If someone asked me 4 years ago where I thought I would see myself in a few years, I definitely would not have said living in Spain teaching high school students. It was never in the cards for me, or at least I thought. But as a language assistant at IES Don Pelayo, I have learned so much about myself and the type of person I want to be, through my students and colleagues. Being a language assistant has reinforced my love of learning, and I learn from my students everyday. I have also made so many connections with other teachers who work with thought and patience to provide the best possible education we are able to these students. Together, we strive to enhance our students’ knowledge, confidence and education to give them a strong basis upon which they can build in the future even after they have left our care.
IES Don Pelayo
Located about 20 minutes south of Alcalá de Henares, IES Don Pelayo is a secondary school located between three neighborhoods. Most of the students live in these neighborhoods and have been attending schools in this area for majority of their lives. What I love the most about working at Don Pelayo are the amazing students and the incredible staff. I teach mostly English classes in addition to being the language assistant for the Comunidad de Madrid’s program, Global Classrooms. My students in all of my classes often astound me with thoughtful, curious questions and their genuine desire to learn. Having them, as well as incredibly kind and supportive teachers to assist has made my time at Don Pelayo truly memorable. The only thing that makes me upset is thinking about leaving at the end of the year.
Global Classrooms
Global Classrooms is a program through the Comunidad de Madrid that brings Model United Nations into the 3rd ESO (9th grade) curriculum at secondary schools with a bilingual program. Students learn the procedure of UN debate etiquette, delve into a complex topic prevalent in our world, and do it all in English only.
This year, I had the pleasure of being the Global Classrooms Language Assistant (GCLA) at Don Pelayo for the second year of the program’s existence at my school. With two classes and a total of 64 students, I planned the curriculum, decided how every lesson would be taught and prepared my students for our mock conferences as well as the large conference held in Madrid.
I worked closely with all of my students, seeing them twice a week in both Geography/History as well as English class. Spending more time with them allowed us to form closer relationships and particularly with the students that continued on to the main conference, I was able to really provide them with tailored attention and help that they needed. I witnessed their growth throughout the months of us working together and am genuinely so proud of how much they have learned.
Cross-Cultural Learning
My other focus as a teaching assistant at Don Pelayo is to be an ambassador for American culture to my students and school community. I work towards this by incorporating cultural lessons into my classes. The lessons began with examining American school systems versus Spanish school systems and have continued to cover topics like American English Idioms, pop culture in the US and American holidays. On Thanksgiving, we had lessons all week about the holiday and at the end of each lesson, we would bring the students to our “Thanksgiving Dinner” and “Tree of Thanks” where we would show our mock dinner table with various photos of foods to the students and have them add a heart to our tree with something they are thankful for written on it.
My cultural lessons also focus a lot on aspects of “American” culture that feel special to me as an Indian-American. Explaining this combination of cultures to my students has led to interesting conversations about what it means to be American and how my parents and their background has added to my understanding of my identity. Specifically, my students began to understand more about my Indian-American background after I gave a lesson on Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. This is the lesson I focused my final project on and more details about it can be found under the final project tab below.
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