Teaching English

It was very interesting to read Allison and Andrea’s reflections, both working in schools in Berlin and Florence, respectively. I finally started my service placement in a private Catholic school on the north side of Madrid. I have been teaching English to both 6 year olds and 14 year olds, and the experience has been overwhelmingly fun thus far. Like Andrea’s third graders, the 6 year olds know very little English, but are very eager to use it. In their class, I help the teacher teach them songs like “The Pizza Song”. There is a lot of giggling in that class. Also just like Andrea’s experience, there exist the same stereotypes and roles amongst the students, but the teacher has much less control over them and there is quite a good deal of yelling and talking all at the same time in loud voices. (But also interesting is my observation that the majority of t.v. shows here are talk shows in which the adults all talk loudly over one another at the same time…) I don’t seem to be teaching them much English, rather, my contribution to the classroom is more along the lines of being a foreign presence, and with that, representing (hopefully in a positive way) the qualities an American. They are in awe of the fact that I am American. It is such an intangible thing to them, even though Madrid is not too different from America. Globalization and Americanization have brought Madrid and the U.S. closer, but in an impersonal way. I represent the personal aspect of that globalization.

My experience with the 14 year olds seems to be much different than Andrea’s experience with 16/17 year olds in Florence.There is one girl who speaks English well, and the rest are barely better than my 6 year olds. And unlike Andrea’s kids, mine are not interested in politics. They ask me questions about American culture instead. “Do you have Formula 1 racing?”, “Do you like soccer?”, “What’s your favorite soccer team in the world?”. It is very funny because here the first question they will ask you is “what is your favorite soccer team?”. Madrileños are very proud about Real Madrid soccer team. If you answer anything but “Real Madrid”, they may not like you. Seriously. I had the exact opposite experience as Andrea, my kids being far less intellectual than my classmates and I at that age in the States (not to say that we were intellectual, because we weren’t, but definitely more so than my kids). They are very curious about me, wanting to know if I had a boyfriend (yes), if I have sibilings (yes), what my favorite color is (red). After my first class, all the boys (and some girls) wanted my autograph. I thought it was a joke, but they insisted on getting my autograph. It was sadder to me than flattering. It seemed to reflect a notion of superiority of any and everything American that many young Spaniards have. Maybe that is just me being critical, but I can’t even begin to imagine that if a Spaniard (or any other foreigner) came to my 8^th grade classroom that I would want their autograph. I would be interested, but not obsessive. Perhaps I am totally wrong, and this is just a cultural way of showing interest, but it was nonetheless strange to me. And, like boys everywhere, mine are in love with me, telling me I am beautiful and asking me on dates. What can I say; 14 year old boys will be 14 year old boys.

Allison’s comments about the reverse-integration of the third generation German-Turks in Berlin were very interesting. As Madrid has just recently been incorporated into capitalist society (after the death of the dictator Franco 30 years ago), immigration has been enormous here. Close to a third of the population of the city is now foreign. But as far as I know, reverse-integration is nowhere to be found. The immigrants want to integrate into society. Race in Spain is not as important as regionalism. Racism is pervasive, but those who are racist are more distracted by more pertinent issues like domestic abuse and ETA than acculturation. An English teacher I work with at the school said (in a whisper) that the private schools have the power to reject admission to immigrants and their kids. Public schools are improving, however, and the government does have private, publicly funded schools. Furthermore, in the 1^st grade classroom where I teach, there are several students who are clearly Latino or Eastern European. It reminds me of the nature of integration of African-Americans into US schools; at first there was strong opposition, followed by the movement of whites to private schools to avoid integration, followed by gradual acceptance undermined by secret or more discreet racism. This is, of course, a very general way of describing both patterns of integration, and Spain’s integration includes people of a variety of races (the majority being from Eastern Europe and Latin America with a growing number from North Africa). I am currently investigating the new education law here (as I wrote about last time) and although my thesis does not focus on immigration and education, it has been certainly interesting to learn about it at the same time.

Ok that’s all for now, I have tons to do in the upcoming weeks (2 more left!). I am preparing a photo slideshow for my 14 year olds with pictures of my life in the States. Most of it shows photos of Upstate New York in contrast to New York City because my kids had no idea that New York is actually a state. In fact, they don’t even really know what a state is (they have autonomous regions here, which is as close as Spain gets to having states). We’ll see how it goes.

-Allie Theis, November 2006