By the beginning of Week 3, we are in love.
There is no one else in our world, no one else understands us, and our poor, tortured, over-worked souls. We spin a protective cocoon around N, who may or may not fail, and H, the loveliest teacher but incapable of paperwork, which is of course, how you assess a good teacher. The jet-lagged Americans are Not Eating and stagger gauntly into our arms after noontime naps. We are cranky and weepy and chase our tails in a circle of stress and only have eyes for each other. It is Teaching Boot Camp crossbred with Big Brother.
We are a we, there is no "I" in team, Jenny! Even I concede to this, and stop fighting against the group work because perhaps it is not so bad a thing to be part of. Or to be part of things. They are wonderfully tolerant of me though, and my Intrapersonal Learning Style (my official diagnosis). I don't run every day now, because we are eating dinner on each other's roof top terraces, conversing over cathedral chimes, or netbooking together in the little cafe overlooking the fishing boats in the harbour, watching the sunset.
Teaching is an hour or two of The Jenny Show, a few times a week. A ridiculously curtailed schedule, down from 25, but then it has to be planned, meticulously, and that plan presented with accompanying rationale. "Distill the essence of your pedagogy and its individual linguistic aims" and other archaically worded forms of assessment.
And afterwards observations, observations of how you walked around the room, where you stood and how high you held your lovingly photocopied hand-out up, up to the light and the TEFL Gods. Someone else has copied down your instructions for each activity, word for word. Did you look at each student equally, did you pick on Juan Carlo more than Juan Maria? You know how he hates that. Your voice is too loud, too soft, too kind when correcting or simply used too much. The timbre of it, though, is so rich, an exquisite brown russet shade, I could almost smell the autumn leaves...
We watch each other teach, most humiliating of all, and soon tire of constructive criticism. We do T-rex arms in a row at the back of the room to try to put our favourite trainee off. We give each other the name of a fish before each lesson, and try to shoehorn it into lessons somehow.
Do you like Spain? asks Diego in class one morning. I don't know, I tell him. It's true. I leave the house every day, blinkers on, hurrying through the streets and into the language centre, don't look at Spain, don't look at Spain.
I remember that I know how to read, and pull Life of Pi from the untouched communal bookshelf. I have no idea when you are supposed to have time to read. I find my kindle shoved in a forgotten drawer somewhere, along with the Spanish textbook and a cardigan and my diary and other things that I don't use anymore. Moll Flanders. That helps. And going on day trips at weekends, to Seville and Rhonda and Tarifa, the southern most tip of Spain, where you can see Africa. I write my Materials Assignment looking out over Tangier. Another country, another way.
There is no one else in our world, no one else understands us, and our poor, tortured, over-worked souls. We spin a protective cocoon around N, who may or may not fail, and H, the loveliest teacher but incapable of paperwork, which is of course, how you assess a good teacher. The jet-lagged Americans are Not Eating and stagger gauntly into our arms after noontime naps. We are cranky and weepy and chase our tails in a circle of stress and only have eyes for each other. It is Teaching Boot Camp crossbred with Big Brother.
We are a we, there is no "I" in team, Jenny! Even I concede to this, and stop fighting against the group work because perhaps it is not so bad a thing to be part of. Or to be part of things. They are wonderfully tolerant of me though, and my Intrapersonal Learning Style (my official diagnosis). I don't run every day now, because we are eating dinner on each other's roof top terraces, conversing over cathedral chimes, or netbooking together in the little cafe overlooking the fishing boats in the harbour, watching the sunset.
Teaching is an hour or two of The Jenny Show, a few times a week. A ridiculously curtailed schedule, down from 25, but then it has to be planned, meticulously, and that plan presented with accompanying rationale. "Distill the essence of your pedagogy and its individual linguistic aims" and other archaically worded forms of assessment.
And afterwards observations, observations of how you walked around the room, where you stood and how high you held your lovingly photocopied hand-out up, up to the light and the TEFL Gods. Someone else has copied down your instructions for each activity, word for word. Did you look at each student equally, did you pick on Juan Carlo more than Juan Maria? You know how he hates that. Your voice is too loud, too soft, too kind when correcting or simply used too much. The timbre of it, though, is so rich, an exquisite brown russet shade, I could almost smell the autumn leaves...
We watch each other teach, most humiliating of all, and soon tire of constructive criticism. We do T-rex arms in a row at the back of the room to try to put our favourite trainee off. We give each other the name of a fish before each lesson, and try to shoehorn it into lessons somehow.
Do you like Spain? asks Diego in class one morning. I don't know, I tell him. It's true. I leave the house every day, blinkers on, hurrying through the streets and into the language centre, don't look at Spain, don't look at Spain.
I remember that I know how to read, and pull Life of Pi from the untouched communal bookshelf. I have no idea when you are supposed to have time to read. I find my kindle shoved in a forgotten drawer somewhere, along with the Spanish textbook and a cardigan and my diary and other things that I don't use anymore. Moll Flanders. That helps. And going on day trips at weekends, to Seville and Rhonda and Tarifa, the southern most tip of Spain, where you can see Africa. I write my Materials Assignment looking out over Tangier. Another country, another way.
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