ets amics, la mar, i BARÇA

What a day!  A couple of good friends invited me to spend the day with them yesterday before I leave, and we set off for the beach Es Caragol, which apparently looks like this (according to the ever-helpful google images):

or maybe this:

But, I´m not sure, because in order to get there, you need to show a special certificate saying that you are a resident of Santanyí, and my friends forgot to get a new certificate this year.  Oops.  So, instead, we went to S’Almunia, a small cove that has views like this (all photos from here down are mine):

We swam, basked in the sun, and talked until we worked up enough of an appetite to go back to their house and eat Indian food and sample their collection of hot sauces that they brought back from a trip in the US.  (No photos, sorry, we ate it all too quickly!)

For all you footie fans out there, you’ll know the Barça-Man U championship match was last night, and that Barcelona KICKED ASS!  FC Barcelona is now the 2011 European champion!  In the evening, my friends and I went to a bar in Porreres to watch the game with a couple of my friends’ friends, who happen to be one of my 13-year-old students and her dad.  There was good company all around; the bar was packed full of old people, little kids and their dads, and a few verrrry tipsy middle-aged guys.  Inside, a projector and screen were set up, and out on the main plaza, all of the public benches had been dragged into a semicircle, and a wide-screen TV was perched on top of a bookshelf just outside of the bar.  The little old ladies were my favorite: they cheered just as loud as the rest in high, little voices (“Barça! Barça!”).

The most exciting goal was definitely this one near the end:

http://ib3noticies.com/20110528_153328-villa-remata-el-partit.html

When Barcelona won, there were hugs all around

And then people started setting off fireworks outside

The excitement was wonderful!  (for Americans: picture an international version of the Superbowl, when not only the fate of a sports trophy rests on the game, but also the dreams of independence of a would-be-nation).  When Barça plays, it isn’t only a soccer game; people view it as a political statement.  Barcelona belongs to Catalunya and the rest of Catalan-speaking Spain, and when Barça wins, everyone’s Catalan pride comes to the fore.  My friends assured me that half of Spain (the Madrid supporters) would be very sad after Barça won the championship.  Lucky me, Mallorca is firmly in Barça territory!

My buff came in handy (thanks, Dad!)

All in all, it was an excellent Saturday!

dolce far niente, or the merits of lollygagging around the mediterranean for a year

“How now, young fellow, what dost thou here?”

“Truly, sir, I take mine ease.”

“Is not this the hour of the class? And should'st thou not be plying thy Book with diligence, to the end thou mayest obtain knowledge?”

“Nay, but this also I follow after Learning, by your leave.”

“Learning, quotha! After what fashion, I pray thee? Is it mathematics?”

“No, to be sure.”

“Is it metaphysics?”

“Nor that.”

“Is it some language?”

“Nay, it is no language.”

“Is it a trade?”

“Nor a trade neither.”

“Why, then, what is't?”

“Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go upon Pilgrimage, I am desirous to note what is commonly done by persons in my case, and where are the ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the Road; as also, what manner of Staff is of the best service. Moreover, I lie here, by this water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson which my master teaches me to call Peace, or Contentment.”

—From Robert Louis Stevenson’s “An Apology for Idlers”: a conversation between “Mr. Worldy Wiseman” and “a young lad.”

This year in Spain has been a year of slow reflection.  Sometimes, it’s been too slow—with copious free time imposed on me by the Spanish government (I am paid to do 12 hours of work a week and no more; my visa prohibits me from finding outside employment), I feel like a lazy bum.  After all, I was weaned on the maxims, “Busy hands, happy hearts” and “Idle Brains are the Devil’s Workhouses” (ok, not that last one—but it did give me a chortle when I randomly googled American proverbs).

One of my fellow Linfield-grads-gone-to-Spain (there are 5 of us in the country this year) described this year as her “personal sabbatical,” and on days when I’m not feeling like a freeloader of society, I agree with her.  I have had ample time for reflection, for growth, for reading, for pondering, and, best of all, for sweetly doing nothing.

Just a hop, skip, and a sailboat ride across the Mediterranean away, Spain’s Italian cousins are apparently fond of exclaiming, “Dolce far niente!” which means, literally, “Sweet to do nothing!” or “the sweetness of being idle.”

This “far niente” attitude is a difficult philosophy to adhere to for grindstone-accustomed noses, but after the initial adjustment, I have found Spain’s similar “mañana” attitude quite, well, refreshing.  The Spanish Ministry of Treasury hasn’t doled out this quarter’s budget into the Ministry of Education’s coffers, so the Ministry of Education hasn’t deposited any money into any schools' bank accounts, so my particular school can’t give me my paycheck?  Don’t worry; the deposit will come tomorrow.  Relax.  Tomorrow, tomorrow.  My boss has repeatedly said, “If you don’t want to come to work today, you can just come tomorrow,” and she’s not joking—she likes me to come to work and help out in the English classes, but she certainly isn’t married to her job, and doesn’t think that I should be, either.  We can always go to work tomorrow.

While such forced relaxation grates slightly on my nerves, I have learned to lighten up and let go.  We all can do the same; just think how sweet the English language is when it comes to verbs for doing something slowly or unseriously or for not doing anything at all:

amble, bum around, crawl, creep, dabble, dally, dawdle, diddle-daddle, dilly-dally, drag, drift, footle, fiddle, fritter, goof off, hang around, horse around, idle, inch, laze, linger, loaf, loiter, loll, lollygag, lounge, lurk, malinger, mess about, mill about, monkey around, mosey, muck around, piddle, poke, potter, putter, ramble, rest, saunter, shamble, shuffle, stagnate, straggle, tarry, tinker, toddle, trifle, twiddle, vegetate.

Many of those words have a negative cast, to be sure, but many also are evocative of summer—lollygagging around the Mammoth hotel’s ice cream stand, puttering around Joffee Lake in a canoe, frittering away countless hours trying to lie in the sun on a patch of grass not covered by elk or elk turds (those were my summers, at least, before I got a job).  (slightly off-subject, but another reason I feel like a malingering loafer right now: my parents moved out of our house in Yellowstone on Monday, and I wasn’t there to help them pack, clean, or move… um, big hug, Mom, Dad, and lil’ bro!)

While this entire year hasn’t been one glorious, long summer (for some reason I thought it would be when I wrote my first blog post, deciding to title this blog SUMMER on my andirons), I have had enough me-time to think about what I really want to do, how I want to find a career that is simultaneously satisfying and worthwhile.  Like Robert Louis Stevenson’s “young lad,” I am desirous to note where the sloughs and thickets in my future are, and to learn peace and contentment.  This year, I've stored up enough inner peace and contentment to last me through many stormy years.  

And the 12 hours a week I spend doing my actual job are a joy: I like teaching because the kids are a hoot, because it’s fun to play silly games in the name of learning, because I can never get enough of watching their faces when they finally “get it,” and because I’m not wasting my life shuffling around the corporate world—I feel like I’m having a positive impact on these kids’ lives.

Besides, spending sweet hours lazing under the Mediterranean sun has given me time to work on other important things, like my Chaco tan:

¡os echaré de menos!

Today I started saying goodbye to some of the kids in the high school, because even though Monday is my last day, I won't see several of the classes again.  The kids in the European Sections classes (my wonderful 7th graders) asked me, "And you won't be here next year?  Or the year after that?" When I told them that I was going into a 2-year university program, they said,  "So will you come back after that?  Let's see, we'll be sophomores..."  Oh, man, would I ever like to take them up on that offer!  Spending the 2013-2014 school year in Spain again wouldn't be half bad...

I gave all the kids big hugs.  UGH--when I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere with the kids, that we're all comfortable together and they're actually learning something from me and I'm figuring out this teaching business, I have to leave.  Several of the English teachers are leaving next year, too (teachers in Spain generally change schools every year until they have enough seniority to have a permanent position), and next year's teachers and next year's teaching assistant had BETTER love these kids as much as I do!

The English teachers and the German teacher in the high school threw a little party for me--we went to the most amazing pizzeria in the area and I had this:

(well, the other half of this, OBVIOUSLY.)

and little baby squids and tiramisu and a "shandy" (known in German as a "Radler" and in English as "the most amazing summer drink in the world," made by mixing equal parts ice cold light beer and lemonade).

And the teachers gave me this:

and this:

and this:

and I gave them all big hugs.  I'm going to make them an enormous batch of cookies for Monday, my last day.  I felt wonderfully appreciated.  AAARRRGH I hate goodbyes!

short but sweet

I had a surprise visitor yesterday!


Well, not quite a surprise—eons ago, I visited Sarah Korn (a Linfield German class buddy) in Heidelberg, Germany, where she's studying abroad.  I invited her in turn to come and visit me on Mallorca, and last week, she told me she was taking me up on the offer!


Sarah arrived at 5pm yesterday and left at 6am this morning... a whirlwind visit.  We packed as much in as possible.  We: rode bikes down to es pontás, rode bikes to the beach, made dinner and lots of lemonade (we got ANOTHER 50 gallon trash bag full of lemons from my roommate's friendly gardening ex-roommate), went on a late-night stroll through the deserted, quiet streets of Santanyí, played Speed Scrabble, had wine and cheese and frozen lemonade for dessert.


This morning we woke up at 5:30, blearily had a bit of breakfast, and headed to the bakery before Sarah's bus came.  Alas! The bakery was open (there were bakers inside) but they hadn't opened the doors to the public, yet, and we weren't desperate enough to bang on the window to see if they'd have pity on us, so we went dejectedly back to the bus stop and waited for her bus.


Sarah got back to Heidelberg this afternoon in time to be in class tomorrow morning.  (What a good student... when I was studying abroad, I seem to remember making every 4-day weekend into a 6-day weekend under the excuse "Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity... when else am I going to get to go to the Amazon for $10?")


So, this year, I've had a dozen visitors (Hannah, Mom, Dad, & JD, Linnaea, Katelyn, Melissa & Sarah L., Uncle Tom & Cousin Katie, Joy, and Sarah K.), and each time, it's been a treat to show them a little bit of my life here, and to explore more of Mallorca.  Thanks, guys, for helping make this year special for me!


(and, ahem, PSA: in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be in yet another beautiful part of the world.  If anyone else feels like road-tripping out to Grand Teton National Park, my cabin doors will be wide open for you.)

who wants to keep traveling?

Because I'm a bit of a map geek (check out my room decorations...)

I decided to make a map of all the places I've been in Europe (so far):

(click to embiggen)

- January 2008: England, Scotland, and Wales, 

- Summer 2009: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy,

- October 2010-May 2011: Belgium, Spain, Spain, Austria, Spain, Germany, Spain, Spain, Spain, Andorra, and France.

***

So, I know I just spent eight months toodling around Europe and occasionally molding young minds (in the formative sense, not as in making-brains-look-like-roquefort), but I’ve already started dreaming about my next fantastic and most likely prohibitively expensive European adventures.  Who’s with me?  Anyone have free time in, say, 2014 for one (or many) of these (assuming we all win free airfare from the trip genie…)?  Feel free to dream with me:

Trip #1: Scottish highlands, Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland

(15-21 days)

Sketch of the trip: hiking & backpacking through the highlands and various islands, taking ferries between the major island groups, eventually ending up in Iceland to explore the geysers, volcanoes, and glaciers.

Backstory: one of my favorite authors, Dorothy Dunnett, wrote a book about Macbeth (historical-ish. According to the book jacket, it was “incredibly well researched,” but since I’m too lazy to actually research the research, I’ll just have to give her the nod for writing a fascinating book about Macbeth, of all people.)  Anyways, it was partially set in the Orkney Islands.

<--Orkney Islands 

                   Shetland Islands-->

<--Faroe Islands  

                              Iceland-->

Trip #2: from Vienna to Varna: cruising down the Danube

(21 days total)

Part 1: explore Vienna (2-3 days)

Part 2: Cruise down the Danube River from Budapest to Bucharest (10-11 days) 

Part 3: Visit Bulgaria with my roommate: a short day in Varna, 3-4 days in Kazanlak, fly out of Sofia, the capital.

Backstory: my current roommate is Bulgarian and will soon-ish be moving back to Bulgaria, and I would love to visit her in her hometown of Kazanlak.  Fun fact: Kazanlak is a valley high in the mountains where the highest-quality perfume roses are grown in the world.  Bulgarian rose oil is shipped to France to make all that good-smelly stuff.

   

     ^ Vienna Austria ^                      ^ Danube River ^                 ^ Kazanlak, Bulgaria ^

Trip #3: Italy, Slovenia & Croatia: meandering down the Adriatic Coast

(21 days total)

Part 1: Italy: Milan (2-3 days) with my friends, Venice (2-3 days), Trieste (2-3 days)

Part 2: Slovenia: Piran (2 days), Ljubljana (2 days)

Part 3: Croatia: Zagreb (2 days), back to the coast (2 days), end in Dubrovnik (2 days)

Part 4: Somehow get back up to Milan to fly back to the US.

Sketch of the trip: probably rent a car from Trieste, in order to have maximum flexibility to lollygag along the Adriatic coast, escape into the mountains, and find tucked-away places, such as a lighthouse on the Croatian coast.

Backstory: I have friends in Milan.  When one has friends in Milan, it is a sin to NOT visit them often.  Slovenia is supposed to be a breathtakingly beautiful country as yet “undiscovered” (whatever that means).
 

^ my first visit to Milan’s ^       ^ this is apparently what ^       ^ and here's Dubrovnik, ^
       Duomo, July 2009                  Slovenia looks like                           Croatia

Trip #4: a Crossing Latitudes trip through Grecian isles

(8 days)

Kayaking through the Dodecanese Islands or the Cycladese Islands

Backstory: in 2009, my family and I went to Norway for two weeks, a large chunk of which was spent with Åsa from Crossing Latitudes.  Crossing Latitudes is a small, Bozeman, MT-based adventure tour company run by Åsa’s sister, Lena.  Among many adventurey things (biking, hiking, etc.), we spent a few days kayaking through the fjords, and I’m hooked.  I’d gladly go kayaking through Grecian isles with them.

^ here’s me kayaking in ^        ^ a highly Photoshopped ^     ^ one of the Cycladese Islands ^
    southern Norway in                version of one of the
      June, 2009, on a                   Dodecanese Islands
   Crossing Latitudes trip

Trip #5: a Crossing Latitudes trip above the Arctic Circle

(11 days)

Through Norway’s Lofoten Islands or the Salten Coast

^ this is what a fjord in ^       ^ and here’s somewhere ^      ^ and here’s a white sand ^
  southern Norway looks like        in the Lofoten Islands            beach on the Salten Coast

Trip #5: Finland

Sketch of the trip: not really sure yet.  A bit of Helsinki, a bit of the lakes, quite a bit of uncovering family history.

Backstory: my grandpa’s pa was from Finland.

 <-- my grandpa

Trip #6: northern Spain: Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, Navarra

One possibility for this trip: starting in the Pyrenees, walk the 500 miles from Roncesvalles to Santiago de Compostela (one route for the “Camino de Santiago”)

Backstory: Cantabria, the Basque Country, and Navarra are all in the mountains—Navarra is in the Pyrenees, and after being in the French Pyrenees and waking up to
 <-- this view every day, I can’t wait to get back.  Galicia is the Scotland of Spain. Seriously, they play the bagpipes there.  Need I say more?

Trip #7: southern Spain & Portugal: Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada, Portugal

Backstory: I spent less than 48 hours in Seville, and it was definitely not enough.  Granada and Córdoba are vibrant cities with amazing sites, like Granada’s Alhambra and Córdoba’s mosque.  And hey, Portugal, why not?

<-- Córdoba's mosque

Trip #8: Frisian Islands, Amsterdam, Bruges

Part 1: East Frisian Islands.  Backstory: Firstly, did you know that the closest linguistic cousin English has is Frisian?  Also, in my very first German class ever, there was a chapter on northern Germany that included a section on hiking THROUGH THE OCEAN to get out to the islands.  It’s called “Wattwandern” (hiking in the Wadden Sea).  At low tide, you roll up your pant legs and walk out to islands that have great names like “Spiekeroog” and “Minsener-Oldoog.”

Part 2: Amsterdam.  Backstory: one of my favorite T-shirts is one that my Grandma bought my brother when he was like 6, and I still wear the thing even though it really only fits a 6-year-old boy, and so is like HELLO, BOOBS on me (maybe that’s why I wear it…) and it’s so old that the sleeves are falling off. Literally. It feels wrong to wear this beloved old T-shirt of a place that I’ve never even been to.

Part 3: Bruges.  Backstory: another Dorothy Dunnett-inspired stop.  One of her historical-fiction series started off in the canals of Bruges.  Yes, I know Bruges is touristy touristy TOURISTY, but hey, I still have an image of the 14^th-century city stuck in my head, and I MUST go there.

<--"Wattwandern" or hiking in the Wadden Sea






Trip #10: Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria

Backstory: this is really just an excuse to go to Liechtenstein (mainly to say that I’ve been to Liechtenstein, rather the same as I did with Andorra, and to use the word “Liechtenstein” repeatedly), but since you can see most of Liechtenstein in a day, I figure we’d better toss some Swiss and Austrian adventures in there to make it a full trip.  After spending less than 24 hours in Salzburg, I’d love to go back and have time to relax, do more in-depth exploring, and yes, go on a Sound of Music tour.







<--that itty bitty country right there is Liechtenstein

Muh-lor-WHAT? wikipedia links & other fun facts

I've had most of the following information up on my sidebar (over there, to the right -->) all year.  Because I'm moving 2 weeks from today, I'm sprucing up my blog for summer.  In the sidebar, you'll now see how I'm getting along with my summer goal of reading 50 (and beyond) books.

If you didn't get a chance to read these factoids about my current home before, here they are, along with a few new videos:

***

SIDEBAR info:

Mallorca, also spelled Majorca by German and sometimes English speakers (pronounced, please, "mah-YOR-kah"), is a Mediterranean island off the east coast of Spain.  The mother tongue on the island is mallorquí, a dialect of català (Catalan, which is spoken in the Spanish provinces of Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands, the French province Pyrénées-Orientales, the country of Andorra, and the Italian city of Alghero on the island of Sardinia).  The vast majority of people on Mallorca also speak castellà (Castellano; Castilian or "regular" Spanish).

Along with Mallorca, there are three other inhabited islands in the Balearic archipelago: Menorca, Ibiza (known as Eivissa in Catalan), and Formentera.  Some bright buy on the island of Ibiza thought of mixing disco music with psychedelic drugs, and presto! out came the rave.  According to Lonely Planet (ever my planning guru), over 22 million tourists come to every year, mostly for the glorious beaches, the party scene, and the chance to find lots of other pasty white people in a balmy locale.  This site gives information about the plethora of tourist activities available.

The total resident population of Mallorca is somewhere around 800,000, with more than half living in Palma de Mallorca, the capital city of the province. The foreign-born population is around 150,000, with another 200,000 recent immigrants from mainland Spain.

I currently work as an "auxiliar de conversación" or teaching assistant in the towns of Santanyí and S'Alqueria Blanca, in the southeast corner of Mallorca; there are 170 auxiliares de conversación teaching English, French, and German in the Balearic Islands for the 2010-2011 academic year.  We work in special language schools (extracurricular classes for all ages), the state-sponsored elementary and preschools (ages 3-11) and secondary schools.  Here is the Spanish Ministry of Education's website; peruse away.

***

WHERE IN THE WORLD? maps:

***

MALLORQUÍ videos:

In case you didn't believe me when I kept saying that "Mallorquí REALLY IS a different language... no, Catalan is NOT a dialect of Spanish; Catalan is its own Romance language, and Mallorquí is a dialect of Catalan..." check out these videos:

Knowledge of the land:

(a typical older person speaking a "from the pueblos" version of Mallorquí)

Politics:

(a politician from Palma speaking in Mallorquí, and another politician from Valencia who doesn't speak Catalan--so, therefore, doesn't speak Mallorquí--but who has a rather strong Mallorcan accent when he speaks in Castilian Spanish)


Sports news:

(IB3 caters to all 4 inhabited Balearic Islands.  Because each island has their own version of Catalan, the reporters from iB3 try to adjust the differences between the various dialects and they "normalize" their language to sound more like the Catalan of Catalonia.  Their Catalan ends up sounding forced, though, because they basically speak Mallorquí with a few "Catalanized" words.  Rafa Nadal is speaking in Mallorquí.)


Sports-related ads:

(I added this video not necessarily to listen to the language, but to laugh at the spectacle of those watching Rafa Nadal film an ad.)


Sports spoofs:
http://www.youtube.com/user/canbuuum?blend=6&ob=5#p/u
(All sorts of hilarity here.  Overblown Mallorcan accents, overblown Mallorcans-speaking-in-Spanish accents, overblown Spanish-woman-impersonating-a-foreigner's-accent accents... great.)

postscript

Just a quick add-on to my last post:

I work with some fabulous teachers.  It was this job, after all, that convinced me to go into teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in the United States.  I work with a lot of teachers who have shown me how to be a good teacher in a challenging situation (a challenging situation might be, say, when all the kids are having a mini-war and are THROWING each other across the room when you first walk in).  I also work with a few teachers, though, who, in challenging situations, or in any situation, really, resort to screaming.  I usually leave those classes with my ears ringing.

The first category of teachers inspires me to be a good teacher; the second group inspires me even more, because I know there's NO WAY that I'm going to be as terrible as they are!  That's what brought about my last post.  I do not in any way want to disparage all of the teachers in Spain that I've met, or generalize about the Spanish education system.  I have simply seen some things that make me very, very sad.

During one class, when I was substituting for an absent teacher, the kids were acting up and I had no idea how to calm them down and get them to do their workbook exercises.  We had already tried playing a game, but it turned into a free-for-all with kids tackling each other in the back of the room.  I ordered them all back to their desks, but they were still shouting across the room at each other.  I stared at them in despair, and one girl piped up in Spanish, "You have a lot of patience, don't you?  A lot of teachers would be screaming and pounding the blackboard right now,"

At that moment, even though I didn't have the slightest control of the classroom, I was glad that I hadn't given in to the urge to throw a tantrum to get the students' attention.  I am getting better at that fine balance between maintaining control of the class, opening up and letting the kids be creative and have fun, and actually teaching the material.  No matter how difficult some kids make it for me, though, I am not going to take a leaf out of the screaming teachers' book.  I hope to follow the good examples of my excellent colleagues, and above all, to show the kids that I really do care about them.

testing blues

      The other day in S’Alqueria Blanca (at the elementary school where I teach), I asked the 6^th graders, “Why are you here?  Why are you in English class?”

      The only answer that they could come up with was, “They make us.”

      “Well, yeah, you have to be here.  English class is obligatory.  But why else?  Why do you think they make you be here?”

      One kid offered slowly, “Because… very important,”

      “Yes, very good, English is important… but why else?  Do you care if English is important?”

      Crickets.

      “What about…” I continued, “When you play video games, are they in English or Spanish?”

      “Some Spanish,” one boy piped up.

      “Yeah, but most are in English.  And what about on the internet: a lot of sites are in Spanish, but sometimes what you need is only in English.  Or what about when you go to the grocery store—is the music they’re playing in Spanish or English?”

      “Kiss FM!” one girl shouted.  (Yes, Kiss FM has reached Mallorca.  And Ke$ha is freakingly ubiquitous in every store.)

      “So, anyways, think of reasons why you have to be in English class.  And now, do you think you'll be in an English class next year, when you go to high school in Santanyí?”

      “Yes…” they said dejectedly.

      “But did you know that there are different classes?  There are normal English classes, like this one, and then there’s a program called Seccions Europees where you take a regular grammar class, and a class called Processos de Comunicació.  In Processos, you do dramas, you watch movies, you have debates, you play games, you do projects on the internet… sounds fun, right?”

      “I want this class!” one kid shouted.

      “To be in Seccions Europees, though, you have to take a test.  In two weeks, a teacher is coming from the high school to give you a test to see if you can be in the program…”

So, I encouraged them to study.  Outside of class I also teach a few private English lessons to kids in different schools, and one kid happens to be a 6^th grader at another elementary school.  I started off on the same spiel with him, and we got to the part about the Seccions Europees and he said in Spanish, “Yeah, but I can’t be in that.”

      “Why not?”

      “My teacher won’t let me,”

      “What?”

      “My teacher says I’m not smart enough to take the test,”

      “What??”

      “He divided up the class into those who are going to take it and those who aren’t, and when he told me that I wasn’t going to take it, I was happy.  He says the class is going to be really hard, and I don’t want a hard English class,”

      “Yeah, but your English is good.  You would do great in this class,” I said, dumbfounded. 

***

Following last week's rant about things that are unjust in this world, you know what else really makes me mad?  Teachers who tell their students, “You're stupid.  You're bad at English.  It's not worth my time to teach you.  Don't ask questions; I don't want any questions, I just want you to memorize what I say” (actual quotes from actual teachers—(versus, I suppose, fake teachers?) anyways, true story). There's a passel of kids who are incredibly intelligent (or, at least, moderately intelligent), who have spent their whole school careers being told that they're idiots, and the Spanish government wonders why 45% of students on the Balearic Islands drop out of school before they're 16?

English class is a fairly accurate microcosm of the rest of the kids' school experience.  The kids are restless.  They have had English since they were 3 years old, and the classes are mind-numbingly devoid of creativity.  We get to do projects every once in a while, but if we stray too far from the approved curriculum, we get behind, and then have to race to catch up and just end up doing book exercises until we’re all blue in the face.  Does it make sense that they all say, “Me no English?”

Anyways, this brings me to today’s story: “Seccions Europees” (European Sections; the only bright spot in these kids' English careers) is only for the kids with the highest English level (obviously, someone who proclaims “Me no English” will probably not be able to take part in a debate on the merits of immigration.)  In order to determine which kids can take the Seccions Europees classes, a placement test is given to the 6th graders in all of the surrounding elementary schools.  AND THERE ARE TEACHERS WHO CHERRY-PICK THE STUDENTS WHO GET TO TAKE THE TEST!  It’s like saying, “No, you can’t even APPLY to college because surely you’re not getting in.”  Me no happy!

***

I talked to my boss at the high school, who is the head of the English department, and she agreed with me that it was ridiculous to not allow all the students to at least try, so when she goes to give the test at the various elementary schools, she'll ask for all the 6^th graders to be there.  The test is going to be hard, and not very many kids are going to pass it, but so what?  At least they all are getting the chance to try.  And we may all be surprised by how well some of the “not smart enough” kids do.


(ps...)