If this were exactly what my life looked like in a year, I would feel... Successful. Accomplished. Blithe.
I'm writing this blog from the Starbucks on Fuencarral in Madrid, outside and under their toasty heat lamps. It was so beautiful and sunny today that it only seems right to be sitting outside at night! I almost feel like Spring is here, and I'm getting so excited for it!
I can't believe I've never blogged at a Starbucks before - the atmosphere is so perfect. I have Grooveshark streaming Jack Johnson and Justin Timberlake through my earphones, and I'm sitting here taking in everybody around me, smoking and drinking their coffees in little bundles of friends sitting around the tiny black tables. :)
Today I substitute taught in fifth and sixth grades. Like last time, Conchita was there just in case there were any behavior issues I couldn't handle. I honestly thought I was really, really going to need her today. See, Sara's classes are the ones that are impossible to teach, because they are always loud, disrespectful and out of control. Sara's way of dealing with them is to scream in their faces and tell them how awful they are and take their recess away from them. At first I thought this was seriously necessary... But after their behavior didn't change months later, I began to wonder if this might not be the most effective manner of disciplining them...? I mean, good discipline encourages good behavior and eventually eliminates bad behavior... So why were these kids only getting worse?
When I'd been told I'd be substituting again, I was really excited. It means a great deal to me that the headmistress trusts me enough to put me in charge of teaching solo. :) But when I found out it'd be for Sara's classes, I was less than excited... If they were that disastrous when their actual teacher was in the room, what would happen with just me there!? I decided it would either be the worst day I'd had teaching at that school, or it'd turn out to be the best.
And it turned out to be the best!!
I walked into the first class with the 5th graders, a little nervous, but as soon as I sat down they all ran to their school bags for their English notebook and textbook and ran back to their seats and sat there, all smiles. They were clearly PUMPED I was going to be their teacher solo today, and they took turns squealing, "Hi, Chelsea!!" from their desks. :) Um, adorable.
The class went off without a hitch and they all copied everything I wrote on the board without a single complaint. Everybody participated and was enthusiastic. When I used the example for Present Continuous that I was teaching at CISTA and that I started in September and would be done in June, the whole class started to protest. "Wait. You're leaving in June? You're not going to be our teacher next year, too? Why? We want you to stay!!" :) It was way adorable!!
For the last ten minutes of the class, the students had to do work in their notebooks. Usually when it's time to silently work and do their own thing, the students take the opportunity to talk and get out of their seats and just become a general loud disaster. But today? Today I used a trick that I learned from my favorite Master's teacher - during one of our classes we had a few minutes to do individual work and she took the opportunity to put some cool, but chill music on. We were all so confused, and she said it make working more pleasant and easier to focus... And she was totally right! Suddenly, we never wanted individual work time to stop because we loved the music she was playing so much! :) And so, I tried it with these 5th graders. As soon as they sat to work, I turned on Grooveshark.com and starting playing some Jack Johnson from the album "In Between Dreams." The students started looking around the room, clearly bewildered. I told them I thought a little music made working more enjoyable. They all smiled and bobbed their heads along to the music while the worked. In complete and utter silence. For ten minutes straight.
It was the weirdest sight I had ever seen.
Ever.
Was this the same class that I have been going to for months that gets so loud and unruly!? Was this the same class that Sara yells at every time I'm there to sit down and be quiet and start participating more?!
At the end of the class the kids told me they wished I could be their teacher every day. ^_^ Awww... Thanks, guys! I'd love to be, now that I know you're actually all really cool when given a proper chance and not being made to feel bad about yourselves all the time! :)
Next class was the 6th graders. Now, in comparison to the 5th grade class, the 6th grade class is a million times worse. It's the class I once made them do a dictation that turned out to be a contract that they had to sign, agreeing to stop being so disrespectful and unruly. It was the class I always end up yelling at and sending some kid into the hallway so that I don't try to pelt them with all the chalk in the room first. They are the second worst class I teach in the whole school, and I had them for two hours today - an hour of Science and an hour of English. Let's just say, I wasn't so much looking forward to it...
So you can imagine my surprise when I walked in and then were all silently seated at their desks with their Science notebooks and textbooks opened on their desk.
Whoa - what!?!
I told them we would begin by doing popcorn reading of the next two pages. A few kids informed me that they usually read paragraph by paragraph and Sara chooses who will read. I repeated that today we would be doing it popcorn style. When a girl tried to tell me again that's not how they do it, one girl said, "That's Sara's way. But today we have Chelsea, and we are going to do things Chelsea's way." By the smiles on the kids' faces, I could tell this made them quite pleased. :)
After we read and highlighted, I told them I would write the important terms on the board along with pithy explanations that they would have to copy in their notebooks. Nobody protested, and everyone flipped their notebook right open.
What ensued was absolute hilarity. I had to teach them about motors, circuits and sensors... As if I had any knowledge on the subject myself before they'd began popcorn reading a few minutes before! And so I did what I do best - I got real ridiculous real fast. I basically did an interpretive dance for each term I defined on the board. For combustion engine I pretended to be a little car and cruised around the room, occasionally making little explosion noises. For an electric motor I pretended to plug myself into the wall. For electric circuits I had a guy come up and be an engine and then tell me to go do things around the room. Each sensor I had an elaborate story for - temperature sensors keeps your ice cream frozen... Light sensors are the reason you have to jump when you run out of a garage as the door is closing... Infrared sensors are what allow us to sit on the couch lazily and still change channels.
The class was ALL sorts of into my crazy explanations as I danced and jumped around the classroom. One of the more disruptive boys, who had been giggling and paying attention just as much as the others, told me this was the most interesting science class they'd ever had. He told me that their teacher usually just makes them read and copy ad nauseum. "Actually," one girl corrected him, "this is the most entertaining class of any subject we've ever had."
Hahaha.
Hell yeah. ;)
We broke for breakfast, and a half hour later we were back for English class. One guy asked if I could try to make this class even more awesome than the last, but unfortunately the subject wasn't so exciting. They had a whole page of bookwork to do for the class, but again I put on music and they, too, were enraptured. :)
Overall a magnificent half day of teaching solo! ^_^
I spent the afternoon getting ready for my late afternoon and evening in the city, and was off. First stop, a TTMadrid meeting in regards to our TEFL certification process. Basically, we have to do part of our dissertation profiling an adult student of ours (Patty!), do six observed classes and pass a grammar awareness exam. Sounds ducky. :) But of course, half my group began saying how much work it would be and they didn't know when they could fit it in and they would be so nervous to be observed in a classroom setting, blah blah blah. Come on, guys... You sound like my students when I give them a coloring sheet and they start telling me how they don't want to do it and it is too difficult and they don't have all of their colored pencils sharpened. ;) Ha.
After the meeting, I stayed behind to talk to Natasha a bit. First, I thanked her for her brilliant music-while-working idea she'd given us in the class she'd taught us! Then I talked to her about my uncertainty in regards to my future plans. I asked her opinion on staying here for the auxiliary program and she told me that it would be a piece of cake compared to what I'm doing now. Four hour a day. Four days per week. Double the salary. Plus private lessons on the side. AND I would live in the city. I'm definitely going to sign up for the program - it seems like the easiest way to live a more than comfortable life abroad ever! But she encouraged me to also look into other options, too. Her main suggestion?
Dubai.
She told me how she lived in Dubai for awhile as an English teacher and how she actually met her husband there. She told me that it is an incredible place and feels surreal - like living in Disney World or something. She said it isn't a place a person could live all their life, but a great place to spend a year or two experiencing everything, traveling and working. The biggest bonus, of course, is that it is in the highest paying country to work for as an English teacher in the world. :) She told me that if she has an opportunity to return, she'd do it in a heartbeat.
Hmmm... Dubai, hey? I've always been curious about it...
Natasha then told me that if I did decide on staying in Madrid next year, she would love to have me teach the Phonology section of the Master's class next year!!! How awesome would that be!? ^_^ So cool.
After leaving TTMadrid, I had dinner, cookies and did a bit of shopping before Abby arrived (I was on a search for a denim button down - all the rage on Pinterest and Spain right now... and something I wanted in on! A million denim shirts later, I found the perfect one and am happy to report that I look as adorable in it as the countless girls on Pinterest do!), and in no time it was time for Caipirinha Party #2.
Now, I knew better than to think ANY party could ever be better than Caiprinha Party #1 with Maitê, Mateus, Sebastian, Lucas, Lucia, Gaba and everybody else in Dublin. That was basically the best party I've ever been to. ;) The caipirinha was delicious, the music was great (Sebastian and I make the best DJs ever), the company was hilarious and amazing, some forró was definitely thrown in there and flirting was definitely happening. I'm sure it didn't hurt matters that I was the only American within miles of the party, either. ;) I felt 100% in my element.
Caiprinha Party #2, however, was pretty much the opposite. Without meaning to be, I found myself surrounded by Americans the entire time... And just in case I'd forgotten, it once again became entirely too obvious to me that if there is one nationality I do not enjoy nor get along with easily, it is the American nationality. Their taste in music, their topics of conversation, their selfishness during discourse, their predictable and undereducated diction... All of it. It was a great reminder as to why I graduated college a year early, as well as why I originally decided I needed to move to another country and try never to return - at least for as long as possible. Jeeze.
I was grateful for Abby clearly knowing what to do in these circumstances, and chose to stand there and consume cachaca rather than summon the energy it would take to walk a few paces to my right to join in a Spanish conversation. Hours later - after following everybody out to a bar, having a yucky Mexican guy try to dance with me, and somehow finding our way back via cab, Abby and I were sitting outside the door of where the party had started - all of our stuff obviously inside but nobody there to let us in.
What ensued was debatably the best (and arguably only) late night/early morning too-much-cachaca story I've ever been part of which involved a lot of doorbells, extreme attempts at speaking sensical Spanish, an old lady in her house coat, a hallway, a wee bit of Portuguese and a note pinned to the door the next morning with a harshly worded warning about calling the police.
Oops.
Overall, it was clearly the most successful night Abby and I have had together since sometime early last fall. ;)
XOXO
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