Spanish Education and Children

The first day at my school in Madrid- Instituto Gómez Moreno (IES) I was very confused about the levels and stages of the education system in Spain.  After a few weeks here I better understand the levels.

First is Educación Infantil which is essentially like kindergarten for kids age 6.  Next is Educación Primaria which is obligatory and free and it consists of six academic years of school so kids are ages 6-12 years old.  Educación Primaria would be the same as the US- primary school.

Then there is Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO) which is also obligatory and free and consists of four years of education with kids between the ages of 12-16 years old.  This would be comparable to middle school and half of high school in the US.

The last level of education before college is Bachillerato (Bach).  This level is not obligatory and the students in this level must have graduated from Secondary Education.  It consists of two years of education and if the student completes these two years successfully and pasts necessary exams, they may then continue on to the University.  Students in this level are 16-18 years old.  At IES I teach kids in the Primary, Secondary and High school levels.

IES is a public school with a small English Department.  There are students of varying levels of comprehension of english.  For example, some of my primary students seem to have a higher level of comprehension of english than some of the students in Bach.  It's frustrating because even though more advanced levels of english comprehension are separated into classes called Sección, the classes that remain have such different levels of comprehension that it's often very difficult to teach.

Each level of education has a certain number of hours a week of english classes.  I can't say with certainty that I know how many hours each level receives but I believe that the primary levels only have about one to two hours a week of english classes whereas the high school level has about five hours of different classes in english.

Now onto the topic of spanish children.  I would have to say that my first day in class made me realize the lack of discipline of children in the spanish culture.  I have talked to other teaching assistants and they all say the same thing.  It's not that the children are necessarily defiant to their professors, they simply aren't disciplined in the way that many American children are.  Maybe it's the fact that all the teaching assistants I've met, including myself, work in public schools.  I myself, attended a private school from k-8th grade and found that students in my school had much more respect for their teachers.  It's a whole other story here.  Many teachers spend a fourth of the class simply trying to get students to pay attention and to calm down. The kids are rowdy, loud and have more energy than I can even explain.  I thought to myself, "are ALL children this crazy and wild?!" In addition, these kids are not taught to raise their hands because they are often just shouting out what they think.

I've definitely had my good days and my bad days.  The good days are when the students seem excited to learn and excited to specifically learn lessons from me.  The good days are when students see me in the hallway and say "hello" to me and smile.

The bad days, however, were like my last class yesterday (Primero C- primary education, group C).  These kids are something else.  I can pick out about six students from the entire group of 27 and say that these kids actually want to learn and actually understand what I try to teach them AND actually listen to me.  The other 21 students are crazy.  I literally mean insane.  They were standing up, moving around, talking, shouting, passing notes, almost dozing off, you name it.  These 21 didn't seem to care in the least that I was standing in the front of the class and trying to teach them about Thanksgiving or punctuation!  After that class I was so frustrated with those kids.  They simply do not have any respect whatsoever for authority or for their elders for that matter.  These kids are almost impossible to teach.

Even after a few weeks on the job I can say that I definitely have more respect for teachers, especially those who teach young kids.  Teaching anyone under the age of 16 requires a certain level of patience.  Having patience is key on this job!  Lets just hope my level of patience increases rather than decreases on my stay here in Madrid!