El Colegio Español

I got to Skype with my family last night! It was wonderful but they told me I looked a little tired so when we ended the call I just went to bed...I mean, even abroad, I have to follow my bedtime (jokes jokes jokes. Everyone knows I don't sleep!)

Yesterday, the ESOL group arrived at the site early to visit the Colegio Español in Rosario. This trip was important because the Colegio Español is a private school, and all public schools in Argentina are FREE for students to attend. This is the standard for all the public schools, from preschool to the university level. We'll visit a public school in the next week or two, and it will be interesting to compare the schools. I wasn't really sure what we were going to see when we got the school, but we took the bus across town and arrived. A woman named Celia met us in the front office, and she spoke impeccable English. She told us we were going to sit in on the 7th grade English language classes, which is just like how students in America take classes on the Spanish or German or Japanese languages. We took a tour of the school building and learned about the influences that Spain has on the school. The uniforms the students wear sport both the flags of Argentina and Spain, Spain's National Anthem plays at school assemblies, and there is a replica of the boat that came from Spain to Argentina. I didn't fully understand why Spain was so important to this school, but you could see its influences everywhere.

Once we finished the tour and had a coffee break in the staff room, we were divided into pairs to go observe the 7th grade English classes. Celia warned us that the students would be very interested in talking to us and asking us questions, but because of their knowledge of the language, their questions might come across as inappropriate. Emily and I were lucky that the students in the classroom we visited were very inquisitive, but also very respectful. There were only 12 students in the entire class, which gave every student ample opportunity to participate in class. The class was studying directions, and I remembered all of the Spanish classes I've taken that have used almost the exact same material. What was interesting about these students, however, was how incredible their English was. As 7th graders, their entire class took place in English! We found out that these students had been taking English classes for 40 minutes a day, 5 days a week, since they were in Kindergarten! They've been taking English for about as long as I've been taking Spanish classes, but I felt like they could speak much better than I am able to at this level. The English they were learning was very formal - it sounded like they were trying to speak with British accents, and they learned to "turn into the street," not to "turn onto the street" like we would say. On the other hand, I'm sure that the Spanish we learn to speak in the United States is very formal as well.

Observing this class made the possibility of teaching English abroad seem very appealing and very achievable. I'm not sure whether it's something I'm really interested in pursuing long-term, but it's another option for teaching that I think I'll file away and continue to reflect on. I think all of us were impressed with the quality of the school, so it will be very interesting to see how the English classes in the public school are different and if that will change my mind about possibly wanting to teach abroad.