I'm VERY happy at present. After being unemployed for more than two years, two weeks ago I found an almost unexpected job as English teacher. If it is not completely unexpected it is because I had applied for it (although I had no real expectations). I'm only a supply teacher at a secondary school, and my contract will end in a couple of weeks (when the permanent teacher recovers from an operation), but I really needed to start doing something. Besides, I'm likely to get some other contract before too long, since my having been summoned means that my score is good enough to make me be in a high position in the list of prospective supply teachers.
There is only one problem about all this. The list I am in will last for two years, and in that time I am bound to accept any contract they offer me (or I'll be taken out of the list). This means that if any of the next schools is so far from my home that I cannot get there by public transport before the classes start, I will have to move house. Which is a drag. But a job is a job.
I lied. Another problem is that there is no degree here in Spain that teaches you to be a teacher (there is something like that for infant and primary education, but nothing else). So here I am standing in front of thirty-five pupils with little interest in anything I may tell them, and with no idea about how a lesson is to be carried out. They all tell me it's a matter of practice, but I wish I had a clue how to do it properly.
And yet another problem is that I must really get up to date with my English. Although I read a lot in English, I don't write much, and don't speak it at all, and it shows. I'm reproducing a dialogue I had last week during one of the lessons with a fifteen-year-old poor little thing who cannot tell a noun from a verb and who keeps on adding the '-s' in the wrong place (as in 'We says'):
Pupil:
Is you accent British or American?Me:
It is Spanish.Pupil:
Well, at least you're sincere.But, as I said, I'm SO happy...
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I was told yesterday that the teacher's sick leave has been extended two weeks!