Believe it or not, I am actually working here in Spain. In fact, I have more than one job! In addition to being an Auxiliare de Conversación (aka a teaching assistant) at the primary/elementary school Ciudad de Roma, I also have private classes in the evenings.
Fernando and Belén are perhaps the cutest kids ever. Belén is an adorable little girl in the 4th grade who attends my school, and Fernando is her 12 year old brother. On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:30-8:30, I sit with them in their small study room in their apartment, and we work on their English. We’ve established pen-pal relationships with my dear friends Quinton White and Anna Beth Bonney. We read stories, we played word games, and we’ve written and illustrated our own Halloween story-books. I really love working with these two kids because they speak English really well and we can do so many different kinds of activities and they can just tell me about their day or their weekend. Every time I leave our class, I feel fulfilled and happy, even after the roughest and longests days of working with children.
Another class that I’m enjoying is also on Tuesdays and Thursdays. From 5:30-6:30, I work with 3 year old twin boys, Marcos and Aitor. Yes, I said three year old twin boys. I can’t really call it an English class, because it’s more like glorified babysitting in their second language. Their parents, Marisa and Javier, have lived in the states for a few years and they want the boys to start getting accustomed to hearing English. Since these two rambunctious boys don’t want to speak in English with Mommy and Daddy, I’m spending time with them in the afternoons to help facilitate their English-learning. The first few days were a little rough. Aitor was attached at the hip to Mom and would start crying if she moved, but Marcos was (and still is) a fireball of energy that can’t be contained. As I have now visited the twins for the past three weeks, they are used to me, and sometimes they listen while I read them a story and sometimes we just play with their action figures or toy airplanes. Either Marisa or Javier is at the house at the same time, and by the end of my one-hour session, I’m normally just talking with Marisa. She’s darling too… they’re a baller family and seeing them a couple of times a week is such a pleasure.
My latest addition to my work schedule is working with more small children—three girls, Ana (almost 2), her sister Lucia (almost 4), and another child, Paloma (almost 3). I’ve only just started working with these two families, and it’s a little crazy. Ana is a little disaster. She will stumble in the room, grab all the crayons and throw them all over the floor or she’ll break the puzzle pieces or she’ll try to crawl onto the bed and just cause a raucous for her older sister Lucia. One of the parents will hear Lucia and Ana fussing and come in shoo Ana away, and I’m left with either just Lucia or Lucia and Paloma. All Paloma wants to do is “pintar” (or color). She didn’t really have much interest in my Halloween book that I brought one day. Likewise, Lucia would have nothing to do with me yesterday, and she sulked and cried when her mom told her to stay and play with me. I’m still working out my schedule with these two families, and as of right now I’m going three times a week, but we might up the ante in a month or so. Again, I wouldn’t dare call this a tutoring job but rather a crazy babysitting job like I’ve never experienced. I have to admit that right now, I prefer playing with the twin boys and with their race cars or farm toys… but maybe I need time to get adjusted to these little girls!
In addition to my private classes, I’ve been given a couple of additional classes at school that keep me there longer. Not that I’m complaining to have more classes with my 2nd graders, but it just make the days a little longer. Even though my program mandates that we work no more than 16 hours per week in our schools, we are still at school pretty much the whole day. Personally, I’d much rather be in a class all day long, working with the kids and the teachers, than having random gaps of time to burn. But here in Spain, that’s the way it goes!
In my first month of work, I feel like I have learned SO much. I am still trying to figure out my role in my school and how to best conduct my private classes. My schedule is still open to change (I’m working on having a couple more classes), and I’m still figuring out the best way to go about my daily routine here. I’m learning how to curve the need to have everything planned out perfectly, and I’m adapting to the flow of life here in Spain, where time is more fluid and life moseys along without much concern for whether it’s on time or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment