So, this year my schedule is a lot more complex. On Mondays and Wednesdays I work in a city called Baio which is 25 minutes away from where I live, Carballo. The teacher I work with also lives there, her name is Laura, we carpool together. We teach at an elementary school with one class per grade, preschool to 5th grade. I don’t teach preschool or kindergarten. They have recess ‘recreo’ at noon and 20 minutes of reading time after that. The school has two buildings with a cafeteria for the kids after school. The first building is two stories tall and the other is three, with two little libraries. I find Spanish schools to be a bit old school, but I went to Central York so I come with my biases. I really enjoy opening the windows, a crack for airflow at all times, it gives me some peace, the ventilation. It used to be a rule last year during more COVID dense times. I also really enjoy standing near the radiators and feeling the warmth they provide, it’s calming. We have a dehumidifier in one of the class rooms and it’s a real luxury (and necessity.)
I never really saw myself working with small children. I was quite content being that emergency babysitter for good friends and that’s it. Last year’s teaching experience changed that for me, the amount of prep required to just be the assistant high school teacher was tiring. I have been called ‘not a kid person’ a few times in my life, I simply have very mild feelings towards them. Kids are cute, I think they’re fascinating. I don’t think I was made to work with them but clearly, I can. I often find myself lost in thought about what their home-lives are like, where they learned what they know or how they behave and what they may be someday. I suppose that's where my adolescent/developmental psychology studies/curiosity comes in.
I also work with another teacher in just 3 of my 9 classes, she doesn’t seem to like it much. As a person, she’s alright but professionally I worry about her impact on the kids, given how short-tempered she is. I see a lot of what I saw in my previous school, policing kids to constantly be quiet and listening. That’s impossible for ten year olds, though they try their best. Her class, I think, is very bright. I have one Black student, one Asian and one Indian, just in that class. They’re extremely bright students but I can’t imagine being a ‘minority’ in this country. The lack of diversity in these kids lives’ is very clear based on things they saw and how they act when presented with anything different from their culture. For example, a lot of them turn their nose up at sushi which isn’t too surprising given the lack of sushi that can be found in these parts… but it gets worse. I showed them a video of New Year’s around the world, a spontaneous decision because we had extra time and the commentary was disheartening. A lot of students joke that they are Black. Also last week when we made paper airplanes one of the kids wrote Russia on it and added missiles. You can see a lot of learned behavior, the ‘jokesters.’ How exhausting it must be to make everything a joke, perhaps because they’re made fun of for everything at home. I surely don’t completely understand ‘Spanish humor.’
I also work at a high school on Tuesdays and every other Thursday/Friday. Their schedule is a two week rotation, which is unfortunate for me because I don’t get to see the kids as often. I work in basic English classes, kids that are behind their age group, and all the other levels up until almost college (bachillerato.) I usually have about 3 classes per day. I also teach in a technology and music class and at this school they have a mechanics program that many of my students are involved in. It can be said that the level of English out here in Galicia is a lot lower. This may be equated to simply country-living, the Galician dialect that must be learned (as well as Spanish of course and French as an elective) or that people simply don’t see English as valuable here. I use their books and what I think is most important to decide what to teach them. Almost all topics are pretty repetitive. For example, they learn past tense like every year.
Lots of Spaniards can speak English but often choose not to. They say speaking English can help you get a job, much like we say here with language-learning. Traveling to the U.S. isn’t seen as very obtainable, not many people do it as it is significantly more expensive than local travel. Spanish people are very proud of their culture, which is consistent across the board. Several of the English teachers I work with have been to England though, and lived there for a while but it’s very easy to ‘lose your English’ here, still. Basically (in Galicia) the only people that speak English over the age of 30 are English teachers and their strong Spanish accents can be difficult to decipher.
The high school is pretty big. I have a lot of students, maybe close to a couple hundred (but I’ve never been very good at guessing these kinds of things.) I am not as good at names as I’d like to be, I find it more confusing, Spanish names. There’s so much repetition. I still think 12/13 year olds, 7th/8th grade is the ideal time for language learning. The high school has 3 buildings, including the gym. There is a cafe in the basement and a big Beauty-and-the-Beast-esque library. I read a simple version of Two Stories by Hemingway and Animal Farm by George Orwell there. It has at least 50 teachers. I usually hang out in the teachers’ lounge with the copy machine and 4 computers and long tables. Spanish schools have separate bathrooms for teachers (which I guess is true for American schools but I never really noticed.) Each building here is two stories tall. The other building has recreations of famous artists recreations on the walls. There are gates around the building but they aren’t usually locked. This is of course odd for me as an American, the lack of security. I was late to school one day and I walked right in to my class and no one even saw me before I got to my class.
The school is placed on top of a hill and at the bottom is the main road through it, the town is called Ponteceso. I work with 5 teachers here. My main ‘boss’ is lovely, she’s about 35 and her name is Lucía (which was one of my least favorite teachers names in my last school.) Two others are a married couple, the man is the mayor of the town as well. He gives complete control of his classes, the lower levels, and the youngest kids. His wife has the highest level classes, she loves Harry Styles. The music teacher dresses really nice and reminds me a bit of my mom when she was 40, she dresses really nice with gorgeous auburn hair. And lastly is the technology teacher, she’s a sweet tall lady that speaks quietly. I like the staff a lot better than last year, they’re pretty good teachers but there’s always a couple ‘duds’ in the education system which I learned when I was in school myself. I usually give presentations about holidays, cultural differences in the U.S. but also parts of speech and grammar related games. Last year, I got to pull kids out of class to talk to them and I do miss that very much. I think it’s much more effective in language learning but there’s no space for me to do this and generally I don’t think my teachers really want this. Only a couple of my teachers truly understand the concept of ‘co-teaching’ but I understand that it isn’t a popular thing to do here. It’s basically what it sounds like, two teachers teaching at the same time. I carpool with different teachers throughout the week. In the mornings I ride with a Spanish teacher named Celia in her BMW, she’s a delightful person to practice my Spanish with.
A school is a very interesting place to learn about a place’s culture. I have always felt Spaniards are more studious than Americans. The music teacher takes French classes in her spare time, I don’t know a lot of forty year old Americans doing these types of things. We frequently discuss books we’re reading– most Americans ‘don’t have time to read.’ But it’s the same with music and arts. Most Spaniards I know go to museums with some frequency. I will say that learning an instrument seems to be much less popular here but perhaps that is the lack of a school band. If you didn’t know, Spanish schools do not include extracurriculars. No sports, no mascots, no band, no driving lessons (you have to be 18 and go to an expensive driving school) , no health class, no workshop. I feel very lucky to have the option to take all the electives I have, I think I knew (even at the time) that I wasn’t appreciating all my options as much as I could’ve been because there were so many it was overwhelming. They do have recess in high school for 30 minutes at 11:30 where they eat a snack or breakfast that they bring to school or buy at the cafe. I am very pro-recess. I would say that most Spaniards seem to think history is interesting as well. I am a bit biased because most of the people that I talk to here are in fact also teachers and therefore more studious.
I also enjoy the school events they have. For example, at the elementary school they hosted a Christmas market fundraiser with hot chocolate and cookies and books and keychains. It was a lot of standing and kind of boring for me but the hot chocolate was amazing, it’s literally chocolate and milk. I was anxious about catching COVID right before Christmas (again.) At the high school they had a moment of silence and a black out day where everyone would wear black in honor of domestic violence. (They did forget to tell me to wear black, but I wasn’t the only one.) Another day, they played games and roasted chestnuts and gave them out for free called Magosto. It was my first time trying them but I liked them, but they said they were ‘hard on the stomach’ and I think I’d agree. At the elementary school, they have cheap events like movies they play after school. I’ve never been to any of them but they’re a sweet idea. They had a lunch with all the teachers just before Christmas that I was unable to attend because I had to catch a train out of town. It’s nice to be included in these types of events even though I usually feel pretty awkward because I never entirely know what’s going on.
Teaching is draining. You pour, sometimes until you’re empty. You want to empower kids and change the world and make an impact and all that good stuff but it often doesn’t feel that way. It feels like you do-the-thing and sometimes what you want is accomplished but often it’s not and it’s hard to anticipate. I do feel like I’m just in a constant state of trying-to-be-understood which is emotionally tiring. I talk slowly and clearly, I use my hands, I draw, I peer into their faces trying to decide if they got what I said. In the elementary school, I fear I don’t talk enough. When I’m not the center of attention, I am not one to fight for the spot. But it is ideal that kids hear as much English as possible and many teachers think they speak 50/50 yet it’s often much less than thought to be. I try to be as useful as possible, acclimating to where I am at the time, who I’m with, doing what I can. Still, it’s a lot of screaming. Kids are loud. So loud.