School Daze Part I

Ok, I think I am ready to talk. About school. I am of course referring to this mysterious 'job' I've had for the past 3 weeks but haven't talked about in any detail in this blog. You know, the reason I am in Madrid in the first place:-). The truth is, there has been so much to absorb that I haven't felt ready to sit down and write about it until now. And this is by no means comprehensive, but I hope to give a good overview.

First, the numbers; I have 16 classes per week in which I assist. 7 classes are "History and Geography", 7 are "Natural Sciences" and 2 are "Art". I work with 5 different teachers, 3 different grades (ages 11-14), and 7 different groups of student (I'll explain how classes are divided in Part II). Needless to say, it took some time for me wrap my head around who I was supposed to be with and when I was supposed to be there.

My role in the classes varies--with one history teacher, I basically prepare a lesson related to the current unit and teach that lesson during "my" periods. With the other history teacher, my main function is to work with the students on the Model UN program. With the science teachers, I act more as a traditional 'assistant', reading out loud from the book so the kids can hear a native speaker, and walking around and helping them with their assignments.

I work at a public high school within the "bilingual section", in which only 40% of the school participates. Most subjects in the bilingual program are taught in English (English, history, science, art), though they still have math, phys ed, and Castellano (Spanish) in Spanish. One major problem I see is that most of the students do not have a level of proficiency that matches the material, and as a result they are not learning the content as thoroughly. This obviously results in alot of frustration for all parties involved (teachers, students, myself. . .).

Many of these kids went to bilingual elementary schools, but you would never guess it. Others never attended a bilingual elementary school, and some are even repeating the grade. Before I started, I had the impression that the bilingual program was something akin to a magnet school, with some kind of selection process. Now, however, I am unclear as to how these students are chosen. It seems that their parents simply express their preference and they fill the bilingual spots on that basis. I have friends who work in more immigrant-heavy areas who tell me they have students who can barely speak Spanish, let alone English. I have asked teachers at my school, but they don't seem to know how it works either. This system seems unfair to two groups of students; a) those who do not have a sufficient level of English to thrive in a bilingual high school program and b) those who do have a sufficient grasp of the language but are unable to learn age-appropriate material because the majority of the class is not functional at that level.

I should mention that this system is relatively new to Spain (10 years or so), and I hope things will improve as the program develops. During orientation, a city government official told us that Spain is behind most other European countries in second language acquisition. The learning of foreign languages, specifically English, has only recently become a priority, while countries like Germany and France are well into developing programs for teaching a third language in the schools. I know next to nothing about bilingual schools in the U.S., but now I am certainly interested in how they do things--I would like to look into it more while I'm here. All that said, I love the faculty I work with and I am enjoying teaching despite the challenges and frustrations.