The joys and pains of working in a bilingual school

Despite the fact that teaching english is the reason I am in Madrid, I have yet to really blog about my school, the students, what its like, etc. It is nearly impossible to describe everything, but something that is unique at the school i work at is that it is a bilingual school (hence the reason I am here) where I work solely with teachers that speak english. While its not their first language, they all have a good enough command of it that we are able to communicate (most of the times). What I find so novel about this is that things can be said in the classroom that couldn´t normally be said because it would be considered inappropriate for the kids to hear teachers say such things, but since the kids don´t really know english, anything can be said and the kids are completely oblivious. So for example, there is a kid in my 1st grade class that is constantly misbehaving and the teacher was completely fed up with his antics so he says to me ¨you see that kid right there, sometimes I just want to cut his ears off!¨That is just one example, but similar things have been said numerous times. It´s like we have a secret language and there is no rules about what can be said!

So that introduces the topic of discipline. First, discipline is not as strict here as in the states and classrooms easily get out of control. They warned us about it in orientation, but it is something you really can't be prepared for. I really am tempted to introduce the idea of "class bathroom breaks" instead of letting kids go just as they feel the urge or as boredom sets in. They move around the classroom with the luxury that wasn't granted to me until I was in college. No joke.

Anyways, I digress. Because I am with 1st and 2nd graders, there is a lot of telling on people. I am starting to understand some phrases, but sometimes kids will come up to me "Profe! Profe!" and tell me something that their infliction makes me assume is a matter of life and death, and I can't understand A THING! Sometimes I feel really bad because they tell me something that is apparently something SOO important I must be told with extreme urgency, and I couldn't repeat it if they begged me because I didn't hear a single word of what they said just "khdskfhasdkljhavkjnadkljahsf". Other times, its kind of a relief because I don't have to deal with discipline issues. I just tell them "repeat" and point to the main teacher.

While there is a team of about 6 english speaking teachers, nobody else in my school speaks english. Rumor is some know a little bit, but will not speak it with a native speaker. While this may not seem like a real problem, it really is. Particularly because i'm not always with english speaking teachers. So for example, today one of my teachers asked me to go make copies. Easy enough right? Well I go to the copy machine and start copying and see that it doesn't have paper, and next to the copier is a sign in spanish that says I need to go ask Rosa for paper. WTF. So I go ask Rosa for paper in my best attempt in spanish, but she starts ranting in really fast spanish and stomps up to the copy room. I tell her I need 39 copies of each. Easy enough. Of course not! She starts trying to resize the copies for some reason and I tell her no, I want it all. Well once again, she starts ranting and raising her voice at me, and the other teachers look at me like I am a complete idiot so I can only assume that was the gist of her rant. Imagine putting an infant that has an extremely limited vocabulary in that situation, and that is how I felt.

In other news, I was walking from the metro to my school last Thursday and two girls come up to me and ask me if i'm an auxillary (keep in mind I wasn't speaking/reading english but they still knew I was an American-- I guess the hair really gives it away that I am from America for some reason). They were both from the States as well and had renewed so it was their second year. They tell me that they both work at the elementary school next door, and i'm like "there is a school next door?" and they proceed to tell me that the school i work at is for all the social-rejects and "socially undesirables" and all the other "good" kids go to the school next door. Pretty messed up, huh?

True Story: I am having a hard time telling the difference between boys and girls in my school. Seriously. Last week I referred to this boy that had a ponytail and gold earrings as "she/her" all day until I heard someone call him Juan...oops!

Non School Related news: I went to see my first movie in Spain. Don't be too impressed because it was "original version" which means it was in english with Spanish subtitles :)

Wow, i really live in Europe

So as life in Spain begins to really set in and be in full force, I am already finding it harder to make myself sit down and blog, and when I do, I think back over the week and decide it is not possibly let my family/friends know everything that is going on with my life. So for those that I don’t talk with on a regular basis, and the primary way of following me is through this blog, just rest assured that life in Madrid is amazing, I feel truly fortunate to have such great friends here, and to just be in an amazing country immersed in a one-of-a-kind culture.

Proceeding past my love affair with Spain, my week started off not so good. When I was at work on Monday I started feeling light-headed, hot, and just overall not well. So I came home, slept 10 hours, got up, got on the metro, and half-way there I started feeling light-headed and just overall dizzy like I was going to faint. So I get to the school and walk up to my director (she is a smoker, as well as almost every other teacher, and they stand outside the gates and chain smoke while the kids and family members walk up to them and say good-morning) and tell her that I am very sick and I need to go to the doctor. So she feels my forehead and says I am burning up. So long story short, she got one of the bilingual teachers that I work with (Julia) to take me the hospital. I don’t know what I have done without her because she did all the speaking and interpreting, I was just overall really thankful. So I stayed home from work for 2 days because I had a fever and was therefore contagious. It is no fun whatsoever to be sick abroad in a country where you don’t speak the language. It is definitely an incentive to use a lot of hand sanitizer and to take my vitamins.

So that brings us to Thursday. Thursday (which is our Friday because we don’t work on Friday’s) I met up with my expat-fam in Sol and we went to a bar and just hung out and then went to this horrible imitation of an “American club” with “American music” where all the expats hang out because they feel more comfortable with it, Joy Eslava. So being the expats that we are, we felt we had to experience it at least once. All I have to say is that I felt like I was at a high-school dance surrounded by 18-year olds that were out for the first time. It was just overall, not an enjoyable experience nor one that I would suggest for others. After that followed a series of unfortunate events that I will not go into detail here to save my mom from a heart-attacks, but I at least once to mention them for my own memories. Friday, me and the rest of my expat-family had taco night and it was great! There is just something so nice about having an “American” family-unit while abroad. Its not like we sit and sing the star-spangled banner, but there is something much more unifying about being an American when you are outside of America.

Now we arrive at my best weekend in Spain thus far. On Saturday me and Alissa went out on the town with Gonzalo and his friend Carlos and really had a great time. We went around to a couple bars in La Latina and just had drinks, conversations, jokes, and of course talked about cultural norms that me and Alissa aren’t use to. It was my first night out until the metro reopened! Yay for leaving the club at 5:45 a.m. ! Sunday, Gonzalo invited us out with some of his friends from school and such. They seemed to be really nice people, despite my self-inflicted inability to understand a word they said. However, because of my inability to communicate with them, I did a lot of observing. The one thing I have to say is that it is almost an out-of-body experience to see other cultural norms, and then reflect on how that would be viewed back home. As I am around more and more Spanish people, I think in general, we (Americans) just take some stuff too seriously. We are so caught up in political-correctness and how we are going to be viewed, that we confine ourselves to boxes of decorum and just become overall boring.

New Insights:

The more I am around non-native English speakers and attempting to absorb Spanish in various forms, my English is changing. I have noticed I have begun using inflictions of words that is perfectly understood in a monotone voice, I’m leaving out key words that don’t really exist in Spanish, and my sentence structure is getting all messed up because I am attempting to imitate Spanish. By the time I leave Spain, I am going to have a horrendous mixture of Spanglish and will be rendered incomprehensible by all.

I am also having to think more about English and why we say things the way we do. For example, Thursday at work the auxillaries had a meeting with the bilingual teachers and they were asking us questions about phrases we use to control the classroom. They were confident that we say “sit on your seat”, but I said no, its “sit in your seat”. They had a strong case because they were saying that we sit ON a couch, not in a couch, so why do we sit IN a seat. The truth is, I have no clue why we say the phrases we do, but we do. But when you hear their justifications for a wrong phrase, you start thinking, maybe I am mistaken. So in short, I spend all day in self-doubt on a topic that I am considered an “expert” on. EXHUASTING!

Quote of the week: “In the winter, I am yellow like a Simpson”- Carlos

*The quote of the week is becoming more and more competitive because I am around so many people that say hilarious things, especially when in a room of about 10 Americans that have been drinking a lot and are able to say anything they want and know they will be understood, for better or worse. However, most are extremely inappropriate so why these may not be the “funniest”, they definitely hit near the top.

some insights/revelations, etc.

Things that aggravate Americans about Spain, but at the same time, makes Spain Spain:

1. The lack of one stop shops: In the states we are bombarded with one-stop-shops and come to expect the convenience. For example, in the states you can buy a notebook at the grocery store, pharmacy, Wal-Mart, etc. But not in Spain. You have to go to a paper store if you want a notebook, true story. The one chain that is somewhat similar to a one-stop-shop in Spain is Corte Ingles, but it is so overpriced, it makes going to the papelaria just a necessity of life.

2. The inability to get coffee “para llevar”- to go: Here if you get coffee, you are expected to sit and enjoy it. Not take it with you. So coming from a culture where I could find a drive-up coffee shop almost every mile along the streets, not being able to find places that have to-go cups is aggravating in all senses.

3. Breaks in the middle in the day, that inevitably make the work day longer: So I started work this past week and was given my schedule. For some reason, schools take a ½ hour break from 11:30-12:00 for a snack, and then take a 2 hour lunch from 1-3. My question is, why not just wait that extra half hour for lunch, and why do we need 2 hours for lunch when we JUST had snack?!? As an American, I don’t like “wasting” time taking unnecessary breaks. I want to go work, with coffee in hand, get it all over with, and go home. But not here. I appreciate the slow pace, but it feels extremely abnormal and unnecessary.

4. Of course, laundry: no explanation needed.

5. Lack of acceptance of debit/credit cards: While you can use debit cards at larger department stores, going to the stores that are conveniently located require you to always carry cash. I am one that ALWAYS used my debit card at home and got annoyed when places would say I couldn’t use my card for my $1 purchase. Therefore, not being able to swipe and go is……aggravating to say the lease.

6. Everybody communicates via phone, and emails go unanswered: Ok this is a really hard one given it is 2009. Back home, I used email to communicate with EVERYONE. It didn’t matter if they were near or far, I would email them, and it wasn’t even expensive to call people, I just didn’t really do it. But not here. People still call, even when it costs a ton of money to place and receive calls. For example, I am trying to set up private lessons to make some extra cash, but everybody wants to call me instead of just emailing me. I was talking about this with a girl at work and I was telling her I don’t know why I find it so aggravating but I do, and she explained its because we are so use to being able to do things on our own time-schedule. If I see an email, and know that I need to answer it but what to think on it for awhile, that’s okay. But when people call (and they never leave voicemails) the only way to know what they want is to answer and be put on the spot.

I think that’s my list for now, but I am confident it will grow. In other news, I had my first private English lesson and it was a lot more exhausting than I thought it would be. It is a pretty sweet deal to get paid good money to just sit and talk with someone, but I’m constantly trying to think of new vocabulary words, but words that aren’t impossible to understand if you don’t understand the cultural context. It really makes me reflect on how I use words.

The woman I talked to yesterday was 24 and recently graduated from pharmacy school (I just can’t get away from pharm-tards can I?) Anyways, she was saying that a lot of the pharmacies want their pharmacists to know English because many immigrants and expats go into pharmacies needing help, and often times we/they don’t speak Spanish. She was also saying that she eventually wants to work for a pharmaceutical company, which if she does, she will be interviewed in English, all of her work will need to be done English, everything in English. It’s mostly because many of the pharmaceutical companies that operate in Spain are based out of the states or UK, and the tops of the companies only know English. We sure are a cocky language! Learn our language or don’t have a job. Cocky.

I am finding that giving private lessons to Spaniards is a great way to learn about Spain. Ana was telling us about the justice system here and we were baffled by the leniency. First, if you are under 18 you cannot be charged with anything, period. A couple years ago a 17 year old killed a girl, and nothing happened because he was under 18. Also, you can’t be in jail for longer than 30 years. So if you commit murder when are 20 and are convicted, then when you turn 50 you are released from jail despite still having 25+ years to commit more crimes. And lastly, you can’t be imprisoned past the age of 55. So if you are 40 and you kill someone, the most you will serve is 15 years because you age out of the system. So Ana’s tip was, watch out for the old people and the young people because you just never know about them.

And yes, I get paid to talk about stuff like this in English…it’s a sweet deal if you ask me!

NEWS FLASH: I walked around my neighborhood last night and I fell in love with Madrid. Despite my complaints in regards to culture shock, it is a place that cannot be given justice through explanation, it just has to be experienced. Last night as I walked through the streets with thousands of Spaniards, watching people eat at the sidewalk cafes, walking through the hustle and bustle in a t-shirt and flip-flops in October, I finally understood how lucky I am, and subsequently fell in love with the City.