Even a Police Officer Can't Keep These Kids In Line!

Bet that title got your attention! It is true. Today, the 3rd grade had a visit from a very friendly police officer, MariLuz. She and the kids talked about traffic signs and safety in the streets. That is once, the kids were quiet. MariLuz worked with them from 10 until 11 this morning. The kids were busy working in their English workbooks when she came in. As per usual it took forever for them to put away the books, especially since many of them had finished the activity and wanted me or Elena to correct it.

Each week Elena assigns two helpers. These kids to a lot of work! They put up the date and the lunch menu every morning, and they are in charge of passing out and collecting materials. When MariLuz entered, the helpers had to collect the workbooks, then pass out scissors and glue. The passing out of scissors and glue was basically chaos. The kids were supposed to have labeled their scissors and put them in a box for the class. When Guillermo began to pass out the scissors it soon became obvious how few of them were actually labeled. Kids were swarming him grabbing for scissors. Finally Elena got fed up with the chaos and told him just to give a pair to each kid, and that it didn't matter if they were that person's or not. Clearly, this would not go over well with the kids. Though they did sit back down, Guillermo spent 10 minutes criss-crossing the class to pass out the scissors "correctly".

Once they all had supplies, 15 minutes later, it was time to start cutting. These kids do not like to listen to instructions, not from us in English and not from the Police in Spanish. Before she could finish explaining that they were only supposed to cut out the "STOP" sign many kids were snipping away. She tried to talk about each sign as they cut it out, but that was clearly too slow for them. They wanted to destroy things!

I mostly watched this go down, as she was conducting the activity in Spanish and I am, under no circumstances, to speak to the kids in Spanish. I tried to help one boy, Victor, since he is usually lost in every activity we do, but when I started to re-explain in English he looked at me and said "I don't understand what you are saying..." and went back to cutting out the wrong things. When MariLuz turned her back to fill out their participation certificates, and Elena was correcting the workbooks I had to police the class. This included directing them back to their chairs, which apparently the forgot what "Sit down" means the second the teacher started speaking Spanish. It also meant that I got to hold on to a stuffed frog for the rest of the class period. One of the major trouble makers, Javi, tried to throw it to his friend Guillermo, but way over shot and it happened to land at my feet.

At the end of class one really bratty girl tried to rip it out of my hands and return it to Ruben, the owner. I'm starting to think that many of the kids try to pull fast-ones over on me because they think I don't understand Spanish. Oh, I understand, I'm just not allowed to speak it. So when you cop an attitude with me, but think that because it is in Spanish I'm just going to cave I get really annoyed. I also get annoyed when people talk down to me because I don't speak Spanish in front of the kids. At the end of the class, MariLuz was talking to Elena and she was asking about me/ why I wasn't participating. Elena explained that I am a language assistant, and as such only allowed to speak English with the kids. At this point MariLuz gave me a copy of the activity and slowly said something to me, I can't remember if it was "Buenas Dias" or what. But it was clearly slowed down. I know she was trying to be nice, but in doing so it came across as her thinking I'm not capable of speaking Spanish. I am perfectly capable, I'm just not allowed to!

After the adventures in traffic safety, I went to the break room for brunch. Just to remind you, everyday they give us a nice spread of coffee, tea, fruit, yogurt and random pastries. Today was Eduardo's birthday, this means that there was a giant spread of other things to complement the regular breakfast. I don't really know what I was eating, but it was pretty yummy. Ana, Eimear and I were sitting on one side of the table eating and chatting when Eduardo insisted on giving us wine. Yes, wine. Yes it was 11 am. It was delicious white wine, and I was happy to have a little drink after watching a police officer struggle to keep my kids in line! At the end of brunch there was still wine in the bottles, and Eduardo was not going to waste it. Eimear had been drinking red, and insisted that he couldn't put white in the same cup; while that was going on, Ana had stuffed her pastry wrapper into her plastic cup. Next thing I knew my cup was refilled. I told Eduardo I couldn't bring wine to Science class, he told me it was OK if I was late because I had to finish it. I can't imagine an American school that would allow such things, and this is why I love working in Spain.

I truly love working at my school. Everyday is different from the one before it. At times it can be awkward to be thrown into a tight-knit group of people who don't speak your native language, everyone does a great job of helping us feel welcome. I think they are such a close group because they are such nice people. Sure, there are times when it is overwhelming to sit in the break room and be engulfed in the cacophony of various Spanish conversations, but it is never impossible for us to participate. At times they want to help us practice Spanish, other times they want us to help them with English. There are a good number of people who don't speak any English, but last week we got into a debate about the collective abilities of Spaniards to learn languages, and even the monolingual people wanted to hear our opinions and stressed how important it was for them to be exposed to us speaking English.