a Lie’ game, more than one student used the sentence ‘I have a tractor’.
As far as I can tell, the students and teachers speak to each other in Galician, not in Spanish. For almost all of them, it’s their first language and the language they speak at home. The younger kids even speak to me in Galician instead of Spanish (or ideally English). I only really understand if they use words that happen to be similar to words in Spanish. I’ve heard hearsay that we Auxiliars should only speak English in the program, but if that were the case, none of the kids would listen. So if kids don’t understand, I sandwich the Spanish in between
Halloween Pumpkins
Notice the hamburger in the bottom left the English sentence repeated. Hopefully as the year progresses, they’ll get better with the key phrases I speak.
The other teachers at the school also speak Galician to each other, so it’s been even more difficult to participate in conversations than if they were in Spanish (but even in Spanish it would be hard). With Spanish I can usually pick up the main idea of the conversation, but it’s hard to jump in and contribute. The other teachers are friendly to me, but it’s been difficult to make coworker-friends. It’s also that even in Spanish, conversation topics can be a bit lame due to my limited vocabulary/lack of cultural knowledge.
It’s interesting for me to see what a difference it makes to be able to get the gist of what my students are saying in their native languages, in comparison to in Korea, where I probably had just a quarter of what I understand of Spanish. I think understanding their language more helps a lot for me to be able to build my teacher-student relationship with them. I can help them express themselves and also show that I care. A situation I had in
Korea occasionally was seeing kids in troubling situations—upset about things or suspecting others were teasing them—and I didn’t have the means to really communicate with them. At least here I feel like I’d have a better ability, even if we couldn’t understand each other completely.
As usual, my favorite classes are sixth to eighth grade. Almost all of the students are enthusiastic about me; just the ninth grade class is a handful, and the tenth grade class needs a bit of a push. This is the first time I’ve worked in classrooms with elementary students, and they aren’t as bad as I anticipated. The only drawbacks are occasionally having to sing and sometimes chastise students for too much rambunctiousness/drama (“it’s MY turn to use the silver marker”).
Something I’ve already noticed is the relationship between students and teachers. Students all call the teachers by their first names! And in Spanish, kids have talked to me in the informal ‘you’ tense (tú and not usted). More than that, students seem to be given lots of autonomy. At least in art and English class, teachers give them different choices for what they do. Apparently the 6
th Poster Related to the Holiday Magosto
We celebrated at my school on the same day we celebrated Halloween. It involved a lot of chestnuts (which you can see in the poster)! grade kids are planning a ski trip on their own over the winter holidays, and they are planning to fundraise for it as well.
For the older kids, I’ve noticed that life has to be kind of boring. There may be 40 kids within 2 years of their age that they’ve known since they were 3 years old. It doesn’t make for a very exciting social life/dating pool.
And I know you're anxious to hear about the school lunch! Twice a week, I eat school lunch. Despite my fears of excessive ham (jamón), it hasn’t been too bad. There is usually fresh fruit, some type of soup or stew (usually my favorite part of the meal because it’s typically vegetables and chickpeas or beans), a main course (fish, pizza, hamburger patty . . .), sometimes lettuce with a light dressing, or sometimes yogurt, and always bread. There is only water available (no milk, juice, pop, etc.).
I have lots more to say, but I’ll save that for a future post!
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