It all started in January when my friend Jane turned to me and said: “You wanna go to Spain this summer?” As third-year TSM students of Spanish, we only had one summer left to carry out our placement in a Spanish speaking country. As we both had professional experience dealing with children and really loved it, we thought that this would be a great place to start our job search. Jane had taught kids to play hockey, while I had spent six months in Germany with a family of four wonderful children the previous year. I won’t say that every day was easy, but I had truly bonded with them and became a member of the family to the point that we are still in contact. So we began looking and applying for many different positions in Valencia, with visions of after-school trips to the beach in mind. I was personally leaning towards a working sunny holiday type trip, but as fate would have it, this did not materialise. We ended up in Madrid, charged with the task of entertaining Spanish children entirely through English for two months.
Madrid is an amazing city and I loved it from the outset. Now as with every trip to a different country, there was a bit of confusion at the beginning. Jane found it difficult to find a flat, whereas I struck gold almost slap bang in the Goya district of city centre, living with two identical Spanish twins. Setting up our bank accounts was somewhat of an ordeal with non-functional Spanish bureaucracy causing us mild delays. Legally registering to work in Spain with the somber Spanish police was also rather intimidating given that our two month stay seemed to have aroused suspicions. Thankfully Karla, the lady who hired us, did most of the talking on our behalf with officials who were fascinated that we did not conform to the U2-loving, devoutly Catholic Irish stereotype.
We went to a meeting on the second day of our arrival to get some training on how these summer camps were supposed to be run. Neither myself nor Jane had taken an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) course or actually taught English as a foreign language before, so we were hoping to get a few helpful tips and tricks on how to keep the class’s attention. However, the training we got was just a small handbook of common sense rules, such as “Don’t let the children climb up the window railings”, and a list of crafts that we could do with the kids, which they insisted the students would find interesting. We were also shown the layout of the school, which somehow seemed much more important to them than describing any useful teaching methods or first-aid measures. One mantra was repeated over and over, in a rather ominous manner: “Do not let the children know that you speak a word of Spanish or it’s all over”. We were assigned schools, and Jane and I would be in the same school for three weeks before I was moved to another part of the city.
We began teaching on a Monday afternoon in May, in one of the most expensive private schools in Madrid. Admittedly, I was nervous. This was my first time being responsible for so many children. All the same, I had visions of myself as the ideal teacher, a Miss Honey of sorts. I pictured a group of well-mannered, well-behaved, middle-class Spanish children clustered around me, listening intently, smiling and saying, “¿Cómo se dice en inglés?” eagerly holding up a crayon or a lunchbox. The reality hit us like a brick in the face.
I have a tip: if anyone is ever thinking of doing orange and clove pomanders with seven year olds, do not. That first day was a disaster. I mean, in hindsight, yes, pomanders do not sounds like something kids would love, but they were in the handbook so I said we could give it a go. Despite having encouraged us to set up this activity, the agency now feared that the kids might be allergic to cloves, although they had already received detailed medical forms from all parents. This resulted in us trying to staunch the flow of orange juice, as the kids inserted the supposedly more child-friendly thumbtacks into the orange, while some of them ate the fruit and others flung them across the classroom. This is just one of many examples of what the kids put us through. It turned out none of the activities in the handbook were actually interesting to these kids and we had to resort to Google. Trying to discipline them was impossible. Examples of bad behaviour ranged from slapping teachers and eating glue to kicking each other while muttering a list of expletives in Spanish that they thought we could not understand. I thought I was the only one who had had a tough day, but it turned out that Jane was also engaged in a battle of wits with her young charges.
As we were leaving, the programme’s coordinator, who had witnessed us struggling, told us that she was delighted with us and how good we were with the children. As the days went by, we learned that these children were not easily disciplined. We tried everything from the world-renowned naughty corner to sending them to the coordinator, but nothing worked. Every day was a new trial, threatening to grind us down and send us running for the first flight back to Dublin. Thankfully we were able to share our horror stories each day, which became a form of solidarity through group therapy. However, at the second school I went to, the children were lovely and eager to learn. They were far nicer than the first group of Spanish children I had encountered and with whom Jane was still dealing. I learned a lot from having two different experiences, and saw that I was able to deal with stressful situations without completely losing my cool.
Madrid itself was fantastic. We lived on a shoestring budget, but I loved it and would go back again in a heartbeat. Madrid has everything that a tourist could ever wish for. I loved the parks, the museums, the nightlife, the long hot days, the food, everything. The memories I made in Madrid will stay with me forever. I sang Irish rebel songs walking down the Calle de Alcala, stayed out in Sol until the sun came up, caught a glimpse of Guernica through crowds of vying tourists and enjoyed a few glasses of sangria and some churros. It was very handy that we lived so close to Madrid’s beautiful Retiro Park and we used to spend hours there lying on the grass chatting and strolling around the park, comparing our horror stories and letting off steam. As students, we got into all museums for free, which made the experience even better. Madrid is a bustling, vibrant, and majestic city. I would highly recommend it as a city to visit, but not necessarily as one in which to teach small children.
