Maybe the fishermen would hire me..

...to prepare their hundreds and hundreds of fishing lures for the next day. Whenever I walked by the fishermen, this is what I fantasized about.

We ended up with a "hybrid" job of being both regular assistants and English teachers in a Chilean preschool/daycare. When we weren't teaching English classes (six classes each on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings) or talleres (extra workshops for kids whose parents wanted to pay for extra English) on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, we each "helped" in our home classroom. I think the idea was that kids would benefit from hearing English, but it was never practical for us to speak in English all day.

We worked as assistants and English teachers
at a jardín infantil for three months

When we were English-speaking Miss Alicia and Miss Kat, we traveled from classroom to classroom with our goods in tow (posters, cut outs, creepy masks, jolly stick puppets, and catchy tunes (my personal favorite was Put Your Finger on the Boy)) and spent about half an hour with each of the six classes. The curriculum we used was straightforward, leveled, and incorporated early learning concepts of science, math, social-emotional development. Some of the ideas in the curriculum were lovely in concept (when you introduce the word chair, talk about using chairs safely) but not always in practice (safety discussions need to happen in the native language when in a non-immersion situation). We were alone with the kids more often than not (we learned classroom management vocabulary fairly quickly) so a lot of the lessons weren't do-able or had to be modified quite a bit.  

When we were Spanish-speaking Tía Alicia y Tía Kat the rest of each day, we...just...didn't have a useful role to play. Sure, the jardín was understaffed, and it's nice to have another set of hands to take someone to the bathroom or coax a four-year-old into eating their beets or cauliflower (oh, how I learned to hate lunch time with a passion). One thing was clear, though: we were not to do the jobs that permanent assistants regularly did - like make a gazillion worksheets by hand, make crafts for each week's theme, or re-braid hair after lunch as part of the teeth-brushing routine. (The hair braiding also happened to be right before naptime, so the girls always ended up going to lie down with freshly braided hair that would only get rumpled within a few minutes. I didn't get it.) I kept trying to understand how I could be most useful (talked with the English program coordinator, my teachers, la directora, and with Alicia about what our role should be), as well filling in gaps as best I could. I read (in Spanish) with the kids (something that didn't really happen in my classroom otherwise). I played with the kids. Once I tried to teach duck, duck, goose to the class (the short "u" sound is not a sound in Spanish, so thought it would be a good game. The tias sort of helped explain the rules, but not really). I tried to anticipate the routines, but it wasn't easy (especially since the routines changed frequently).

Early on, I decided that my job in Chile was to learn Spanish, and that working as an assistant would help me do that. Children need a lot of language from their adults (especially when they are upset, or their behavior needs redirecting) so I had good motivation, and eventually got to a point where I could start to be useful. I eventually knew enough Spanish that I could help calm kids down (as opposed to cause more anxiety by saying wrong or unintelligible things), or help with a scraped knee or earthquake evacuation. It was tough, though. It wasn't until the last two weeks there that the other tias started to tell the kids that they had to listen to me or do what I said.

I can see where it's hard to welcome (or, at least, easy to forget to welcome) someone to your workplace when a) they don't speak your language very well if at all, b) they don't know the routines, c) you don't want them there, d) you know they are only there for three-four months at most, e) you have pre-conceived notions about them that don't necessarily sit well with you, or f) any or all of the above. But still. The teachers were nice to us and chatted with us whenever they could, but didn't include us as part of the work team. If looks or snotty peerrrrmiiiiisoos could kill, the assistants would have done us in several times over within the first month. It wasn't awesome.

I wonder if it could have gone differently. If there had been someone at the school whose job it was to adopt us (be our go-to for questions, tell us about exceptions to the schedule, and talk about expectations) or if we had gone in with a job description for the non-Spanish-speaking assistant, would it have eliminated some of the frustration? Or was it always going to be frustrating to do something so similar to what I already did but in a completely different context? I think the staff has to decide that they want English speakers there before they take another one, but there are a few things that could be done to make it easier for everyone.

After two months we abandoned the assistant role. It was always too much for the teachers to "take care of us too" all day long, and the frustration levels on our end were just too distracting. I did slightly regret not sticking it out, though. In May and June, I used my extra time to work on note cards and to write and read in Spanish, but I found it was only in the preschool that I felt "the click." That click you feel when you are only thinking and speaking in Spanish, and it doesn't hurt.

In the end, a good experience...

...and I learned to accept that there was something
about me that the kids adored that had
nothing to do with what I said to them. Eventually.