These last few months seemed to fly by at times and others, drag on for an eternity. There were many different reasons that could explain this. First of all my academy has been in the middle of a big move. For the past 30 odd years we have been in the same building expanding over time. However, we’ve been expanding not only to different rooms but to different floors. So our main office has been on the 6th floor while majority of our classrooms were on the 2nd and 3rd floors. This made it frustrating especially trying to cart around the portable TVs up and down the crowded elevators and during the hot summer months when air circulation was a rare commodity in some corner rooms. But during this trimester, my academy administrators announced that we were moving to a brand new facility just down the block. All classrooms are located on one floor with WiFi and air conditioning in every room. But as rumors spread to the students, every other day we were cornered with questions about the timeline and how come other classes were chosen to start in the new place before theirs. In the 3 month time span, only one of my classes, my one-session Friday night class, was moved into the new building.
Another reason for the apparent stunt in pace was the fact that I was going home to Chicago in July. So towards the latter of the trimester, all I could think about was my friends and family back home. However bad my desire to finish at the academy, my classes were quite enjoyable.
I had my morning intensive class as usual with a few new faces. One that particularly stood out was a student named Borja. He came into my class the first day with baggy shorts, a ripped tee 6 earrings in each ear and covered in tattoos. It was big change from my gelled-hair, polo and loafer wearing Spanish students. So I took a special interest in watching him develop his language skills over the month of June. I asked my students on the first day of every class, ¨Why are you learning English?¨ I get the usual responses: to get a promotion, to travel, to find a better job... but Borja´s answer was the most unique and heart-felt response I have heard. He said he was learning English so he could write music and poetry that everyone could understand. For the next few weeks, Borja would stay after class a few minutes and show me some of the things he was writing so I could correct any mistakes and make sure everything made sense Definitely one of the most intriguing experiences I´ve had here in Spain.
I continued with my business classes in Tecnicas Reunidas as usual. But as June passed, I knew that I would have to say goodbye to most of them. The had been my students for the entire academic year and I had grown quite fond of the majority. Unfortunately, teachers can only have 1 on 1 students for a maximum of 1 year. I try not to dwell....
I continued with my 2 trimester classes and they went relatively smoothly. I had the same group with Mer and Lorena from before which went relatively quickly as we added some new faces to the mix. My other trimester class was also decent. No one with much personality but luckily, classes didn´t drag too much. I had problems with 2 girls at the beginning. They were best friends who sat in the corner talking only with eachother and at times, not paying attention to my class. Then one day I caught one of the girls putting her fingers to her head shaped as a gun (the same gesture we use in the US to say, ¨Dear Lord I´m bored; someone please shoot me!¨) Well I was less than thrilled about that so I called her out and said that if she didn´t like my class, she was free to leave at any time. We didn´t have any more problems after that.
My last class was, as I mentioned before, a 2 1/2 hour Friday night class. At first I was dreading this class. 2 1/2 HOURS!!!! But in the end, it turned out to be one of my favorite classes from the entire year. It was all due to the wonderful students I had. Each one had such a unique personality and they were all quite talkative. That is, in my opinion, the best thing any teacher could ask for. Majority of the time, I had to stop them from talking so we could actually learn some grammar. They loved to debate which was great because the dynamic of the class. We had one older lady while the other were mid 20s to early 30s; a good mixture of men and women; different cultures; and different professions. Every class with them was a piece of tortilla española!
So overall, I finished my first academic year on a high note. I just returned from my vacation back home which will be in another blog shortly! Thanks to all my amazing students and colleagues that made this past year, unforgetable!
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