5 Things about Teaching English

   Struggling to find a way to finance my weekends in Paris and nights in Barcelona, I was lucky enough to find a job teaching English to children ages 7 to 12. Teaching was never my first choice job, in fact, ever since teaching swim lessons, teaching anything to small kids with the attention span of a fruit fly has been relatively low on my list of job choices. However, money is money, and now that I'm a little older and have a little bit more patience, I decided to try again. It turns out, that teaching English here in Barcelona was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I've learned a lot about myself, language acquisition, catalan culture, and teaching. Come to think of it, I've even been begrudgingly forced to grow up a little bit for teaching. Don't worry, just a little bit. Here is a list of the things that I have realized after teaching English to Spanish kids for the last month.

1. English is really difficult.
I consider myself to be pretty good at English. One might even go as far as to say that I'm proficient, maybe even decent at the language. After all, I've been using it every day for the last 20 years. Until looking at the language from an outside perspective, I did not realize how many random apostrophes, ambiguous verb tenses and weird little quirks we have in our language. In fact, I sadly realized how little I know about the language.

2. You have to grow up a little bit in order to teach.
Apparently, there is this thing in the real world called 'being or looking presentable' or 'looking professional. ' I have to interact with kids, and more importantly, I have to interact with their parents. So, I faced the harsh realization that you need to do these strange things like shave regularly, wear collared shirts, and not get to places late, but 'on time' or even 'early.' The whole concept of being early still confuses me a bit, I think this is what they might mean by culture shock.

3. You have to be prepared.
I realized that teachers, well, at least the good ones, know their stuff. They have lesson plans and activities and books and all sorts of stuff that they prepare in advance for their students. This means you can't roll out of bed, show up hungover and expect to teach two back to back hour long lessons. I've heard that this is actually extremely difficult, and the kids will see right through an unprepared teacher. If you are one of the fortunate few teachers that can teach under those conditions, well, good for you, you're a horrible role model.

4. The Kids
One of my kids legitimately looks forward to his lessons, his parents told me so. He pays attention, does his homework, and might even be smarter than me. He keeps me on my toes to say the least, and honestly, I love it. Over the last month, I've watched him go from struggling over English words like a fresh marine recruit struggling to climb over an obstacle wall at boot camp to Captain America plowing his way through every English word on the page like it's D-Day. It's pretty cool to think that I've taught him that, and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Even though teaching still might not be my dream job, I now understand why teachers teach, and how that one student can make a world of difference on a bad day.

5. The Culture
Teaching English here in Spain has given me the unique opportunity to get close with the families. Not only are they helping me with my Spanish, but I'm also starting to pick up Catalán, and learn about Spanish and Catalán culture. In fact, I watched a James Bond movie in Catalan the other night. Other than that, I get to see the child's perspective of the Spanish academic system. All of my students ( I have 7 total) are currently learning four languages at once. The typical list consists of Spanish (Castellano), Catalán, French, and English. By the time they're out of high school, they are fluent in Castellano and Catalán, and very close, if not fluent in French and English as well. When I was seven years old, I would wear my underwear on the outside of my pants and tie a towel around my neck and then go jump off the couch. At seven years old, I was very seriously working on becoming Batman. In high school I learned some Spanish, and I'm still working on the whole English thing. These kids are working on becoming miniature diplomats and translators. Just think about all the people those extra languages open the kids up to at an early age! I think that's one of the many reasons that today's Europe, on average, is much more socially liberal and progressive than America. They're exposed to more cultures and societies from the time that they are very young, and they grow up with a less isolated, more global view of the world, while we watch "Jersey Shore" and watch rap stars show us their bedazzled jacuzzis in their cribs.



Overall, teaching gives me a profound new respect for teachers, and it's helping me transition to the real world, whether I like it or not. As much as I don't like shaving, I have discovered that I look awfully handsome in collared shirts, and when you get to a place early, you have time to do grown up things like read newspapers, drink expressos and nap.

Is it still considered 'grown - up' if I eat the sugar cubes separately and pretend like I didn't get any sugar?

Word of the Day: Enseñar - To teach
Enseño niños el ingles y en la realidad, es un poco divertido. I teach kids English and in reality, it's kind of fun.