A Typical Day for Me
Of all the things to read about on teacher blogs I think that daily schedules are the most interesting. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because I’m a boring person. Or maybe because I’m nosy. Despite the true reason, I find it fascinating to see how diverse each auxiliar’s life is. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that my coworkers are having a completely different experience. We go to the same school. We work with the same teachers. And we drink the same coffee during the break. However, they are seeing our school and program from a unique point of view.
Regardless of all this, my week begins Monday morning. I normally wake up at 6:30 because I’m the type of person who needs a few extra minutes (translation: an hour) to get myself up and ready to take on the day. I eat, take a shower, do some light reading and exercise, and go over my plan for the day. At 8:00 I’m leaving the house for work. I don’t deal with commuting or traffic because I live close to my school, though rainy days can be a drag walking. When I arrive, I’m usually early, so I chat with the other teachers or get whatever paperwork that needs to be finalized done. Then, the bell rings at 9:00, and the students, teachers and I all go to our classrooms. On Mondays, I start off with one of the 6th grade groups in English and alternate between two teachers, that way I see all four groups throughout the day. Exactly with which class I’m helping depends upon the day and period, but I’ve been assigned to help with all the English, Social Science (S.S.), and Natural Science (N.S.) classes for 6th grade.
Below is a breakdown of my working day:
*I’ve reframed from putting my teachers’ names (TI and TV) to keep their privacy.
As for what I do in each classroom, I’ve mostly been preparing the 6th graders for the speaking portion of the PET exam, which is a Cambridge test that all Spanish students must take to move on to a mostly-English-speaking high school. Other class periods I’m asked to help students with new grammar concepts or their classwork. I’ve even been volunteered to accompany the 6th graders on fieldtrips. Finally, there are times that the students work so hard that we finish early and decide to play a fun review game. However, all in all, I spend most of my time outside of the classroom, one-on-one or one-on-two, working on their speaking and pronunciation.
During my breaks, I’m usually doing a project for one of my teachers, reading an ESL blog or checking my email. And when we’re in the coffee break, we all gather in the lunchroom to drink some coffee and eat whatever the lunch staff has made us, which is always something tasty and filling. Oh...and there’s a lot of chatting and laughing. We all get along very well.
What about after school and weekends? Well, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I quickly eat lunch and then go to tutor two boys from my school. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I take private Spanish classes so that I can improve my speaking skills. As for the weekends, which begins on Friday, I normally clean my apartment, read a bunch, go out to exercise, rest from the week, and do some cooking. And when it’s a holiday weekend, I go somewhere new to get some fresh air and learn something new about my host country.
Overall, the auxiliar life has treated me well, and I’m loving it compared to my previous 9-to-5 job. I can’t complain the least bit.