When life slows down.

Life has kind of slowed down recently.  I've gotten into my routine of working 3 days a week, doing something or other on the weekend, and then cleaning and lesson planning and running errands on Monday and Tuesday (when the rest of the people in my apartment have work).

Contrary to popular belief of most of you who read this, I do work. Granted, it's not much and it's not extremely hard. But it happens. 3 times a week on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.  I carpool with different teachers every day and the 20-30 minute drive to school is breathtaking.  My school, Alta Axarquía, is literally in the mountains. One day, the entire town of Periana was enveloped by a cloud. This was no regular fog. This was a legit cloud. You could not see more than 10 feet in front of you. That kinda made the drive through those windy roads to get there a little scary, but the teachers that I commute with know the roads really well.

View from a window at school

Wednesdays I have a short day where I just need to come in for the afternoon and then Thursdays and Fridays I have full days.  Most of my classes are English classes, but I also have some other classes within the bilingual program such as Physical Education, Natural Sciences, and Social Studies. Math is also a course in the bilingual program, but I don't have any Math classes until February.

Leslie is the other Auxiliar de Conversación at my school. We are actually living together which is nice since we can help each other with lesson planning and ideas.  She works Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays but in February we are going to switch our schedules so that I can have Fridays off since a lot of our friends also have Fridays off. It's also cheaper to travel Thursday-Sunday than Saturday-Tuesday.

Every other week, I teach a 30-40 minute activity in my Social Studies class with the 4th year students.  Two weeks ago, I taught the American War for Independence.  Since it was also around Halloween, I incorporated candy into the lesson. I gave each student 4 pieces of candy, but I told them that they were not allowed to eat it until the end of class. Then, I appointed tax collectors and I collected taxes (of candy) to simulate the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, etc.  The kids were not happy that I was taking away their candy, and they tried to reason with me. But I told them that they did not have any representation in my parliament, so I would not listen to them.  At the end of the activity, one kid who does not speak up in English very often raised his hand and said "Teacher" (referring to the Social Studies teacher, Fábian) "I propose we start a revolution."
This was probably one of the most rewarding classes I've taught so far. Sometimes I wonder how much they pay attention when I am talking in English or how much they understand. But with the combination of the worksheet and the activity, I feel like the students really learned something with learning in English.

Soon, I will update about my commute and hopefully get pictures of the drive.