4min read
Everything in this blog is subject to my personal experience and those of my friends in the language assistant programme.
In October 2019 I began my role as an English Language Assistant! I’ve been working through the British Council in a primary bilingual college in Pozuelo de Alarcón, which according to various news sources is the wealthiest municipality in Spain(!)
If you’re considering the role, I highly recommend it; working as a language assistant abroad is a great learning experience. Aside from learning and loving the language and local culture, navigating life in a foreign country will give you ample opportunities to work hard and play hard.
Read on to find out what you can expect!
If you’re applying to the region of Madrid, schools are allocated through the Community of Madrid, not the Spanish Ministry of Education.
Location, location, location
I’ll begin with location. Through the British Council you can select your top 3 regions of Spain, and whether you’d like to work in a city, town or a rural area, in order of preference. I was lucky enough to be placed in Madrid, my top choice and I ticked both the city and town boxes.
Looking back, it would have been easier to have only ticked ‘city‘. I knew I would definitely not live in a small town and ended up living slap bang in the middle of Madrid; ticking the ‘town‘ option meant I was ticking an ‘I want to commute‘ box without realising it.
I was placed in Pozuelo de Alarcón, a town to the west of the centre meaning that I had to take the metro, cercanía (the suburban railway) and a bus which took around 50 minutes each way. So tick carefully!
Speaking Spanish at work (or not)
At school, there’s great importance placed on you NOT SPEAKING SPANISH. To encourage students to only converse in English, schools generally don’t want them to know that you have knowledge of the language, or else every time they don’t know a word they’ll ask you what it is straight away, without thinking!
Working with Year 1 (6-7 years old) students means that their speaking skills are of a low level. While they do understand more English than they realise, they almost always speak to me in Spanish, to which I always reply in English. It baffles me that they don’t realise that if I can understand their Spanish then maybe, just maybe, I can speak it too…?!
In the first school I worked in, I was not allowed to even speak to teachers in Spanish (unless they didn’t speak English). I was told that part of my agreement was that, should they choose to, teachers can utilise my presence to better their own language skills. While this was a great arrangement for teachers wanting to perfect the English language, as a Spanish student I felt a bit frustrated that I’d come to Spain and couldn’t speak Spanish!
Thankfully in school #2 I eat lunch in the cafeteria surrounded by the other teachers chatting away in Spanish, On the rare occasion that I’m outside of the cafeteria and conversing in Spanish, I am always distracted by a bewildered child shouting ‘HABLA ESPAÑOL?¡!’ which means ‘SHE SPEAKS SPANISH!?¡?!’ and this happens consistently because they forget this fact… consistently.
Also, the language assistant’s room was connected to the nurse’s room – Nurse Gemma was more than happy to spend many a break chatting in Spanish, and we helped with her (practically native) English too!
– On the left we have Dani who is the other English assistant at my school, from Texas
The work schedule
The timetables of language assistants can vary quite a bit. With the British Council, you’re expected to work up to 12 hours a week for 800€ except from Madrid which has higher living costs and is 16 hours a week for 1000€. You will either work Mondays or Fridays, and in some more rural areas it is possible that you only work a 3-day week.
Here’s a picture of my timetable, where I work 15hrs 45mins each week with Years 1, 3, 5 and 6 (45 minutes per class).
The morning break is 11:00-11:30 with free food in the staffroom (score!) and the lunch break is 1-3pm. Including the commute, breaks and lunch, that’s a grand total of 30hrs 40mins each week.
They said ‘You gotta work for your money, honey!’
Here’s an example of a friend’s timetable who worked in a primary school in Las Rozas, another western, wealthy municipality.
The workload
In terms of workload, the British Council explains that the 12-16 hours a week includes any out-of-class preparation that is expected of you. A couple of times I’ve arrived to class and have been given a task such as preparing a presentation or exam based on certain text book pages. Any other prep that I have usually doesn’t come home with me since I have a lot of free time during lunch and on the train. Most of my friends’ schools didn’t ask for lots of class prep out of their hours either.
However, when it comes to special celebrations or when things need decorating, be prepared to be a bit more flexible!
At my school in Madrid we celebrated the following…
October: Halloween decorations are a must in many schools. Some of my friends also had to dress up!
November: Thanksgiving is a ‘thing’ in bilingual schools. In the same way that in Spanish class in the UK we learn about Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) which is actually a tradition in Mexico and not Spain.
December: Christmas, obviously. But instead of the kids meeting Santa, at our school they met and received gifts from the three kings (Reyes Magos). At home, they receive most Christmas presents on 6th January (Epiphany).
January: Día de la Paz (Day of Peace) on 30th January, the anniversary of Gandhi’s death.
February: Carnival, celebrated before the 40 days of Lent which lead up to Easter.
March/April: Easter
And there you have it – some things to consider if you’re thinking about a language assistantship!
If you have any questions or want to hear more you can leave a comment below, send an Instagram message, or email me!
Instagram: @bellablogsabroad
Email: bella@bellablogsabroad.com
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