I Love Teaching

Ok maybe the title's a slight exaggeration – I complain every single day about waking up early to go to school, and I dread Sunday nights more than I ever did when I was at school. Before I came to Spain I had absolutely no desire to be a teacher, I chose to spend my year abroad as a language assistant because the salary and lack of university work seemed like a very attractive option, and I definitely don't want to be a teacher now. I'm not even very good at teaching. When left alone with the students for half an hour on two occasions this week, instead of doing the set work I preferred to talk to them about their school trip to Lanzarote (of course I made them take their books out so it looked like they were working). I can't discipline them at all because I've definitely crossed the line between friend and teacher, which I'm fine with. I’m so young that I can relate to some of the kids more than I can to most of the teachers. I can even sympathise with the really naughty ones, as I wasn't exactly an angel myself at school. The discipline in Spanish schools is so much worse than the UK anyway; teachers aren't respected in the slightest and if a student doesn't want to do something there's no way of forcing them to do it. I regularly leave lessons with a headache because the students have been shouting for an hour.

However, when the students give me a round of applause and cheers after every presentation I do, write me stories in English with titles such as 'The Girl Who Married With a Bear', randomly make me a C.D filled with songs that they think I'll like, or walk past the staff room twice just because I didn't see them and say hello the first time, it makes me realise that this ‘teaching’ thing isn’t so bad after all.