My name is REEEECHARD, pt. 2

The thing I've most enjoyed throughout this experience has been the role reversal. I remember sitting where they were, thinking about how boring and pointless it was to learn Spanish. I remember thinking of harmless schemes to take up the teacher's time and delay the lesson, passing notes to friends and hounding teachers to watch movies or play games instead of doing grammar activities. Throughout this trip I've gotten to know a whole new generation of schemers.

Take Fran for instance. Fran is easily one of my worst students. He is also one of my favorites. Fran is a tall, dark 14-year-old prankster who spends most of the class trying to learn anything except English. I think that's one of his most endearing qualities, his light-hearted disregard for classroom discipline. Every time I have class with Fran he will move from the back of the classroom to the very front, so he is basically underneath me as I teach. He doesn't usually care if I'm talking or if I'm answering other questions, he'll tug on my sleeve until I stop and listen to him. Often his questions will have nothing to do with the lecture and are Spanish variations of:

"Riiiichard, do you have enough chalk? Should I go get some more?" (this is a weekly question)

"Riiiichard, can we play chess?" (also a weekly question)

"Richard, I have to go to the bathroom again."

"Richard, do you like Reggaeton or house music?"

"Richard, do you like Real Madrid or Barcelona?"

"Richard, how do you say 'gracias' in English?" (he occasionally mixes it up with other basic phrases that I know he knows already.)

"Richard, how do you say 'which way is the weigh room?'"

"Richard, what does 'dildo' mean?" (or any other inappropriate word he can think of)

He will ask me just about anything as long as it distracts me from the lesson. They're always innocent questions for the most part, which is the cleverest part of his masquerade. I can never get angry at what he says because most of the time it's hilarious and harmless, but he is a master of delaying and distracting the class. He'll walk up to the board and start drawing something or he'll make ridiculously enormous paper airplanes (one was the size of a desk) or he'll make a tower out of whatever he has handy. His best trick of all though is that he toes the line, but he never crosses it. There are kids who hit each other in class, refuse to read, openly talk throughout the entire class, refuse to participate even with basic activities and there are some who get up and run around. Fran never does anything blatantly disrespectful. He knows what he's doing and how to throw a wrench in the works without getting in trouble.

Fran was also the first student to make me feel truly welcome in a non-ironic way. There are a handful of students who say hello to me just because my accent is funny, but then there are a lot who are genuinely happy to see me. Fran leads this list. I can't walk past him without getting a high-five or being interrogated about my weekend. He'll always ask if I'm coming to class even when he already knows the answer is 'yes.' I can't help but see a little bit of myself in this kid. He's definitely a schemer, but he's totally non-malicious in his actions. I think it is these more mischievous students that have become my favorites and they will be the ones that will be hardest to say goodbye to. They're the one's who make every workday interesting and in many ways they're the one's who make it fun.

My name is REEEECHARD, pt. 1

My students call me REEEECHARD. I'm not totally sure how that happened, but it did. I think a combination of my sorry attempts at explaining that I went by "Rick" and the fact that they never understood me when I said "Rick" ended up being my downfall. Honestly though, "Riiiichard" and "Riiichie" have grown on me a little bit.

For this program I was assigned to secondary schools/high schools in San Roque, a rougher neighborhood on the east side of Badajoz, and Alburquerque, a small mountain village about an hour to the north. I've split time between the two schools doing Monday and Tuesday in San Roque and Wednesdays and Thursdays in Alburquerque. I also alternate class schedules every other week to see as many kids as possible, bringing the number of students I see to about 300. On top of all of this, their ages range from 12 to 18 and the skill levels, even in classes of the same age, has been highly variable and a bit of a challenge.

Overall I love the kids. I admit that they were more fun at the beginning of the year when I was still a new commodity, but for the most part I think I got lucky with my groups (except 4B Alburquerque, which will haunt my dreams forever). Most of them liked me from the start, but it's remained consistent that they're generally more interested in me than the subject I'm teaching. Because of this, I've made an effort to make my classes as interesting to them as possible. We've sung songs (the most successful of which was "I've got a feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas), done crosswords, played games like Jeopardy and have practiced directions by turning the classroom into a city map. Because of the low levels of most of the students, vocabulary and pronunciation have been my focuses. I also gave a few lessons topics from slang to drugs to history to globalization. My oldest kids seem to have benefitted the most from what I can see.

I wish I could say my students were always smiling and willing, but that wouldn't be true. They're sometimes a pain and even though there are days when I feel helpless, there is always a hand full of students who are sitting at attention, trying to hear my lessons above the chaos. I also see great potential in a number of those students and that makes everything I do seem worthwhile. In the end, it has been getting to watch individual students, good and bad, that has been the most fun for me.