These are how my summer days are going: in a nearby park in partial shade I teach kids how to ride bikes. Two, maybe three groups per day. I put sunscreen on everywhere but especially in the folds of my ears, the inside elbows, the backs of my hands. The kids on bikes: they’re pushing […]
Tag: Teaching
A letter to my students…
Dear students, I wasn’t able to properly say goodbye to each one of you. Me habría dado tanta pena, saying goodbye to each and everyone one of you. Too much pena. But there are a few things I would like to say to you… Thank you for introducing me to David Bisbal, Paquito el Chocolatero, […]
Translating music: a note about learning new things
I unintentionally joined a jazz group with a few other teachers at my school. I play the guitar. We practice on Wednesdays. Here is an example of how practice goes: We’re playing some Duke Ellington piece to which I lost my last page of music and I don’t know the last chord. I play the […]
I hate it when that happens: I pooped in the milk
Last week was an off week. It included losing my classroom to another teacher because I didn’t reserve the room and a stare-down to the death with a lady at the post office. Plus, one day I walked into the secretary’s office and one of my students Matias was there (who is actually a pretty […]
Here’s one for the brothers and the sisters…
On Tuesdays I give a private lesson to two sisters, eleven and thirteen. They’re both really sweet girls and hard workers. And Miriam, the eleven-year-old, she’s got spunk. She’s going places. When she’s president of Spain, just remember, I called it. In our last lesson we practiced the future tense. Each sister had to say […]
Sending students to the principal sucks almost as much as getting sent to the principal
Going to an all-girls private Catholic didn’t do much to prepare me to work at a public high school in the so-called Bronx of Madrid (see most recent post). A few weeks ago I was talking to another teaching assistant who also works at a high school in Madrid. She was telling me about one […]
The very Spanish experience of getting hit on
Typical Thursday: I wake up at 8am, commute one hour to work, teach four hours of class, which includes telling the students to stop prying the letters off of the keyboards, spend two hours lesson planning, give a private class, commute one hour home and from the metro stop I walk uphill to my apartment […]
