10-6
My roommate Maria showed me where the school that I’m working at is on the first day that Orquid and I got to Algeciras from Madrid. As the three of us walked around the school, all of the kids stared at us and they all looked so old that I was quite terrified of having to teach there. I guess when I applied for this program I didn’t realize that I could be placed at a high school. I went back the next morning and talked to the director who was really nice and the kids looked a little bit younger at that time (which they probably were, because in the afternoon they teach older people). But the night before the first day that I had to present myself to the school I kept myself from becoming too nervous by telling myself that I wouldn’t have to be in front of a class the next day, because when I met the director he didn’t seem to have a clear plan for what to do with us (there’s 3 English teachers).
On my first day, the general chaos of the school (and really just of Spain) swept me up. I felt like I had just barely met the teacher who is in charge of us language assistants and the language assistant from Scotland, before we went to the tiny school cafeteria for a quick coffee (they drink so much coffee here, pretty much after every meal) where you can barely here anyone because the students make so much noise. The next thing I knew, I was following one of the English teachers to her class to help with the lesson that day. She had me introduce myself and then I read aloud the verb “have got” while they copied my pronunciation. After I went around to different groups and corrected their pronunciation while the read aloud a dialog. At the end I talked a bit longer to one group because one girl spoke really good English because she had been taking lessons elsewhere too.
After my initial fright of the students I’ve been surprised at how most of them are really interested in me and really try hard to communicate with me. I guess right now I’m still a novelty, as this school has never had language assistants before. I’ve only been in 5 English classes over the course of 3 days. I’ve mostly told them about Texas and impressed them with examples of how far away things are in the U.S. and answered their questions. I’ve really enjoyed it so far. I think we will finally have a set schedule sometime next week and then I can start talking to the teachers I’m working with and determine how to help them. I think they have me going to 10th and 11th grade classes.
The teachers are really nice, but there are so many of them that I have trouble keeping track of who is who. I swear that Spanish kids are 10 times nosier than American kids and there just seems to be so much more chaos than in U.S. schools. The school wants us to put on a play in English with the students. We are also supposed to help prepare material for next year when some subjects, like geography and history, will be partially taught in English, when the it becomes a bilingual school.
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