Life with a Fork

I feel like I owe it to my school and my peers to do a post on my TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) experience here in Madrid.  If you know me in real life (as opposed to this fake virtual life), you will know that my corporate background and degree have absolutely nothing to do with a teaching career of any sort.  But if you know me in real life or in this virtual life, you will know that I took a big leap into this not knowing what to expect but certain that I was making a serious change in my life and I was ready to embrace new experiences from all angles.  I can honestly say this past month was a complete one-eighty from where I was 30 days ago.

I came to Madrid (3 days later than expected) with no home, no friends, and not a damn clue as to what the hell I was doing becoming a teacher.  Needless to say, I found an amazing flat with great roommates and it was all rounded off with an absolutely incredible TEFL school experience.  The past four weeks of my life were spent either in school, working on school, walking to school, or thinking about school.  I can honestly say that I worked harder in the past four weeks than I ever did in college (sorry, Mom) or in my previous job.  However, while it was extremely intense (and downright annoyingly so at times), I wouldn’t have chosen any other school or route.  TtMadrid is an exceptional program with absolutely brilliant teachers.  The methodology they use to submerse the students in the world of teaching is directly related to how we will take the lessons we’ve learned and bring them to life in the classroom.  Every technique they taught, they used in the classroom.  We were pushed outside of our comfort zone often and much to over-prepare us for the experiences we would face once we left the doors of the school.  We were forced (and I say ‘forced’ because none of us wanted to do this at first) to teach a total of six classes of actual students prior to our certification and that is only one of the many projects and assignments we were to complete in such a short time.  To put it nicely, the course is tough.

But I couldn’t have done it without my peers.  I met some of the most amazing people over the past few weeks from all over the world and we have created a little family for ourselves.  It’s bittersweet thinking that Monday I won’t be walking to school and seeing them or stressing over lesson plans together.  I do know that we will always have a strong bond because we went through it together.  Through HELL, that is.  I am so proud of every single person that went through that course with me and I wish them all the best of luck in the future even though I know most of us will continue to stay close while so far from our homes.

If you are at all interested in quitting that shitty job of yours and doing something completely different, I strongly suggest you look into the TtMadrid program.  I can not speak highly enough of the course and I encourage anyone who is wanting to make a big change in their life to consider teaching English as an option.  You can visit their site here and no, I am not getting paid for this post (although I will gladly accept any monetary donations to the cause).

our goal cards from the 1st week that have been succefully accomplished

p.s.  I might not use correct grammar and punctuation in any of my posts and I understand that as a proper teacher now, it is expected of me to practice what I preach.  But commas are fun and so is inaccurate conjunction usage.

I’m pretty sure I have mentioned in a previous post that I was assigned the topic of Harry Potter for one of my lessons this week.  I obviously can not be bothered to check, so if I haven’t mentioned it, well, there you have it.  Allow me to go into a bit of more detail regarding the specifics of the assignment.  The actual topic (word for word) is this:

“Harry Potter:  Have you seen the most recent movie?  What did you think of the movie?  What was your favorite scene?  Would you see the next one when it comes out?”

First of all, I have never seen the movies.  Secondly, I have also never read any of the books.  And third, to my knowledge, there will not be another movie coming out from this series.  Anyways, as you can imagine, I spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday agonizing over this ridiculous topic and practically pulling my hair out trying to come up with some sort of cohesive plan.  It wasn’t until about 11:30 last night that I made any sort of headway.  Needless to say, I was absolutely dreading the class this afternoon and was completely lacking confidence.  Given the phrasing of the topic, I was lead to assume that at least one person in my class would have seen this movie and have some sort of opinion on it. Boy, was I wrong.  Not only had no one in the class seen the movie or read the books, one fine gentleman named Enrique told me that he hated Harry Potter so much it made him want to fall asleep.  This all came to the surface within the first five minutes of my fifty-minute class.

“fuck.”

The seconds felt like minutes and the minutes felt like hours (or however the saying goes).  Basically, it was a horrible disaster and it felt like a plane spiraling downwards, engulfed in flames, and hitting everything in its way before crashing into the ground.  At least that’s how it felt to me.  My feedback session with the moderator went surprisingly better than I had expected.  Apparently, the fact that I stuck to my written lesson plan to a T and didn’t waiver was extremely impressive in her eyes given my distaste for the assignment.  Looking back on it and putting it into context, I don’t know why I was stressing about it so much.  Yeah, the topic was complete shit.  But at the end of the day, it’s just teaching English.  And if there is anything I have perfected in this life, it is speaking English.  Or just talking in general…