SUPASTAR!!

In Limbo

Steven doesn't say anything after my lesson, but leaves quickly after the class packs up their things. Sarah and Lawrence run up and tell me I did great. Judy smiles and says, "I think you got it." I'm afraid to think too hard on the topic, but there were both mistakes and good things in my last class. If my grade was riding on this one class, I'm not sure how I did.

The Assessor's Visit

She's not a pleasant woman. She's smiling at the right times, and she sort of seems to be paying attention to my lesson, but she writes notes in a little black book and whispers to my tutor often. He grimaces at my lesson plan, sitting in front of him. Steven, my third tutor during the CELTA course, has definitely been the hardest to please. I half-watch helplessly from the front of the room, even as I attempt to teach. No, the assessor, the official ambassador of Cambridge sent to make sure this CELTA course is up to par, is not a happy woman. In an attempt to spare the one boy who is actually in danger of failing from a heart attack, Steven decided to allow the assessor to see his group, with me teaching. He mentions off-handedly that she only comes to see people who are in danger of failing or are in the running for getting an A. I don't want to hype myself up into believing that she's here to see me, but these are not things that you think so calmly while sitting in front of her, attempting to get out a lesson on the Present Perfect.

Afterwards, Steven pulls me to another room. He begins bluntly. He has no time to waste. "Neil and Kate have told me good things about you, and I thought you were a candidate for an A. However, what the Assessor and I saw today was not an example of an A student. You are a strong teacher, but that was not a strong class. For your next class, stick to the book and allow me to give you the grade you deserve." My stomach rises to my throat. I meekly nod an affirmative, and something like, "I will try." Everything is riding on my class tomorrow.

Becoming a Superstar

Somehow during the past three weeks, the tutors began whispering amongst themselves about me. This isn't bad in itself, since apparently they are discussing positive things about my teaching style and abilities. My last tutor, Neil, looked at me after one lesson and said, "You're going to leave me with nothing negative to say about this class." I blushed and fussed with my books self-consciously. My teaching group heaved a collective sigh. Over the past weeks they have been told once or twice to model me in my lesson plans and in the classes I teach. Judy has mended her skulky ways, and smirks at me after Neil pays me his compliment. "You were brilliant in that lesson. It's not fair!" She pouts falsely. She's actually quite good at teaching, as well. In our private feedback, Neil tells me to go for the gold, and to not hold anything back in my last three classes. He says I'm a candidate for an A. Afterwards, in her private session, he tells Judy that she could possibly get a B, but that they only give an A out every three or four months. My insides twist from the pressure.

London Calling

Maria picks me up from the airport. I'm in shorts and searching through my backpack for a sweater. It's freezing cold; the rain picks up and I belatedly realize I forgot my umbrella, as well. The next morning, we sleep in and wake to a brand new day. It's sunny now, if still chilly. We take the Tube (the subway) down to the center of London and walk around. While traipsing around the oddly carnivalesque Covent Garden, I am careful not to spend money when I do a mental calculation of the exchange rate and realize that everything is approximately double its price. The buses are red and double decked. The Thames flows quietly beneath the huge Ferris wheel known as the London Eye, and Big Ben chimes slowly. A wonderful way to become a legal resident of Spain for three more months.

Taking a Break

As Madrid bakes in the heat of August, the rest of the city decides that it's a good time to take vacations. Shops close down. Less and less people roam the streets. The last two weeks of August in the capital city make it seem eerily apocalyptic, somewhere between Hitchcock and a Twilight Zone movie. The desertion of Madrid only makes me more excited for my upcoming "make me legal" visit to London this weekend.

The View From My Terrace

Rumors

In an effort to share the love, all the teaching groups switched tutors a few days ago. I now have silly Neil as my tutor, who is quite laid back. We bring our lesson plans to class and wait for Neil to check them over. Meanwhile, Neil makes up excuses to go smoke with the Spanish professors, leaving us to plan out our lessons ourselves. It's fly or plummet to the ground in this group. A good change, I suppose. As I am quite worried about my upcoming lesson on grammar (the kryptonite to my teaching style), I try to consult Neil, who isn't in his office. Instead is the third tutor, a man who has gotten a dastardly reputation for being a Grumpy Gus. I ask him if he can help me out. After about five minutes together, while I am packing up my things, he tells me, "I hear you're doing very well in the course." I mutter something about "I really hope so" to sound self-deprecating. I blush.

Because Cathy is an excellent teacher and only the other four people in her group can watch her teach, she has earned the mythical status of being the best teacher trainee around. People whisper behind her back that her lessons are filled with laughter and that everyone understands her. She doesn't know what to do with all the extra attention. The other day, after having slept two hours and working like a beast on a lesson plan that didn't turn out how she would have liked, she burst into tears. The other trainees, shocked, whispered furiously amongst themselves. Her group consoled her. Someone looks at me and says [and I quote], "You know if Cathy --the pillar of the Teacher Trainees-- is crying, then it's bad." Cathy's status as human superstar was solidified.

Refrigerating

When the new fridge first arrived, we cranked the knob to maximum coldness. Our previous fridge, which slowly petered out after a month of use, had needed to be on that setting just to keep everything lukewarm. The next day, we get brain freezes while drinking our water. Our milk has ice crystals in it. We love this refrigerator.

A Purchase

Although I have no money nor stable income, I have purchased a new phone. New friend Gina asks what I'm going to do with my old one, and I tell her I'll step on it and dance on its grave. My new phone is extra cutesy, bite-sized, and takes photos of the world around me. I love it so much. In related news, our refrigerator has broken and Cathy and I have been eating ourselves silly so as not to spoil food. Our landlady, instead of going through the hassle of calling up a repairman and paying his fees, has decided to buy us a new one. Meanwhile the cheese melts, the milk curdles, and I take pictures of it all.

Homework!

We're given written assignments to complete by Monday. I store my papers in a huge Spanish binder and organize my notes according to day and subject. I buy fluorescent highlighters and assign meaning to the different colors. Blue means "grammar", Yellow means "skills lessons", etc. I attack this course like it's a one-month Master's degree, or an especially long tournament of champions. I want to win. I want an A.

More Group Dynamics

The first day, poor Lawrence leaves the lid off the marker so it dries up while he's teaching. The next day, he moves half the class into another room for a listening activity and chaos ensues. As he's a bit bumbly sometimes, he's become another of my favorite friends of the group. He laughs at his mistakes and seems to be learning a lot. He wears shorts to teach in. Cathy and I still dress business proper, in the hopes that the tutors will notice that we're the only ones who still dress as specified. Lawrence's mum is from Spain and his dad is from England, as such he is perfectly fluent in both languages. He has a twin who's his better half; a banker making tons of money somewhere in England. Lawrence bums money off of him indiscriminately. I love it. Although I still somewhat love her, British/Spanish Judy has applied to become my arch nemesis on the course. Her application is still being processed, so we quite like being around each other still, but she has moments of sheer madness and can be pretty rude. After a session where Kate had given Judy some pointers to work on during her teaching and had told me that I did very well, I was commenting that to Judy: "I really thought that I messed up the instructions to the students so it's really surprising that Kate didn't mention it." Judy says: "Yeah, I thought that your instructions really were crap." I store these comments in a small folder in the back of my brain. Judy is a double agent.

Group Dynamics

My small group, led fearlessly by Kate, is a hodgepodge of accents and countries. Some of us have taught before, but most of the group hasn't. At this point in the stage, and given my background at Syracuse and this summer, I have loads more experience than any other group member. I cling to my head start and study everything I am told every night. Katie, the Australian of the group, is quite possibly my favorite new person. She pronounces every TH like it was an F, which is at first complicated, but it ultimately is quite endearing. Everything becomes Everyfing in Katie's magical mixed-up language. Her spelling is also wonderfully atrocious, so she spells things like headache wrong on the board and gets corrected by students. The rest of the group, sitting in the back of the room, makes frantic gestures to get her attention. Linda is from South Africa, and is a bit older than the rest of us. It has been my experience that the older students are generally the most studious, like they have something to prove to everyone. We go on lunch break and Linda sits in the library, studying her lesson plans. She asks thousands of questions in our small group time and Kate patiently answers it all. It's quite overboard. If we were competing against each other, Linda would be prime competition. Sarah is from New York City and so stereotypical that it makes me laugh. The first day, she pointed to the students and asked them what their name was. The students cowered beneath her glare. When she laughed, she said "That's funny" without a smile on her face. She could beat me up.

Getting the CELTA

Cathy and I arrive early and sit in our seats properly. We fidget a bit. Nervous future English teachers enter the classroom as well. They are all dressed far more casually than we. While the classroom fills slowly, we all sit in stressed silence until someone finally turns to someone else and asks her name. Everyone begins to chat quietly. Our tutors enter, and I am separated from Cathy and assigned to Kate, the best tutor that the course has to offer, although she was obviously nor marketed that way. Later, after quick comparisons of all the tutors, it is unanimously decided that my group must have the best karma out of everyone, having received such a wonderful tutor. Cathy's group, however, was left with the weird cross-child of Hitler and John Cleese, without all the funniness of the latter and with all of the unfortunate grimaces of the former. Our first day is exhausting; after a few hours we are thrust into our classroom with nothing but our lesson plans to hold onto for support. Kate sits in the back of the room and takes copious notes of our nervous tics. At the end of my first lesson, she likes me more, but tells me I need to stop repeating everything the students say and learn to write like a normal human being. Apparently my handwriting, while delightfully artsy in some circles, is frowned upon by Cambridge.

New Adventures

I pick at my itchy scabs. Sniffle. Cough. The last few days of camp, although undoubtedly much more enjoyable than the first two week period, were a bit rough as I was inflicted with a strain of Spanish Ebola which was transmitted through the sweaty kids and ridiculously large insects that swarmed the mountains. It was with a twinge of regret that I said goodbye to the sobbing children (I giggled at the dramatics) and boarded the bus to go home. My entire head was a throbbing mass, my bruised and scabbed arm still stiff, my spider-bitten legs only now returning to normal size. I put my head between my legs as the bus zipped happily around the steep, narrow mountain roads. To my left and right children and camp counselors alike threw up. iPedro was busy singing me into a Zen state where none of these physical ailments existed. The Dramamine that I had taken threw its arms up in exasperation.

Thus I returned to Madrid after a month-long technology exile. During my month I slept a lot, taught a lot, and hated and loved an equal number of children and monitors. Camp was highly enjoyable once we got into the swing of things, though the old hills of Madrid surely were a welcome sight. As we came in view of the city, I happily smiled, mainly because my hacker friend Tyler gave me a program that, upon arrival in Madrid, located and provided me with internet signal within my apartment. The only trick is that Cathy and I have to precariously hang my computer out the window to receive said signal. My heart skips beats. Circus folk don't live with this kind of tension.

Tomorrow begins our month-long teaching course, promised to be both difficult and ridiculously intense. We pack our lunches and go back to school shopping for glue, scissors, paper, and other child-related accoutrements. We prepare out first day's homework and discuss the answers. I cheat and look in the back of the book.