Life as an English Teacher
(How to Turn Off the Headlights and Turn on the Light Bulb)

I was a little apprehensive about teaching English when I decided to move to Spain. As it's the primary occupation for English-speaking foreigners, and probably one of the more lucrative, I knew that it was what I needed to do. I shelved my fear of speaking in front of groups and decided to just go for it.

Initially, it was good. My first position was at a very yuppie insurance company with students that had a really advanced level of English. I basically just needed to bring news articles and materials to facilitate a discussion and everything ideally would flow from there. I hated trying to find things of interest without being controversial, but I think for the most part I succeeded. Aside from a little attitude from this group of young guys in one class, generally things went smoothly.

Over the summer, everyone in Madrid flees to the beach or to other countries for vacation, and the English jobs pretty much dry up. I only had one intensive class with a young woman who worked for a consulting firm and one private student during this time. When the fall classes started up again, I placed a couple of ads for my services on popular internet boards here. I was immediately overwhelmed with calls and emails. I have finally been able to pretty much work out a schedule with a good balance between earnings and free time. The challenge has been the students in the new classes.

I think I was spoiled by the VERY advanced level of my first classes. I basically could talk to them about whatever - politics, religion, society, culture. We had similar interests, and I found their insights into current events really interesting in contrast to my American perspective.

Well, now I have several classes that are supposedly intermediate, but often when people speak about levels here, well, they can be a little deceptive. Due to the method of teaching in Spanish schools in the past (I think it's a little better now, but they NEVER spoke in class), the conversation level is much lower than you would expect at the different levels. Since I had no formal teaching experience upon my arrival, I wasn't really equipped to deal with students who couldn't really speak. Fortunately, my Spanish is good. (For detail, see prior Hablo Español entry.)

For example, I just recently added a class of business professionals. My boss at the academy said that due to a problem with scheduling, he needed to swap out my advanced group with an intermediate group similar to another intermediate group I have, but with a lower level. I was like, LOWER LEVEL, is that possible? Getting my current intermediate group to speak was like pulling teeth. So, I arrived the first day, and tried to speak to them in English, and they were like deer in headlights - horrified and only able to utter the most simple phrases, riddled with errors. Ugh. To compound the fun, everyone had been taught by British instructors in the past, so my accent really puts the FOREIGN into foreign language.

Their horror and confusion just compounded my nervous insecurity, and I scrambled for things to do that they could understand. I started with a lower intermediate level activity that I had used in one of my other classes, and about five minutes into it, one woman said, "This is really difficult language for us." I was like, OK, well, let me know if you have questions, and we can move to something easier after reading through this. I gave them a homework assignment to answer a few basic questions over the article, and the next class, neither of them (there are 2 in the class) had done the homework, and one didn't even bother to bring the printout of the activity so we could discuss. I started with the next activity, the EASIER one, supposedly, and they were still struggling, not listening, drifting off into daydreams in the middle of a discussion. Finally, when they completely ignored my instructions and started doing the activity following the one we were supposed to be doing, I got frustrated with them, it was obvious, and I felt a little bad for acting so annoyed. SIGH.

I know from my other higher-level lower-level group (?!) that they probably just need time to become accustomed to my accent, time to practice, to refresh their memory on English after the summer break. I also think that when we get more familiar with one another, I'll have a better idea of how they operate, what they like and dislike, and how to best tailor the class to their needs. In the meantime, I'm practicing patience and tolerance. I'm sure I have as much to learn in this situation as they do :)