Working Girl (October/November)

In order to save time and space, I’m combining October and November’s edition of Working Girl. Both months were part of the first official trimester of the academic year. Up until October, I was working either part time or the summer schedule. I never had to deal with a real trimester schedule. The days are a lot busier with a variety of different classes. Plus, everyone is back from summer vacation: not only students but teachers as well. The new academic year brought about 10 new teachers to the academy. We lost a handful of older teachers throughout the last few months for various reasons. However, I was looking forward to the new dynamic that these new teachers would bring. Almost 2 months into it, I have already built strong friendships with many of the new teachers along with building stronger bonds with the older teachers.
Anyways, onto my average work week… I start majority of days with a Pre-Intermediate from 10-11:30 am with exceptions to Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have 2 more Intermediate group intensives: one on Monday and Wednesdays and the other 5 days a week until 9pm. The rest of my classes are executives that I give private lessons. I travel to their offices usually 1 hour a week per executive. I start at 8:30 am on Tues/Thurs for one and the rest are from 12-1, Mon-Wednesday. Twice a week I’ll give private lessons to a regular student who is doing a special program within the academy.
Overall, I enjoy my schedule. It’d be a bit taxing starting everyday at 8:30 am and going to 9:00 pm but I have breaks in between and my night class is my favorite of them all without a doubt. So far, the schedule is bearable. Plus, my apartment is so close to the academy so I don’t have to worry about traveling time which is really nice.
My intensives (daily classes) are so completely different from one another that it’s almost funny. My morning class is fun but they really want as much information as I can cram into an hour and a half class. So we work a lot in that class which is awesome how motivated they are. Most of my students were new but I had 2 returning students that I had taught previously in the summer. For the most part it’s a good dynamic and the personalities work well together.

My Mon/Wed intensive is probably my most troublesome class mostly because they are a little too motivated and I have so short of a time with them. They constantly get off topic and ask me irrelevant questions. Don’t get me wrong, I want them to learn as much as possible but you have to draw a line when Intermediate students are asking questions that are difficult for most Advanced students to understand. Plus, I had problems with some students not liking the textbook we were using. I sympathized with them; you spend all this money for a class during a time of economic crisis, spend good money on a book and then not find the significance in any of the material. However, I don’t control that aspect of the class. So it was trying to find a common ground with them.
My night intensive almost parallels the elementary class I have with Rosa and Elu during the summer (neither of which I have as students anymore). In October, it started with 5 guys but then some dropped and some women were added. From that month my 2 favorite students were Jaime and Jose Manuel: the impossible duo. They took a class together the month before hand and became quite the comedic pair in my class. Both were an absolute blast to have. However, Jaime didn’t continue into November. This month I have Jose and Rocio from the previous month, Natalia and Javier who transferred from my morning Pre-Intermediate class and a new girl Marta. Together, we have the best classes ever. I teach them what they need to learn but they make the classes fun. After class, many teachers come up to me and ask what I was doing because they said they could hear us laughing in their classrooms. That’s my favorite part of my job: teaching thru laughter. Every other Friday, we go to a local bar instead of staying in the classroom for conversation practice. Most of the students aren’t returning in December which really saddened me, but with the holidays coming, it’s understandable.

My executives aren’t much to talk about. In general they don’t want to do grammar worksheets but general conversation practice. My favorite right now is probably Leandro. He’s an Argentinean lawyer for Tecnicas Runidas. I call him the Argentinean pacifist and he calls me the Obama-loving war-monger. Needless to say, our classes are interesting. We talk about all the hot debate issues mostly dealing with cultural differences between S. America and the US, Spain and the US, and Spain and S. America. Most times I’m only supposed to stay for an hour but we loose track of time and before I realize it, I’ve been there for almost 2 hours. I’ve only had actual class with him 4 times because he travels a lot with his job. But I’m sure I’ll have a lot to add in later blogs.