An extract from Cucarachas or Cucuruchos: An English Teacher's Spanish Dilemma. Free sample chapter available HERE
TEACHING HAS ITS DOWNSIDES: one of the biggest always
occurs when people find out what you do. Very few blurt it out immediately.
They beat about the bush, asking you which subject you teach, or which age
group; they tell stories about teachers they remember (for good or bad); they
disclose their favourite subjects, the ones they were good at - and they often
want you to know the ones they hated (it's usually PE); they complain about the
amount of homework they got (too much) and the amount their own children get
(not nearly enough).
But if you're a teacher, you know this is all
preliminary. The hors d'oeuvre before the main course, the warm-up
before the kick-off, the trailer before the feature. You know what they're
going to say, at some point in the conversation (nearly always just after
you've expressed a slight dissatisfaction about some educational issue or
other): they give you a curt little nod of the head and a slightly accusatory
fixing of the eyes before finally saying what they’ve wanted to say since they
first discovered you were a teacher.
'Ah, but what about all those long holidays?'
They usually cross their arms at this point, like
they’ve caught you telling porkies, or filching a couple of extra pencils from
the stock cupboard. They might look sideways at another member of the group and
nod another curt little nod like they’ve discovered a new prime number or
solved the Irish backstop problem. They wait for me to put up a defence, to say
that we need to recover from a full-on job, re-charge our batteries, prepare
next year's materials. This is all true. But it's never the response I give.
Instead, I shake my head slightly wistfully, like I've
just taken the first lick of a rum'n'raisin ice-cream, then I sigh a little
sigh and quietly say, 'Yeah, fantastic. Thirteen weeks... How much holiday do you get...?'
They usually change the subject after that.
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