I could literally write a dozen blog posts about the goings-on of today. You'd think it would be a normal sort of "back-to-the-grind" Monday, but no. Here are the highlights:
2nd Grade Playground Drama:
My second class of the day is a second year science class. Today, it took about 40 minutes to get to the "science" aspect of the class because the teacher had to lecture the whole class about all of the drama that exists between the kids. What lead up to this was the typical "she hit me, so I hit her back" sort of complaint. This instinctive sort of revenge must be universal because these Spanish niños were saying the same exact things that the kids would say where I worked before! It was absolutely crazy the way that kids were saying, "Well my mom says I'm allowed to hit back if someone hits me." The thing that amazed me was that the teacher actually spent 40 minutes of the hour-long class period to deal with this playground drama! Good for me, I got some wonderful vocab words to add to that little dictionary in my head (mentirón, me ha dado una patada, me robaste la peonza -- big lie, he/she kicked me, you stole my spinning top).
The philosophies of the headmaster:
The headmaster of my school is an interesting guy. He looks like a wannabee Santa Claus who missed the memo on how to be jolly, drinks whiskey and wine instead of milk, and cuts his beard too short. His real name is Delfín, codename: The Dolphin. Today, all of the staff members of the school were given a letter. The point of the letter was an invitation to a staff luncheon in honour of teachers. Instead of a tacky little memo that says the date and time of the luncheon, we all received an incredibly philosophical, 2-page letter about teachers and what makes a teacher great. The language of the letter is incredibly formal and philosophical; after the first sentence I was transported back to the mind-boggling words of some of my Spanish literature classes. I'm pretty sure the Dolphin was meant to be alive during Spain's Golden Age!
Some highlights of the letter include: The most illustrious men in history were teachers...Jesus was a teacher...Teachers all deserve to be honoured and you, teachers at (my school), dedicate your lives to the most noble task: educating children and creating men....My childhood brings back memories of a small town and the people of Castille, where respect to one's elders and to the teachers was something sacred and they wanted something for their children that they couldn't have had themselves....the illustrious teachers of my Philosophy degree taught me so many things, for example, how to discover my ignorance... and so on. I'm pretty sure it's more entertaining in Spanish, but the whole "Jesus was a teacher" thing made me go "Whoa! None of my principals would have EVER said that on a staff party invite!"
Continental Seven:
My word of the day was "continental." What brought this about? You might wonder. Well, Danny, my fellow professional English speaker asked if I write "continental sevens." My response was a blank look, thinking of a Fred Astaire song, and really just thinking to myself "What the &$#* is a continental seven?" Then he told me that it's a 7 with a line through it. (Well, why didn't you just say that?!) And then I just burst out laughing because it was such a weird way to differentiate the two ways to write a 7. But in all seriousness, I learned that Europeans on the "continent" are so much different than British people because they write their 7's with a line through them... either that or the Brits are so elite that they don't waste their ink on a line going through a 7. Either way, my answer to his question was "Yes because Spanish people will think it's a 1 if I don't." (FYI: Spanish people write "continental sevens" and they write 1's like a weird tee-pee thing instead of just a straight vertical line).
Private English Lesson:
Today I gave my first clase particular (private lesson) for a 15-year-old Spanish girl who is learning English. It was a 90 minute lesson and I made 25 €! Completely under-the-table and incredibly rewarding! After practically pulling teeth with the 1st and 2nd graders at school, it was wonderful to be teaching someone who actually understood things when you were correcting them. Nerdy me, I actually enjoyed explaining the difference between subjects and objects and which sentences needed auxiliary verbs and how to form the questions for the sentences! What a thrill! And that was the hardest part of the lesson, the rest of it consisted of me correcting her writing as she wrote a short essay. Can't wait until next Monday!
That about sums up the craziness of the day... Coming soon: A Thanksgiving Blog
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