It’s really hard to try to describe the conflicting emotions at leaving somewhere that you loved living even as you realise that you were never going to be financially enhanced by being there. It is a confusing miasma of feelings that I think you can never really reconcile.
Having said that, Portuguese employment laws have ensured that we have most definitely benefitted well from their regard for employees – the final payments from my contract have made up for much of the losses we incurred along the way.
Anyway, this blog is a bit odd in that there are so many photos to peruse. This is because we were spending our last three weeks in Lisbon whilst getting ready for yet another new adventure here in the outskirts of Madrid. And our last three weeks were spent as tourists enjoying all that Lisbon has to offer as well as the saying goodbye to treasured colleagues/friends. When the distinction between the two is blurred then you know you have met people that you will always keep in contact with.
So, here we are in Colmenar Viejo, a commuter town north of Madrid. We arrived smack bang in the middle of Fiesta! Time, which was interesting to say the least. Bullfighting was part of the programme but it is safe to say that it is not for us. The rest of it, including the street bingo, did kind of make up for missing the Fiesta! back in our home village.
Our landlady is great; she loves dogs and speaks flawless English. We have had some issues with our wifi provider, Movistar. It is part of life in Spain. You go with Movistar you get unbelievably shit service – think the worst of BT, Barclays Bank and British Gas combined. What makes it worse is that Sonalee has to deal with it in Spanish. Even when she gets the landlady or work colleagues to explain in Spanish, Movistar still manage, somehow, to screw it up. What to do?
We are five minutes walk from the Camino de Santiago de Madrid which is absolutely brilliant for the dogs. It’s fantastic for all the dogs of the town. There are thousands of them, literally thousands and many with owners who do not ‘pick up’ after their hounds. As a result, there is dogshit everywhere. I do not exaggerate. Luckily it is scorchio hot at the moment so it dries out fairly quickly but the winter should be, well, interesting on the paths and streets around here.
We also have the mountains nearby which are always guaranteed to provide some stunning early morning and late night landscapes and cloud formations. It is a different vibe to the beaches of Lisbon but there is a natural beauty to our surroundings that is quite spectacular. Hopefully we will have a good winter here, with snowfall enough for me to try out the ski resort half an hour away. Apparently it has not been great for a number of years around here. Global warming. Denying it is denying what you see in front of you.
This week has seen Sonalee and I in school trying to figure out the systems they use, the geography of it, the timings of lessons and breaks, the equipment they have, the furniture and fittings that are there, the philosophy of the school, the requirements of the management and the hundreds of other things you need to become familiar with at any new school.
What has made this one a lot more challenging is the sheer scale of the place – it is huge! There are so many staff that they outnumber the pupil at some schools I have worked in. There seem to be a lot of Scots for some reason. Not sure how I feel about that given that they speak funny.
Two of the new staff, a couple called Eddie and Kate, live up the road from us. Both are lovely. We did a night out during the Fiesta! the other night where we found out that Eddie is from Glasgow and Kate is from… Portsmouth. Yay! My first encounter with a fellow Pompeyite as an international teacher. Not only that but her mum is from Paulsgrove! I know! Brilliant! Well, it would have been had she not casually announced that I was, in fact, older than her mum. Thanks a bunch. How to win friends and influence people. Bah.
But, back to the school. The students begin on Monday so we have had five days of trying to work out what the Hell we are supposed to be doing. Now this is quite straightforward for Sonalee and others but a trifle more dificil for me since I am teaching year 9 science – including chemistry. Argh! Not only that but I am teaching year 7 maths which is not exactly problematic but it does mean I have another department to deal with and another set of rooms in a totally different part of the massive school to work in.
And then, to make it even easier for me, I found out yesterday that I will be teaching year 6 primary science in yet another part of the school and with totally different systems to the senior school.
Suddenly all of my bravado and confidence has dissipated in the face of the complications that come when you blithely announce to your head teacher that, sure, you can mix it up and you can teach anything.
Hmm. Idiot.
I will be teaching, all told, around 250 different children. The school expect me to have close relationships with them. Yeah, right.
Oh, and it gets better. The management have decided that I would be the perfect person to teach PSHE (Sex ed, health, drugs, finance etc) to year 13.
Me. Me, teach 18 year old girls about sexual health. Me, teach 18 year old boys the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse. Seriously?
I will, naturally, be coaching football in a voluntary capacity since it is part of my life as a teacher. I’ll be coaching key stage 3 girls again, which will be great. The PE guy, Jordan, is cool as all PE people are. I can even forgive the fact that he is a West Ham fan – someone has to be, right?
Sonalee and I both feel that this year will be bloody hard work. We do not look forward to it. I am actually dreading it in many ways. I am not a ‘proper’ science teacher, we all know that I am not. I am fearful of that moment that one of the students stands up and says, “Hang on! He doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
I did fear the same thing last year but English, and I don’t know why, seemed easier to blag. I reckon some students suspected I didn’t really have a clue but couldn’t quite prove it.
The IGCSE results did come through for my students in grade 10 last year. Despite myself, I did take a look. They were okay. One result did stand out though. One of my students has cancer of the blood – leukaemia. It meant that she underwent chemotherapy throughout the year and was only available to teach online. She is a great kid and really talented at English language. I encouraged her to tackle the normally avoided short story task in the exam because I thought she was a particularly brilliant writer. She did so. She got an A*. I cried when I saw the result. For her, not for me.
I have never met this kid in person. She has recovered to the point where she is able to return to school physically but I will not be there. I hope that, sometime in the future, I can meet her and give her that hug that any teacher would give to one of their particularly memorable students.
I hope that this next year does not end up being as difficult as we both fear it will be. I hope that it will produce moments like the past year has done and that we can make friends as good as those that we have left behind. Who knows? We start yet another adventure. Wish us luck.
Ayubowan
Hasta Luego, inshallah
Ciao
Paul
