Teaching

Moving to Spain gave me the ability to live in a foreign country, travel, and experience countless different cultures. However the only way that I would be able to afford all of those wonderful things was to work and make some money. Naturally, I did what almost any English native speaker would do in this situation - I monetized my language.

There are thousands of people across the world who are currently teaching English in foreign countries, but the biggest difference between Spain and the majority of other countries that want to hire native English speakers is that Spain does not require teachers to have TEFL certifications. The only requirements to work as an English "auxiliar" in Spain are that you have a four-year Bachelor's Degree, and that you are from an English speaking country. Essentially, any University graduate from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia or New Zealand can get an English teaching job in Spain.

There are also a variety of programs that you can apply to, and those programs dictate what your job responsibilities will be. For example, last year before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was working through the Ministry of Education in Spain, in a program where you are only scheduled to work four days a week. This was essentially an assistant position, where I would help the teachers with whatever they needed. Very low pressure, very low responsibility. 

This year, I decided I wanted more of a challenge. I enrolled in a program through a company called "UCETAM", and they told me when they hired me that this position would be a lot more "hands on". They weren't joking. On my first day at my new school, I met with the English coordinator, and she handed me a stack of books, showed me to my classroom (yes, MY classroom), and told me good luck. Oh, and they also told me I would only be teaching first and second grade for the entire year.

I was in a state of shock. I went from being an assistant in a school that hardly used me at all, to now being entrusted with the safety, well-being, and education of classes of first and second graders. I'll be honest, there were days at the beginning where I did not think I could handle it. Thankfully, my coordinator and the other teachers at the school were extremely helpful and patient during the first few months, and by the time we had reached the Christmas break, I knew I was in the right position.

When you're put into a job you aren't prepared for, one of two things will likely happen. Either you learn on the fly and are able to adapt to your new job, or you get overwhelmed and crumble. In the past, I know that I would have crumbled in my new position. There have certainly been jobs that I've had in the past where I crumbled within the first few months. But I think all of those experiences have shaped me in different ways, and now with the lessons that I've learned from those previous jobs, I was able to stay calm in the first few months when I really felt like I was out of my element.

Now, we're in late May and the school year is nearly finished. It really is remarkable how fast it went by. There were a lot of ups and downs during the year of course, but I am so happy to have gotten this experience. Teaching with masks and social distancing has created a varitety of challenges (I've had numerous students this year who have missed weeks of school because of close contact with a person who tested positive for Covid), but we seem to have made it through. In the words of my coordinator on my first day in September, "Just survive."

- Cameron Begin