My first 3 weeks living in Madrid!

It's a little strange writing this post because it will be the first one about my time living in Madrid as an English Auxiliar, not about my time as a backpacker across Europe with my best friend!

I began my job on October 1st, working at an bilingual elementary school in Alcorcon. (http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/cp.carmenconde.alcorcon/) Alcorcon is a suburb southwest of Madrid. From where I live (near Santiago Bernabeu), it takes roughly 45 minutes to get to my school everyday. However, I can make it in 37 minutes if I make all the green light crosswalks, if my metro happens to come right when I get off the escalator, and if I run at the Principe Pio station where I transfer from the metro to the bus, which drops me off on my school's street. And just so you know, running for a bus at Principe Pio station isn't anything like running for CyRide at ISU. No one stares at you or makes fun of you; everyone runs there, so it's cool. ;)

the classic 'first day of school' picture!

So let me explain my job as an "Auxiliar", or English assistant. I work with 1st grade - 5th grade and I only spend an hour or two with each class per week. I move around from class to class all day (except Fridays) and help out in any way I can. In some classes, I take two students out in the hall at a time and practice conversational speaking with them. In some classes, all I do is read so the students get used to hearing a native English speaker, and in some classes, the teacher gives me the book and says, "teach these two pages today" and I take on the whole class for an hour.

I have to be at the school by 9am every day and my schedule looks something like this:

9-10: Class 1
10-11: Class 2
11-11:30 - Break (this is when all the teachers hang out in the teacher's room eating tapas and drinking coffee)
11:30 - 12:30 - Class 3
12:30 - 2:30 - Break (yes, we have a 2 hour break every day. It sometimes gets annoying, but it's also a great time to do lesson planning)
2:30 - 3:15 - Class 4
3:15 - 4:00 - Class 5

There are a lot of things that I like and dislike about this job. I love the people I work with and I love the students. I like that I don't have to do much lesson planning (nothing like a teacher in the US), and I like that there are new tapas in the teacher's room every day. However, there have been some challenges since I've started this job. I knew from student teaching in Caceres last Spring that a Spanish classroom is way different than an American classroom, as I'm sure all of you know. Here, education is all about academics and it's as if nothing else matters. The teachers don't seem to care about self-esteem, bullying, classroom management, etc. I'm not trying to say that all the teachers here are mean; they're far from it. But there's no "sharing time", there's no working in groups/any kind of collaboration among the students, the teachers have NO patience with the students, and there's absolutely NO classroom management. So you can sense the frustration I have after having spent the last 4 years of my life studying these concepts and knowing how important they are in a classroom. (Hence my new background on my blog...)

How I feel some days.

Aside from teaching, I have taken on a few of my own private tutoring sessions. I have my own session set up every Wednesday after school with a very nice family that lives in Alcorcon and I tutor their 12 year old boy. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I work for an academy in the city of Madrid and I have 2 clients - an adult who is studying to take the First Certificate Exam next summer, and 2 brothers (11 and 12 years old) who have a low level of English. So every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'm pretty busy, but I sure do love my 3 day weekends. Also, shortly after I began teaching 3 weeks ago, my roommate and I starting doing "intercambios" every night. So we spend about an hour speaking strictly in Spanish, then an hour speaking strictly in English. I think this is a big reason why my Spanish is improving! And I now know all the "palabrotas" and "palabras de la calle", aka all the slang and swear words in Spanish. :)

There are two other girls that are English Assistants at my school, too. Both of their names are Alexandra, so in the future, I will refer to them as Alex PA and Alex FL (One is from Pennsylvania and one is from Florida.) On Wednesday, the three of us went out to a festival in Lavapies, a very eclectic neighborhood in Madrid, for a 2-week festival called, Tapapies. Which of course includes... tapas. Each bar (that participates) has a special tapa that they created for this festival and you go from bar to bar trying each tapa for 1 euro (add a beer and it's 2 euros). So on Wednesday, the Alex's and I went to 5 different bars trying all the tapas. Obviously I took a picture of each one....

rice with vegetables

a very large tater tot?

similar to a spring roll

more Mexican than Spanish

Fish!

Me with the Alex's

Yesterday, many of the public schools in Madrid were on strike because of a new education law that was passed recently. If my sources are correct, it has to do with the exam that the students take when they are about 14 years old. The exam determines whether or not they go to a university or a vocational school. A lot of the teachers and parents are upset about this new law, so yesterday was the strike. Only about half of the teachers showed up and less than half of the students were at school. So we spent the day coloring and watching movies....

We watched "Aviones"... aka "Planes"

Okay, that's all for now! I will add some more shortly :)

Missing you all... only 8 weeks until I come home for Christmas!

Shea