In retrospect...

I knew when I started this that I would struggle with regularity, but I did not think that I would up and forget about the existence of my blog project for a whole two months of life here in Spain. I sit down to write late on a Sunday night of my last full week in Ávila, the place I have lovingly and sometimes painfully called home over the past two months. I don't know exactly where to start with this at such a late date and late hour of the night, so I will just write and see what comes out...let's begin with my crazy kids.... This is a group of my 1st level, secondary students doing a conversational English "party".

Teaching:
It has been a powerful experience to walk into a private Catholic school in a small Spanish town and teach groups of wild adolescents in my second language. Spanish schools are broken primary, secondary, and bachillerato. Within both primary and secondary, there are 4 levels. I mainly worked with secondary 1-4. I have had days where I feel completely defeated after teaching here--over taken with the frustration of not having my own language at my fingertips to express the details of thought and feeling...but on these days I have always learned something and walked away a better educator in the end.


Of all the work that I have done with my students, the part I am the most proud of is a research project on various US states that I put together for the 4th level classes I have been teaching. My 4th level students (15-16 yrs. old) were really interested in learning more about specific regions of the United States, so we worked together over a 5 week period to research certain states in groups, make brochures about their states in English, and last week they gave oral presentations in English on their states. I really enjoyed this process with my classes, and it was especially interesting to see students who are not accustomed to group work learn to work together. Unlike American schools (and especially Key Learning Community) my students here were not used to being given the opportunity to work in groups or do research based, long term projects. So, along with learning about their certain state, I felt like each student was also exploring a whole new way to look at learning. A way that is not based in their prescribed national textbook. I was lucky enough to find an English teacher in my school, Belén, who wanted to work "outside the box" with me. I feel like the classes that I worked with on these projects got so much more out of their time with me than any other groups.


The rest of my classes were mostly based around oral English practice, conversation and pronunciation. We played a lot of tongue twister games, learned some of the more regular rules of English pronunciation and we also spent a fair amount of time critiquing my Spanish...which was sometimes good and sometimes bad. I have had to kick a lot of kids out of class for lack of respect, general craziness...behavior issues that I never faced in the States. This was quite a task for me to face in Spanish, but I am alive and well in the end! While I am aware that the students I have taught in Spain have a lot of the same adolescent angst tendencies of students in the States, I have to say that after 8 weeks of teaching, I look back on my students at KLC with amazement and respect. I am amazed at how much more mature they seem to be than the students in Ávila. Don't get me wrong--I have met some really special kids here, but I feel like there is something to the struggle of life many of my students in the States have faced that gives them perspective that my students here just haven't experienced. I feel like because this is such a small town and because kids do not usually have jobs in Spanish culture, they grow up much more slowly...except in the negative ways of smoking and drinking...there are 12 year olds that smoke outside of school on break. I could never quite get over this being a normal thing....


With all of this said, I have forged meaningful relationships with many students in my classes, and I hope to see some of them in the United States one day in their future travels. I also had to opportunity to develop activities with the primary program at Las Nieves, and I have gotten to accompany classes on field trips to different areas of Castilla-Leon. I was also lucky enough to develop good friends with several teachers in my building; two women in particular have become good friends of mine, taking me on day trips around this region, introducing me to their families, taking me out for amazing meals, and generally extending hands of friendship in times when I have needed the extra support.

Now that it is all said and done, I can already feel the new perspective on education that this experience has given me--a perspective that can more fully acknowledge the benefits of American schools while holding the important lessons I have gained from working internationally. I have included some photos in this post of my teaching experiences with Las Nieves...
These are from the field trip I took with Las Nieves to Atapuerca--the archaeological site of the oldest remain of human ancestors in Europe. The bones were found in the early 1900's when the English built a rail line to Africa. Also, there are photos from our visit to the Cathedral in Burgos.