The Spanish Classroom Pt. 1

I´ve been meaning to write about my observations at my school and education in general for a while now, so here I go. It´s been a very interesting few months here at the school to say the least. My experience with the students has been, in general, a good one. I hate to gloat, but sometimes I feel like a celebrity walking the hallways of my school when students shout, ¨Hello  Charlie!¨ with their cute accents. It was amusing at first, but now it kind of gets on my nerves. Can you say anything else besides "hello"?! I usually responded with a hello back, but now I´ve changed it up with hi, how´s it goin´, or what´s up? And some of them are finally changing it up too.

The thing is I am the first auxiliar that this school has ever had, so this is the first time that some of the students have been exposed to a real live American. Maybe thats why they are soooo enthused by my presence. I just wish that they would be as enthusiastic about learning English. Typical scenario: I enter a classroom and suddenly their is a wave of excitement that soon dies down after they open their books. Well, part of the reason is that Spanish students are incredibly timid when it comes to speaking out loud in a foreign language. A colleague told me that they´re so timid, in fact, that they´d prefer to get a zero on participation then say anything at all. Another reason, which I discovered during one of my mid-morning conversations with colleagues, is that less emphasis on conversation has to do with the way foreign languages have been taught in Spain for decades. Apparently, Spaniards have been drilled on reading and writing in English or French for years, but when it comes to practicing the language verbally there has hardly been any support. "We Spaniards are horrible at learning other languages; only the English are worse,"another colleague told me. He said that even the French can claim more linguistic savviness. So, several years ago the Spanish Ministry of Education got a clue about the embarrassing language situation in Spain and put together the program that I am now a part of.

In all seriousness, I feel that many students have made progress so far in terms of increase in vocabulary and responding to my questions with more complex sentences or phrases. Pronunciation has improved among them too. They are also less timid than before. Part of it is that they have warmed up to my presence and the other part, I like to think, is because of dialogues that we have read aloud in class which I prepare at home. Some of them still read like robots unfortuantely. I keep telling them to be natural, that intonation is important, but it goes out the other ear.

Motivation is also a key factor and the ones that are more motivated have improved the most. Interestingly, that motivation seems to vary according to class too. Apparently, at each grade level there is a specific class called diversificación which is made up of students who didn´t pass their final exams from the previous year, but who were allowed to advance because you only have to pass x number of classes to pass the entire grade. They tend to be the least motivated in English. Anyways, even after they explained it to me its still kind of fuzzy.

To continue, the way school years are divided up here are way different from the United States. First of all, a high school here in Spain is known as la ESO or Escuela Secundaria Obligatoria (Obligatory Secundary Education), colloquially known as el instituto. It caters to students ages 12 to 16 who are placed into grades 1 through 4, and its main focus is to prepare them for bachillerato, baccalaureate, or vocational training which is for two years and usually taken at the same high school. The bachillerato is essentially two years of college prep. The students who are preparing themselves for college tend to be the ones who are serious and motivated about learning, so its no surprise that my favorite class is my 1st year Bachillerato class. They actually put emotion into their dialogues and seem to enjoy it at the same time.

On a different note, if you know Spanish then you can understand this saying: De marzo no te fíes que es traidor, tan pronto frío como calor. This has been so true. 

Hasta luego.