Teaching

 

      Sometime around noon today I looked down to find myself in an apron with a giant tortoise printed on the front in bright pastel colors. His name is Tex. Because I'm wearing the apron, I am now Tex. I want to tell the three year-old student sucking back snot who is holding on to my leg that although my appearance has been cunningly disguised as an amphibian I am still his teacher before bubbles of mucus soak into my pant-leg. While trying to disengage him however, I am still trying to get three students to understand what I mean when I say 'please get that out of your mouth, it's not safe and you'll be electrocuted' and calm down a hysterical young Chinese girl. I look up at the teacher I'm supposed to be assisting and her head is in her hands.

     

Luz Casanova-The front of my school in Carabanchel

 

 My teaching day usually starts off so full of promise. I wake up and take a quick shower, throw on some clothes and pop my I-pod on and run out the door. I grab a coffee at the metro stop closest to my school. The air is cool, I have a hot drink in my hand and I'm awake and ready for the day.

      My first few classes are primeria or elementary school aged kids. These are my best behaved students of the day. They can be bribed with anything. Telling them I'll draw an American flag on their work if they finish is enough to get them in a frenzy. They ask questions, they are quiet when I ask them to be, and they are generally respectful and nice to be around. About 10 I get one of the older students to grab me another coffee and I chug this while writing in the staff room.

      My next group is harder. The seconderia students are not interested in where I'm from or how I can help them. I'm just the guy standing in the way of the chalk board speaking too fast in a foreign language. I try to get through the next hour without causing anyone bodily harm.

      By noon I'm out of steam and it's time for the big leagues.The infantil or preschool group is like if you took a group of the criminally insane, made them bite-size, then got them drunk. As I walk into the classroom I'm confronted by a litany of offensive sights and sounds. I rank them in my head to organize which to deal with first:

 

 

-There are two boys holding another, extorting payments in the form of jigsaw-puzzle pieces.

 

-A thin girl has her hand shoved up her nose to the wrist, searching for something that is probably better off lost.

 

-The boy in the corner being quiet and pensive as he stares at the wall just shat his pants.

 

-A crazed three year old has just taken ahold of a plastic cup and is wielding it as a weapon against four cautious students who are looking for their opening in what appears to be the toddler version of a classic bar brawl.

 

       I quickly disarm the cup kid, send the two mafiosos back to their seats, and (with paper towels encasing my hands) remove the girls forearm from her nose. I avert my eyes from the boy in the corner and wait for the real teacher to arrive to deal with the rest.

 

       When I get home I'm exhausted, my clothes need to be fumigated and I feel frustrated. Not because I feel overworked or mad, but because I didn't expect to care this much about teaching. I catch myself getting really excited when that light clicks and a student understands a tense or can answer me in broken English. When I flop down on the couch at night and grab a beer I thank God for the thousandth time that I had teachers in my life that stuck it out and put up with my snot, disrespect and insanity so that I could be here now.