It appears that life in the “club and bar district” of Santander has caught up with me. I find myself in bed with a raucous cough on a national holiday, when I should be out and about celebrating a day of no work, but instead have a box of Kleenex by my side, wondering if my nasal projections will ever return to their normal (colorless) color. But somehow I find this state worthy of celebration—a day of rest is long overdue, a feeling shared by the tall, dust-collecting pile of neglected movies, books (well, a Kindle), and introductory guitar music by my bed.
It’s pretty simple: I get sick when I am sleep deprived. Four months ago, “when I was in college,” my lifestyle worked well with this equation—if attending a 9am class would mean sacrificing three hours of quality sleep, alarm clock settings could be (too) easily adjusted. But now that reality is in check. I am no longer a selfish, sweatpants-clad, attend-class-at-my-will student who can afford to only feign paying attention, really just wondering how long I can fool my professor into thinking that my staring out the window at the sun frequenters not imprisoned in the dark lecture hall was really my method of pondering a difficult academic question.
I am instead, and so suddenly, a great purveyor of knowledge, who needs to be alert at all times in the classroom setting, and whose absence at school for even one day would go noted with distress by the throngs of bushy-haired, bright-eyed Spanish students who eagerly await my arrival each day, on their best behavior, minds primed to receive and pencils prepped to annotate the wisdom that spews from my all-knowing mouth.
Except that the students in fact do not display, ever, what would be generally accepted as even good behavior, and that little to no actual knowledge actually spews from my mouth. I refer specifically to one class of students, who are our equivalent of high school freshmen, and who find farts in class and flirting with their neighbors understandably more entertaining than listening to “An Introduction to the United Nations” in a language not their own. This doesn’t anger me at all, I totally get it—not that many years separate us—but it does strike a nerve with the teacher whose class this actually is, to whom I’m technically an assistant English teacher. What has, up to this point, typically ensued the out-of-place snicker or chortle in class has been a quickly escalating yelling match between students and teacher of a caliber I have never witnessed in an academic setting. What often results is that one or two kids will get kicked out of class, the others will try to suppress their laughter, but then one or two will catch my eye, and I will realize a moment too late that I have forgotten to match the expression of sternness and discipline of their Real Teacher, and have instead let a smile or poorly suppressed snicker escape what should have been my tightly drawn lips, which will cause them to chortle more loudly, and the Real Teacher to in turn to anger more, not realizing I am now an instigator as well, with the result being that the bell sounds before we complete even 1/5 of the material I had intended to cover, and the Real Teacher assigns them for homework essay topics like “The Meaning of Respect,” and I wonder whether my presence in class that day was truly that necessary.
Discipline issues in this particular class aside, I am digging this whole teaching thing. It feels natural. I feel like I have more control and influence over the other grade levels, and have developed especially an affinity for the “segundos” (8th graders) with whom I have the most class periods. They are technically in the bilingual program at their school, but I quickly learned that “bilingual” is a very relative term, meaning that I often feel like a very bright headlight shining into the eyes of several dozen petrified deer. In just two weeks though, they seem to have become more comfortable talking out loud in English—I quickly learned that games with candy rewards are the way to get them speaking—and it’s rewarding to think that maaaaaybe I am instilling in each of them a little bit of confidence in their abilities. The seniors/12th grade equivalents are equally awesome—I have 10 of them on my own, once a week, for conversation practice. They initially seemed limited in vocab, but now that I have learned that the boys (there are 7 of them) in this group are indeed capable of asking more than “Do you have a boyfriend?” in English, we have moved on to some cool conversation topics. Last week we debated smoking legislation in Spain. (I was shocked to discover that many of them were upset with Spain’s decision, this past spring, to outlaw smoking in pubs and clubs!)
Teaching is taxing, though. Lesson planning requires an output of creative energy and critical thought unlike that which I had imagined. Teachers have homework too! (Even if they do it at the last minute—more on “teachers lounge” culture later). My new theory is that teachers give students homework purely as retribution for having to prepare lessons. It is funny, though, being on the other side of things. Like, I somehow don’t feel like I should have a cubby for my materials in the teacher’s lounge, or a key to the faculty bathroom (the one with toilet paper and soap). I am supposedly on the same authority level as those who confiscate cell phones used covertly in the hallways. I go to the café across the street with other teachers for coffee breaks, where the Argentine owner Sebastian already knows my order by heart. And I attend weekly staff meetings, where Spanish flies around the room so rapidly that I understand hardly anything, and realize that I have a lot more learning to do, and find myself staring out the window, feeling like a student again, and wondering if I’m convincingly fooling my teachers into thinking that I’m just pondering the answers to their questions I don’t fully understand.
In other news....shout out to Kacey Burr! Happy Birthday, amor!!! (pic from San Sebastian)
Aw this entry struck such a chord in my heart ....I wish I was half as good of a teacher as you are hahahahai am the "real teacher" hated by all my students for not having a sense of humor and laughing at their stupid shit which really is funny....but unfortunately not allowed hahahaha :/ ugh
ReplyDeleteBut yes totally feel the weirdness of being on the other side of the student-teacher relationship hahah
<3