Tuesdays have officially become my longest day of the week. Longest, but (by far) certainly not the worst. Mondays are the worst. Tuesdays are just long. I get on the bus at 8:35am. My only break in the day is lunch. After my five classes I teach during the school day, I have play class with Nacho. After that (as of today), I have an hour of conversation class with his parents! Then, I run to the train, get to Madrid, transfer between two metros, walk, and get to Patty's. An hour and a half later, she drops me off at the train station. My train home is 55 minutes long.
I could technically get home by 11:30, but (seeing as how I hadn't eaten since breakfast, 12 hours ago) I decided to stop at 100 Montaditos for a quick bite and a large beer. Current ETA? Midnight. (And yes, I am writing this from the train! Interesting fact: I write the majority of my blogs on the train... :-P)
But, despite my work day being roughly 14 hours long, I had a lovely Tuesday.
The first two classes sucked, but Laura's class perked me up, as usual. I know I say the Bachis are my favorite. I'm not reneging on that. But Laura's 3rd grade comes in at a VERY close second. ;) And that's who I had today!!! ^_^ Nothing snaps me out of a funk like those kids. :o)
Their adorableness motivated me to do my (awesome and inspired) rough draft of my final project at lunch... Which brings me to my life long question: Why am I so great at procrastination? It's not even that I pull it off in the end - it's that mine is always way better than everyone else's... including those who have been working on it for weeks and weeks!? Man. I swear this is my biggest talent in life!! I used to think it was luck, but now I'm starting to see it as a sort of super power. What takes other people serious planning and brainpower takes me five minutes of intense, zen thought. And then, BOOM. Inspired idea.
This talent really pays off in the classroom as a teacher. Man, does it ever! I got to fourth period and pulled out an awesome activity OUT OF MY A$&. I put the 6th graders in four groups of four and gave each group a kids book to read. They then had to summarize it and each give their personal opinion on it. Then, they'd switch books with another group. Cool, okay. But what really made it work was that I put each group on the board and told them every time I heard their group use Spanish, I'd put a sad face on the board. The idea was the group with least sad faces would win.
But they took it way seriously. I heard one Spanish sentence in 30 minutes.
This, coming from one of the classes that teachers are always screaming at to speak in English, yet they never do.
I changed up the rules and started giving smiley faces to the groups who were being witty, using English when they didn't think I was listening, etc. Make it a completion and game and suddenly everyone is fluent! O_o
After school it was Nacho time. Sometimes I feel like I understand how kid play therapy psychologists work... See, he and I can be coloring or playing hide and seek or Hungry Humgry Hippos, and I have to find a way to ask him questions and get him talking. It's a very delicate art form, I must say! But the adorable part is he almost always understands exactly what I said, and almost always has a perfect response! ^_^
Last Tuesday, after our play lesson, his mom told me how he had gotten a perfect score on his English exam. She told me how she'd tried to study with him, but how he already knew it all. She was so impressed by this that she asked if by chance I gave adult lessons. When I responded that I did, she jumped at the opportunity and asked if I could give her lessons after Nacho on Tuesdays and Thursdays! Her husband came home while we were discussing it and said he'd be interested, too!
Holy crap! I just love unexpected awesomeness!
This was the mom that I was worried wanted to fire me when Nacho started telling her for a few weeks he never wanted me to come back again. I never knew if she liked me or if she thought his classes with me were worth it.
And then this!
Anyway, today was our first lesson and it actually went really well! ^_^ Once again, didn't prepare a thing... Made it all up as I went... But by the end of the hour, the mom was talking to Nacho in English without fear or embarrassment on her face! A HUGE thing for her, who I'd never heard speak a word of English in the eight months I've known her because of her "embarrassment when it comes to speaking English..." :-) Awesome!
While the ending of the lesson was a big win, the whole thing
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