Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
First week of Work in a big nutshell After a long awaited journey, I finally did what I came here to do: teach!

Monday, October 6th, was my first day of work: Let's briefly recap the events.

I met the other auxiliar working at my school, Shaina, at the bus station and we embarked on our .95 centavos, 10 minute long, luxury bus ride to Corrales. We arrived at noon where we briefly met with the director, Constanza. She apologized immensely and told us that she didn't have anything for us to do, but she offered instead to take us out for tapas :-) So, instead of working, Constanza, took us on a mini tour of Corrales and Huelva, showed us where we needed to go to obtain our legal documents, and then took us out for a beer and tapas! Haha I've never heard of any other school in the USA where the director leaves in the middle of the day to take the new teachers out for a beer. Either way, we left quite happy.

Day 2:


Upon arrival, I received my official schedule. Get ready to be jealous:
Monday: Day off!
Tuesday: 10:30am-3:00pm (With a recess break from 11:30-12)
Wednesday: 8:30am-1:00pm (With a recess break from 11:30-12)
Thursday: 8:30am-11:30am
Friday: Day off!!!

Hellllllo 4 day weekends every weekend!!!! The director even told me that if I'm traveling, I can call her and tell her I can't make it...she wants me to fully explore the wonderful world of Spain and all that it offers. I wish every boss in the world had the same mentality.

All of my days seemed like a crazy awkward blur, so I'll give a quick summary. My time at the school is more or less divided into two parts. For 3-4 hours each week, I have individual meetings with teachers to help them with their English. Since the school is working to become bilingual, I am especially working with the music, math, science, and English teachers to help answer specific grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation questions. It's a neat experience because although I've only been working at the school for one week, I feel like I have a closer connection with the teachers that I work directly with. They understand that while they spend one hour each week stumbling over their English words and constantly uttering "can you please repeat," that this is what we do day-in and day-out in Spain. They have gone out of their way and are more than enthusiastic to help us translate phrases and teach us typical Spanish slang. It's nice the have the special little tie.

The other half of my job consists of working directly with the students. In order to help them better their English, I have to pretend as if I don't speak Spanish while in the classrooms. At times this is extremely easy and I don't need to pretend because I really have no clue on Earth what they're saying. But at other points, all I want to do is laugh because I completely understand and think it's hilarious! It's more difficult than I thought it would be because a. I don't like lying to the kids (even though it's for their own benefit) and b. sometimes I feel like it'd be so much easier if I just explained it in Spanish! O well, this is the way it is so I'll get used to it!

So here's how part dos of my job works. Each class, the teacher selects four or five students to be a part of our little English group. While the other students are working as class with the teacher, I am able to individually give attention to select students. Our goal is to have each student have an hour of "group" time each month. During these sessions, I mostly work with the students on correcting homework, enhancing listening skills, and helping them become confident with their English skills. It's so neat to see how within an hour, these students have let down their guard and poco a poco, little by little, begin to speak with slight ease and confidence. Even though I thoroughly enjoy only having to work three days a week, this is a job that I just can't get enough of.

In addition, I've had a few random teaching experiences, such as playing American BINGO with the students (and yes, American BINGO is different than Spanish BINGO), demonstrating and dictating how to do a math problem in English, and pretty much just walking in the classrooms to say hi! Quite the variety of tasks.

Overall, the students have been so enthusiastic and receptive to us being a part of their school. No exaggeration, when I walk through the halls, the kids all pop out of their rooms and say "HALLO NICOLE!!!" It feels nice to belong to a small community. The only small problem I encountered was with a boy in my very first class...go figure. He kept telling the teacher (in Spanish), "I don't believe that she doesn't speak Spanish. How can she be living in Spain and not know how to speak Spanish?! You're lying or she's dumb!" With his best intent to test me, he waited until the teacher wasn't looking, slowly opened his mouth, and then mouthed "Pooo-taaah." Puta=B*tch. Haha all I wanted to do was take the kid by the ear and kick him in the butt, but instead I just gave him a slight evil eye to let him know that he's toast if he opens his mouth again to say such a thing, and then I went on my way. Yes, there are better ways I could have handled the situation, but it occurred within my first 5 minutes of arriving at the school and it was nothing I expected! Otherwise, everything went well!

This blog is long enough, so I'll update tomorrow with more school info!

Buenas noches y hasta el primo!

Besosssss
~Nicole :-)

PS- As luck would have it, the director lives right down the street from me and has the same schedule, so she's offered to pick me up and drop me off at my piso every day...que suerte! (que suerte=what luck) Peace out bus.