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Go West: My Experience as an Exchange Teacher in
California
Guzmán Huerta Pérez
Guzmán Huerta Pérez, born in 1974 in Gijón
(Spain), has a degree in English Philology from the University of Oviedo
(Spain). He has worked as an ESL teacher in several secondary schools in Spain
and was a Kindergarten teacher in Compton (California) in the school years
1999-2000 and 2000-2001.
Although I
had never taught little children or native speakers of English, the
representatives of the Compton Unified School District decided to take me on
board as a teacher in Roosevelt Elementary School, one of the 24 primary
schools in this city in South Central Los Angeles, known for its violence and
social tensions. My degree in English Philology, my 6-month Teacher Training
(CAP) and one year of experience in a Spanish high school teaching English were
enough to help me get through the selection process that took place in Madrid.
And the next thing I know, I am standing in front of Compton High School for a
one-day training for new teachers.
California
needs new teachers badly. They are being contracted from all over the USA,
Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, and a big asset is their knowledge of
foreign languages, which will enable them to communicate with parents and
students, many of them part of the growing immigrant population, especially
Spanish-speaking. One of the sources of teachers is the Bilingual Teacher
Exchange Program (Programa de intercambio de profesores visitantes
bilingües), that establishes an agreement between the Spanish Ministry
of Education and the educational authorities from different counties in several
states of the USA. The requirements for the candidates (degree, level of
experience ...) are established by the American authorities in each case and
published in BOE, as well as the number of positions offered. After a selection
from the Spanish authorities, according to the profiles requested by the
Americans, the candidates will be asked to do a fairly accessible language/math
test in English and to go through a personal interview with the representatives
of the School Board of the district.
Compton is a
former black neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles, which has seen the
number of Hispanics rise to over 56% of the total population (US Census 2000).
In Roosevelt Elementary School, English-only children were of African-American
origin and represented a 20% minority of the enrolment. A few years before my
visit to Compton, the student-teacher ratio had been lowered to 20 by law, and
in a district with massive immigration, that meant that more and more teachers
were needed. In my school alone in the school year 1999-2000 there were more
than 2,000 children from kindergarten level (5-year-olds) to 5th
graders and there were around 20 new teachers. Some were foreign teachers, like
me; others were young American teachers, fresh from a West Coast college; some
were older American vocational teachers, who, after years of working on
something totally different, decided to take some courses in teaching and
plunge into the world of education; and the rest were older teachers with many
years of experience.
In order to
help the new and use the experience of the old, the district organizes a series
of teacher training sessions. Some are compulsory, some are helpful and some
are neither, but they all share a surprising aspect: those teachers who take
them, get paid by the hour, as this time is regarded as working time, just as
if they were teaching hours. Apart from these training sessions there are some
other methods used in order to guarantee the homogeneity of the instruction in
the whole district (over 29,000 students) and one is the compulsory use of the
teacher’s book or teacher’s guide. They have little to do with the
Spanish teacher’s books, where a simple key is provided. The American ones
are a thorough explanation of the lessons, so much so that they even include
whole hypothetical dialogues between the teacher and the class, leaving little
or no room to improvisation. Obviously, the use of this tool might be helpful,
but its abuse can lead to cookie-cutter lessons, boring/bored teachers and
unmotivated students.
Anyone who
has had any contact with the USA knows the importance of money in the American
society and the world of public education is no exception. Schools provide for
the materials used by their students (textbooks, paper, pencils …) and pay
everyday for the lunch and, in some cases, also breakfast, that students eat in
the school cafeteria, and this means a great amount of money. How much the
school receives from the district or the state of California depends on
attendance rate and standardised test percentile. The attendance
rate is so crucial because the school receives money for every child/every day
of attendance. Missing a day is seen, therefore, as risking the future of the
school. In a social environment of instability and family problems, parents are
required to send their children every day, or bring a written excuse.
Test results
are the ghosts that drive the teaching process during the whole year for all
students, grade 1 onwards. Test preparation, test revision, right-answer
"bubbling in" – filling the circle next to the correct answer, paying
extra attention not to make any mark out of the bubble, for that would
invalidate the computer-corrected test – are common concepts that all
students should be familiar with, because more or less money will come next
year from the district, depending on how high the scores are and the ranking of
the school in relation to the rest of the district and the state (percentile).
And contrary to what one may think, those schools with poorer results will be
the ones to receive less money, so the better the results, the more resources
the school will enjoy next year. The idea behind this is to encourage the staff
to do their best, disregarding the students’ special situations: if they
know enough English to read and understand the questions, how many days of
instruction they received the previous year, etc. Award the good; punish the
bad - that is the motto behind it. I have to wonder how fast this idea may be
extending in the Spanish educational system nowadays.
Exam weeks
are more hectic than usual, because, in order to avoid "cheating", teachers are
required to pair up and control each other’s classes, which gives an idea
of how little teachers are trusted. School organization is different from the
one in a Spanish school, because the principal and vice-principal are not
necessarily teachers, but "administrators", whose job is to keep the school
working and that includes teacher control and evaluation, too. Depending on the
principal, between twice a year and one a month, they will come to your class
and watch you deliver a lesson and give you a mark for it. Apart from that,
they hold the job interviews when new teachers are needed; they try to keep a
good relationship with the district and the state administrations; they have to
be sure the school is a safe place, and to do so organise a complete plan of
"yard duties" (teachers have a shorter lunch break to keep the students in a
line in and out of the cafeteria); they have to face the responsibility for the
more than usual law suits coming from parents. But they are not usually someone
you go up to for help; they will not necessarily take your side if a parent
comes complaining; they will not try to understand why your students show such
poor test results only because Spanish is their mother tongue. These are, of
course, my personal observations of the administrators in my school and from
what I have heard from other colleagues, and I suppose there must be principals
who act differently.
"Get in
line", "keep your hands and feet to yourself", "fire drill", "code red drill"
(in case of a street shooting), "earthquake drill", "no food from the cafeteria
may be eaten outside it- if a student chokes, the insurance company will not
pay for it". These and many other regulations are there to keep you and your
students safe, and, therefore, you and your school free from law suits. Parents
will not hesitate to go to a lawyer and sue you, the principal or the district
if they think that you have not been careful enough. Safety is vital in such a
fearful society as America, especially so in an urban area known for its
teenage gangs and street violence. The school needs to be seen as a "safety
place" for the children, not only because it will enhance the learning process,
but also because it may be the only safe place some students may experience in
their daily life.
The
employment of bilingual teachers and bilingual specialists shows how much the
communication school-family is cherished. Regular circulars are sent to parents
about parent-meetings, school festivities, test dates and learning tips, and
great importance is given to the role of the families in the learning process.
The presence of parents in the classroom is encouraged, as teacher’s aids,
test controllers, line monitors or bilingual helpers and any parent may, at any
time, go to the principal’s office to ask for permission to walk into your
classroom and watch a lesson being delivered.
Many of my
colleagues back in Spain have asked me if the American system is better or
worse than the Spanish one, and, if I want to be fair, the answer cannot be a
simple straightforward one. Each society is different, has different needs,
different values and expectations. The fact that money is the main motor of the
American society conditions public education in a way not seen by the Spanish
public system. The keyword of an American school is efficiency and teachers try
to achieve better results, because they know that it is not only their
students’ future, but also their job that is at stake. Spanish teachers
have less pressure and more independence, which, depending on his/her personal
commitment to education, may be positive or negative.
There are a
few things that this experience taught me and that I try to implement in my
everyday teaching practice in Spain. One of them is the importance of the
classroom environment in the learning process. The walls in an American primary
classroom are covered with posters, papers, word lists, students’ work,
etc. in a degree I have never seen in a Spanish primary or high school.
Vocabulary lists, diagrams, posters, when made by the students’ efforts,
make a useful source of revising, help decorate the classroom and make it more
personal and are a wonderful opportunity for those unmotivated students at the
back of the class to do something else, apart from disrupting.
Another idea
that I have successfully tried is the concept of "portfolio", which is a
personal folder for each student, where some pieces of his/her work are filed
with a regular interval of time (once a month, twice a term, …). The
student decides which piece will go into the portfolio and why, and this
encourages him/her to do better, keeps him/her involved in the whole evaluation
process, helps the teacher file and correct the work and will make at the end
of the year an important assessment tool and a proof of the student’s
progression.
The bilingual
experience is also a source of enrichment, because little children accept a
foreign language easily and have no fear to use it, even when they make
mistakes. If our goal is to communicate with the students and help them
communicate, let’s use both tools that we have—English and
Spanish—in a flexible and creative way: giving commands in English, but
not interrupting to correct a student who is trying to communicate; accepting
that some students will answer in Spanish to a question in English (at least
they understood the question!); avoiding the grammar drilling and "fill in the
blank" exercises and making the English class a time for learning how to
communicate, i.e., how to listen and talk and how to read and write.
All in all my
experience in California proved to be one of the most valuable in my life, not
only on a professional, but also on a personal level. It gave me the
opportunity to teach in a different educational system, to experience a new
culture and to live in a challenging environment, all of which helped me
appreciate the positive aspects of life back home (again, both personally and
professionally speaking) and confront the negative ones. I can only tell all
those of you who might be thinking about exploring this possibility or any
other teacher exchange program: Find the information, get ready and go for
it!
For more
information about the program, these articles available on the net can be
consulted:
2002. "US
schools look to import teachers"
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2002/fyi/teachers.ednews/05/12/imported.teachers.ap/
Cabrera, M.
2004. "Administrators heading to Spain to recruit teachers"
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/2004/04/09/news/8398181.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp |
