Life as a Guinea Pig

As promised, I now present “Being an ETA in Spain: Part 1”(the non Basque terrorist kind)

Due to some issues that arose at the beginning of the Fulbright grant, I ended up being the only English teaching assistant at my school. At first, I was a bit concerned about being the lone outsider in a place that was just starting its bilingual program. You know what they say: never let a guinea pig suffer alone (yes, I just invented a self-serving adage). I seemingly overlooked the inherent benefits of being a solo guinea pig: you have no competition for the love of those doing the experiment. That is to say, the faculty and students love me. And the love is mutual.

After hearing from other Fulbrighters as well as other teaching assistants, I’ve realized just how lucky I am at my school. Sure, it’s well over an hour away from my house, but the students have thus far left me feeling energized enough to make it home happy after the long commute. The teachers have also been exceedingly welcoming. Some excitedly test out their English with me, while others chat away with me in Spanish, curious about what I’m doing, but also sharing their advice for things to do and see in the area. I’ve been “invited” to coffee numerous times already (aka had my coffee paid for during breaks), and they wryly smile and explain things to me during strike meetings if I’m failing to understand the teacher and union jargon. That happens a lot.

Free coffee: Universal sign of love and adoration

Speaking of strikes, I’ve come to Spain at a particularly pivotal moment in the education world. Education is directed by each of the autonomous communities (essentially states), and the current president of the Comunidad de Madrid is a woman named Esperanza Aguirre or, as some of my co-workers would have you believe, Satan. The vitriol displayed towards Esperanza initially surprised me, as she was the one who instituted the bilingual program that currently employs me. Though some of the teachers are opposed to the program, they’ve still treated me with nothing but kindness.

The real problem lies in a recent reform that increased the number of teaching hours by two hours to 20 per week. Coming from the US, where the average teacher is in the classroom teaching at least 30 hours a week, it was hard for me to not scoff at the outrage, but after many individual discussions and strike meetings, I’ve realized that the hour increase is not the real problem. The issue is that they used the hour increase to cut several non-contract teachers, leaving over 1000 of them without jobs. This has led to shortages in other areas. At my school, they had to close the library and the lab as there were no teachers to oversee them. At the same time that the government was making these cuts, it increased funding to private schools by 90 million dollars.

This is what angry Spanish teachers look like

Spain has two main political parties: PSOE (the socialist party) and PP (think Republicans minus the religious right, with a tad more liberalism still). Esperanza Aguirre is PP and the current president of Spain, Zapatero, is PSOE. The next presidential elections will be in about a month, and PP is going to dominate, so more cuts are likely. This has the unions up in arms, and voila, the current strikes. The teachers have gone on strike 5 days thus far, and have at least two more days scheduled. I, however, am not allowed to strike, given my contract, and therefore I have to go to school and sit for hours in the faculty lounge with nothing to do. It’s heinously boring, but at least I get to come in late and leave early.

Another teaching assistant has just arrived, so I'll have to spread the love, but it was glorious while it lasted, and I still couldn't be happier with my school assignment.