Summer has arrived in Spain. It’s been pleasantly cool up until now, but yesterday somebody upstairs decided to crank up the thermostat. Two months ago it was finally warm enough to ditch the thermals by night, and now it’s shirt season. Which, for anyone who knows me, suits me just fine.
I haven’t done a random regular update in a while. I guess that with all of the to-and-froing after Semana Santa I’ve hardly had the time: in less than a month I’ve been to El Rocio, Sevilla, Cordoba, Barcelona, Andorra, Calatayud, Monfrague and Jerez de los Caballeros, not to mention taken part in a Romanian art school exchange and worked a weekend at an English immersion event. It’s been pretty non-stop since the 23rd of March. But life goes on, and as I try to make clear on this blog, life is not one massive series of amazing year abroad adventures – unless you count the everyday as an adventure in itself, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did. It’s full of trials and tribulations of its own.
Well, what’s to say? Here I am in the staffroom at my afternoon private school, waiting for my Upper Sixth class to arrive for a catch-up class (I’m still making up for those hours I lost by being in Barcelona, one month later – take note, future me!). It’s hard work but rewarding, teaching Upper Sixth… They don’t all take part as they should, but those that do do so with a spectacularly high level of English. The others are just as good, if only they’d speak more (an eternal problem with teenagers). I look back to the honeymoon period when I’d first arrived and it was a barrage of questions from all sides… but even if they aren’t as proactive with familiarity, at least being settled pays off. And at least I know their names. It hardly needs saying, but that’s crucial to good relations.
Teaching at the public school this morning was uncharacteristically problematic. For the first time this year I forgot to set my alarm, with the result that I only woke up at the sound of my flatmate leaving, some fifteen minutes before my first class. In my haste to leave I startled a recently fledged pigeon that had been sitting on the doorstep of the block of flats which, as Fate would have it, flew straight under the wheels of a car. In that dark mood I went on to teach two Lower Sixth classes about the End of the World, painfully aware that the biggest challenge – trying to teach Shakespeare – was still around the corner. Even so, I’d prepared a nifty presentation for the job, which would do the trick.
Provided the computers were working. Which they weren’t.
For the second week in a row my premier class had to suffer an off-the-cuff lesson where all the visual prompts and gags had to be done manually. I’ve got to say it; if my mother hadn’t gotten me into drawing, I don’t know what I’d do in such situations. Drawing skills are a genuine lifesaver in teaching. No PowerPoint? Whip out the chalk. Trouble explaining a word? Draw it. Need to motivate the kids? Get scribbling. It’s a defibrillator that never runs out of juice. I owe my parents, my friends and my art teachers so very much for encouraging me on that front. I don’t know where I’d be without a pencil in my hand and an image in my head.
It’s 15.30. My Upper Sixth class should be here in a couple of minutes, but if they play their usual ‘I went home for lunch’ card, I’ve got at least another twenty minutes until they turn up. In the meantime, I’ll get prepping their mock exam. Let it never be said that a language assistant is a cushy job. You land a job as good as this, you’d better earn it. BB x
Today offered up the perfect example of why you should save a weekly summing-up-style post for the end of the week. Because most of what I was talking about in yesterday’s mammoth entry happened again today, if only in miniature. But because it’s probably ranking amongst the best days I’ve had here yet, I’ll throw it in – if just to find an outlet for the photos I took today.
I should warn you; if you read yesterday’s post, today’s might smack more than a little of déjà vu.
So I went into class this morning and tried to do another round of ‘My Secondary School’ presentation. I must have jinxed the system last night, because it froze no less than six times, requiring six reboots and twenty minutes lost. Still, I managed to get most of the presentation done despite everything. Once you’ve been doing the same lesson for four or five hours a week, you hardly need to look at your notes to know what comes next. You find yourself saying the exact same turns of phrase, making the same gestures and cracking the same jokes, whether they worked or not. It’s a little strange, that. I only notice it when I look back.
My second class of the day was spent half on the workbook, and half on John Lennon’s Imagine. Considering the near-total absence of a choral tradition in this country, they did a damn good job for a class of twenty-nine twelve year-olds. They also reminded me that they haven’t forgotten that I promised to bring them some peanut butter. If mine hadn’t been confiscated at the airport, I’d have obliged them earlier, but as it is they’re getting restless… At least it’s on its way! The things I do for these children, honestly…
My third class of the day was (technically) my last class with one of my favourite groups, a lower sixth bachillerato class and one of the very best. I had a Uganda presentation planned for them, but if I expected them to sit and listen in silence, I had another thing coming. Halfway through OMI’s Cheerleader started playing and the ringleader of the group revealed three bags full of crisps, cups and Coke. After apologising for not paying much attention during my presentation, he explained to me that when they heard me announce that today was my last lesson with them, they arranged on the spot to throw a party. That explains why there was a general hum during the presentation (these kids are usually silent) and why Candi left ‘to take an important phone call’. A lot of hugs, a lot of puñados and a lot of love.
Yeah, I really need an autofocusing lens. Nobody really understands manual focus
I never even got to finish my presentation; we’d only got as far as Kyambura. But I don’t care. I’m touched. And if I can find a way to claw back an hour with them, even if it’s out of my own free time, I will.
On to today’s main event. Today is Día de la Paz. It’s something I haven’t celebrated since I was last in a Spanish school myself, which was way back in 2007. I’m not entirely sure why, but English schools (or at least, the ones I went to) don’t deem it celebration-worthy. Must be something to do with the general negative attitude towards anything that might detract from that sacrosanct curriculum of ours.
Now 2007 was a long time ago – almost a decade – and I can’t really remember what it was we did in C.E.I.P. Miguel de Cervantes to celebrate Día de la Paz. Something similar to today’s events – minus the John Lennon, of course. Melendez Valdés’ plan was heavy on the balloons, anyway. Handy, since I’ve been trying to explain the concept of a balloon race all week.
We all gathered in a square the patio in the final hour of school, and two representatives from each class came up to the front to read a quote about peace, which was written on a small dove-shaped card and attached to one of many white balloons brought forward by the students.
I’d brought my camera on the off-chance that Día de la Paz would be a good chance to finally grab some photos of the instituto; for my drawing, if not for the sake of it. Madrid with Ali should have been a reminder, but I’d plain forgotten just how willing kids are to have their photographs taken. That’s reassuring – because they make the very best of subjects. Always.
When everybody had said their piece (no pun intended), I was called out of the square to lead the recorder orchestra (oh, now that takes me back) and the rest of the lower school in singing Imagine. I guess I should have seen it coming, but that basically resulted in the recorders playing a completely different version of the song to the one everybody else had learned – and, consequently, me singing on my own. Well, I can’t say I didn’t see that coming. Because I did. And in the background, the teachers began to release the balloons and their messages of peace, one by one.
It’s not been particularly windy for a while, so wonder just how far those balloons will go…
Here’s to hoping that wherever they end up, the messages of peace they’re carrying with them put a smile on somebody’s face – in irony or in truth, it really doesn’t matter. Just as long as they’re smiling. (Exit Sop, stage left) BB x
I love blackboards. They’re quirky, they’re the very definition of old-school and, more importantly, they’re reliable. Grab yourself some chalk and you’re good to go. The sad thing is, they’re on the way out.
Wait, what? I thought they were done away with years ago, I hear you say? I remember a grand total of two years of blackboards in primary school before whiteboards and whiteboard markers edged them out, to be replaced almost instantly by the firestorm that was the first wave of interactive whiteboards. Well, blackboards are still the status quo here – or rather, they were, until last week. The twenty-first century has arrived in Extremadura, it seems, and the herald is the interactive whiteboard.
It’s been highly interesting to watch the reactions, as my scope as a teacher covers kids from five to eighteen along with several seniors. Unsurprisingly the youngest are the most in awe, and I’ve had to play the fool and feign ignorance, living through the ‘brand new toy’ atmosphere along with the rest so as not to spoil it for them. How are they to know that I was no older than nine years old when I had my first encounter with an interactive whiteboard, some twelve years ago?
As such, I’m long since past the shock-and-awe stage, and I see them as more of a nuisance. Not only have you got to spend time mucking about with the computer and projector, but you’ve got to keep an extra eye open, because kids just love to touch the damn things (I’ve already banned its use in my two primary classes because they just won’t keep their hands off). On top of that, if you’ve planned a lesson that requires the technology and it decides, for whatever reason, to screw you over by playing up, that’s the entire lesson out of the window.
And that’s without mentioning the calibration nonsense. How does one even draw properly on one of those things? As such, I’m definitely in Camp Blackboard.
All I can say is that if my generation made the same fuss over this new technology, I’m truly sorry. The last two weeks have been comparable to trying to plug a burst water main with one’s hands.
So, apart from lapsing into his old Luddite ways, what else has yours truly been up to?
In a complete turn-around from the way things were at the beginning, my state school kids have been nothing less than complete angels of late. Our school hosted a charity event last Friday in aid of the Syrian Refugee crisis, which I agreed to sing for. When my backing singers bottled out, I ended up having to improvise a new number, which was a mish-mash of several of Tolkein’s walking songs set to music, half from the 1981 BBC Radio adaptation (my childhood, right there) and half from the 2003 Return of the King movie – specifically, Billy Boyd’s The Steward of Gondor. And what do you know, it worked! I’ve had people coming up to me all week telling me how it sent shivers up their spine (or the Spanish equivalent, piel de gallina), which has done my crushed ego a world of good.
Alicia of 4º ESO delivers a brilliant monologo
On top of that, I had a wonderful surprise yesterday when I turned up to a class to find four people missing: three students and, crucially, the teacher. Of course, nobody thought to tell me until that moment that she’d be on a school trip. As it turns out, I’d arrived just in time, as most of the kids were on the verge of following their three classmates’ example and doing an early runner. For reasons I still can’t fathom, instead of making a break for it – unwisely, I did give them the opportunity – they stuck around to see what I’d got in store for them, after giving me a demonstration of the songs they’d prepared for this year’s chirigotas (satirical songs, often covers with the lyrics rewritten to local effect).
It was halfway through the second when a cover teacher showed up and tried to take over. I managed to persuade him that I had the situation under control (Nixon never told a bigger lie) and let him have the afternoon off. From the moment he shut the door behind him I had the unwavering attention of the whole class for the presentation I’d prepared, and that in itself was nothing short of a miracle.
But better yet was when I got to school the following morning to be told by their teacher that not only had they enjoyed the lesson, but that they’d told her that they really learned a lot from it. It’s little moments like that that really make teaching worthwhile. It truly is a vocation and I can’t help but feel I was called a long time ago. And so what if it’s a family tradition? I’m a traditional sort of guy. I can handle that.
Not so nice was what came later, when I voluntarily took an hour out of my free time to pay a visit to the Upper Sixth class, which (for reasons beyond my understanding) is the one year group in the school which has no contact with me at all. Most of them were really keen to see me at last, but I also had the first example of hostility I’ve ever faced in a classroom when one of the students, pressed to ask me ‘a question, any question’ by the teacher, said in perfect English that he ‘quite honestly couldn’t care less about [me]’. He shut up pretty quick when I revealed that I was actually part-Spanish myself, but it did sting a little.
It didn’t hurt for long. I had a primary class right after which took my mind off the whole thing, to put it lightly, and for the rest of the afternoon I had my hands full trying to keep the restless upper tiers of my private school kids under control – which came to a head in one of the funnier instances of the year so far.
We were discussing Netflix, illegal downloads and streaming on the internet and, naturally, the subject of porn came up – what do you expect in a Catholic school? Now, one particularly chatty kid always gets that class’s goat and today one of them decided the kid had simply gone too far and brought him down to size royally, joking that he watched porn, but on his Smart Watch, ‘because it’s a lot more practical that way’.
He didn’t need to demonstrate. I couldn’t keep a straight face for ten minutes.
On the whole, there’s been lot of reasons to smile over the last two weeks; ever since I wrote that post on reasons to smile, in fact. Troublesome though they are, I still cherish the hugs I get from my primary kids on a Wednesday. It makes me feel appreciated. So too do I accept the hero worship I get from my cuarto class every time I pass their classroom, because it makes my heart soar when they scoff at my facts, laugh at my jokes and generally get so involved in my classes.
Oh, and the swallows and the martins are here. Already. In January, for Pete’s sake. I’m practically on tip-toes I’m so happy.
Couldn’t grab the swallows, but the siskins that stopped by the park were pretty obliging
But perhaps the best thing that’s happened over the last two weeks has been the arrival on YouTube – at last – of last summer’s A Night at the Movies concert in Durham Cathedral. I wrote a blog post about it at the time, which you can read here to refresh your memory if you like, but needless to say it was the single best night of my life, and remains so to this day. To have the chance to watch it all over again has had my head spinning. I’ve put a link to the grand finale below. Listen carefully at 3:10 and you might just hear yours truly belting out the Zulu solo, despite having next to voice left by that stage of the night!
It’s been a love-filled few weeks, and I’ve needed it, all of it, as after what was supposed to be the date of the year became the friend-zoning of the century, I’ve not had the easiest start to 2016. As it is, I’m coming out fighting.
I’ll leave you with that Smart Watch image, I think. It stills gives me the giggles, in the most shameless, puerile fashion. But then, I am shameless. You know that. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 
