instant assistants

When I described this programme to a friend in Lisbon, he predicted it would be another Erasmus (the European uni exchange programme). And indeed, as I joined the thousand or so other assistants in a conference room at the Hotel Convención, I decided he was right. There were Belgians, Italians, Germans, French, Brits, Irish, New Zealanders, Australians and Canadians, here for a year to assist in French, Italian, German and English classrooms around the country.

And we are only the half of the total assistants in Spain this year.

There are all sorts of different people here. Most of us are 'recent' university graduates -- except the Brits who are in the third year of Spanish degrees and are spending a year abroad to fulfill course requirements. Some people are testing the teaching profession, most are just here for an adventure. It's a good deal. The pay is peanuts, but when you are in a small city or town, you can live on peanuts. Work is twelve hours a week, with a very clearly defined role as an assistant and not a teacher (which absolves us of much responsibility and tedium).

Our orientation course included several modules, from confusing diagrams of the education system to tips on surviving the bureaucracy involved in legalizing our stay here. The best part of the whole thing was this video, part of the lecture on foreign language teaching methodology.



What I found most interesting was the philosophy that justifies forking over so much cash to a corps of untrained young people whose one CV point is 'native speaker'. There are so many reasons to learn a foreign language -- people want to learn Italian or French because they are 'beautiful', or Spanish because they want to travel in Latin America, or Arabic because are interested in the region. But when it comes to English the motives are more practical -- I need it for my job, my studies, for a better job, for better studies. It is not so much about accessing another culture, it's economic. Even those of us who went to Chile had a sense of our project as social justice, providing kids from marginal communities with tools that might enable them to move closer to the center.

Not that all that isn't important. It's all fine and dandy...but it makes for a different classroom dynamic.

The fellow from the Ministry of Education who spoke to this point framed our work as an integral part of creating a common European intellectual space. Learning a language has one very clear function -- to communicate with others. And communication in the sense of learning, sharing, understanding. Sounds pretty, doesn't it? It's kind of refreshing to have a cultural objective. And I find the idea of working towards integration by promoting learning and communication (rather than homogenization) rather motivating.

Of course this is all talk. But I happen to think talk, particularly how we chose to articulate our objectives, is important. And so I appreciated learning about the European framework for language learning and so forth. I'm kind of a nerd that way.

The last activity was a meeting with representatives from our Autonomous Regions, in my case, Extremadura. Lots of interesting tid-bits. Since 2000, kids have English from the age of two, in day care. There are 3o bilingual schools in the region, that sound like a Spanish version of French Immersion. And apparently every classroom in the region is outfitted with one computer per two students -- literally, like in every classroom there is a computer at each desk of two. And they run some linux system which they call linex because they are clever that way. All fascinating stuff.

And so, after very long day of being talked at, the Ministry of Education let us loose.

"Ta-dah," the ministry worker said to himself as we spiraled out from Madrid.

"Instant assistants."