Salesianos

While the experience is still fresh in my mind (somewhat), I would like to write a short post about my first day of work at job number two.

My previously mentioned friend, Samantha, who got me job number one, also led me to job number two. There is a man who studies at the academy, who is also a teacher at a somewhat private school in Utrera. The school is a chain I guess you could call it, I don’t know if that word applies for schools, but there are a bunch of these schools around the country. It’s a catholic school, founded by a famous priest, don’t rememer his name, forgive me I’m Jewish. Its public in that it is funded by the government, but in every other sense it seems like a private school. There are boarders, and uniforms, and it looks a little like Hogwarts.

Well, back on topic, this man, Carlos, asked Sam if she would be willing to help out at the school a couple of hours a week. Since she is already working at yet another school in the morning, Sam decided not to take the job and offered it to me. Good deal. Thanks SammySpain!

So this past Thursday morning, I had to wake up at 6:45 AM, yuck, in order to be at Salesianos at 9 (normally I will be arriving at 9:30 but this was the first day so I had to take a tour and meet all of the millions of teachers there). Well I am now becoming somewhat of an expert at taking the train to Utrera, so that part of the commute presented no trouble for me. But as soon as I got off of the train, I realized all I really knew in terms of how to walk to the school was, go to the right. I did however plan a little bit ahead and picked up a map of Utrera at a hotel earlier in the week.

For some reason, maybe the fact that it’s impossible to find street signs in Spain, I was having trouble following the map. I couldn’t exactly figure out where I was, so it was hard to figure out exactly how to get to where I wanted to go, obviously. Luckily, I turned a corner, and saw three boys in school uniform! I followed them the whole rest of the way to school, without them noticing! Maybe I have a future career as a spy?

The school is an entire city block, like NYC style city block. So once the boys got me close to the school it was really hard to miss. Also there were tons of little school kids in uniform, gossiping and cramming last minute for a test. I met Carlos at the main gate to the school, and he gave me a tour of the school, completely useless because it’s so big that I will never remember how to get everywhere. He introduced me to almost every single person that works at the school, even the teachers I will not be working with (which is almost all them because I’m only working with one teacher). But it was nice to be introduced anyway.

The job itself is very much like what I did last year as a language assistant. I will be in each of the first grade classes for one hour a week, because they want to start something of a bilingual program at the school. Since it is not technically a public school, they do not have the official bilingual program and therefore are not assigned a native speaker as an auxiliar de conversación (fancy name for language assistant). Right, so I’ll be in the classroom so the kids can get used to hearing a native English speaker, learn correct pronunciation and all that fun stuff.

The morning was fun. Taught the parts of the body and face, three times. Made little 6-year-old friends. Looking forward to more.

Since I don’t start at the academy until 4:30 on Thursdays, I was invited to stay at the school for lunch (they serve lunch there because there are afternoon classes too and not everyone can go home to eat). Also there are boarding students and they obviously need to eat there. Seeing as this is Spain, and lunch is the most important meal, I was served not just a sandwich or basket of chicken fingers (like what you might find in a school cafeteria in America) but rather an entire 3-course meal. There was salad and a potato stew to start, chicken and more potatoes for the second course, yogurt and fruit for dessert. Not too bad. I think I can get used to having a good meal made for me once a week.

In the cafeteria there is a student eating section and another one for teachers. I sat in the teacher’s section because I was eating with the primary school kids, and also I’m a teacher of sorts. It was a little lonely because no other teacher was eating at that time (1pm is really early for lunch here). But eventually some started trickling in, a couple even sat with me! Exciting, new friends! Some teachers were young and seemed cool but the only problem is that they mostly all live in Utrera. And I don’t. So, that’s a bummer. But still, good to know there are young, friendly people working there.

After lunch, I spent a couple of hours sitting in the teachers’ lounge (one of the lounges I should say) preparing my classes for the academy. I believe in that time I met the rest of the staff I hadn’t met earlier in the day. It’s a great environment at that school. Everyone was super nice to me, many complimented me on my Spanish (always nice to have a little confidence booster) and a lot of them spoke English pretty well. I’m excited to have some extra work in the mornings, and the extra money of course, but by the end of the day Thursday I was dead tired. I don’t finish at the academy until 9:30 so I was out of the house almost 14 hours. For me, that’s a lot!

Sorry I lied, not a short post.