Secundaria

Last week I started my teaching internship at a Catalan secondary school (high school). Right away, I realized my strengths and weaknesses in teaching are quite different from what I originally thought. (I am always thinking of myself in boxes and grids!) Initially, I was worried about how I would be in the disciplinary realm -- past relationships have taught me that I tend to err on the side of passivity and "niceness" to the extent of being a welcome mat -- but I've found that in the classroom, assertiveness, demanding attention comes easily. It makes things a little more fun when the class is rowdy, anyway, and when all else fails, I like to start off class with a little yoga to get their blood flowing and their minds centered. Maybe that wouldn't fly in some schools, but here they seem to be more lax about structure.

That might be one of the most interesting things I'm learning here -- how to operate "synchronously." I could bore you with quoting some literature from one of my seminars, but I'll give you the Cliff Notes version: essentially, there are two different ways in which we operate/"manage" time. The first is "sequential," a mode which we tend to prefer in the States, as well as in the UK. People who operate in this mode prefer order and sequence. For example, when waiting in line at a butcher's shop, one would commonly find a policy of "first come, first serve" -- we're all familiar with this, right? Take a number, have a seat, and wait your turn. In countries like Italy, Spain, and many Asian countries, however, people tend to operate in a "synchronous" mode, meaning they complete tasks parallel to each other, often times working on several tasks at once, even if it means abandoning order. In an Italian butcher shop, for example, one might find the butcher unwrapping salami for one customer's order, then calling out "Who else for salami?" then completing those orders before those who may have arrived first. Different methods of "productivity" -- different senses of time.

I think I've always had a natural inclination to work synchronously, and I know my family does, but it's interesting to realize how much I have adapted to a sequential lifestyle, and how much I've had to because of the way we perceive time in America. We plan, we have "pathways" and schedules. None of which are bad things! In Spain you won't know the times and locations of your fall classes until a week or two beforehand, but everyone is used to working that way, so they don't expect anything else. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if our university in the States waited until mid-September to confirm our class schedules?

I have friends at both extremes of the spectrum and everywhere in between... so now I can better understand how unhinging it can be for some people when I show up 10 minutes late. At the same time, I have come to value and deeply respect the sense of elastic time I 've found here, especially in the workplace. Here, being "late" is not necessarily inconsiderate, but rather, accepted with 1)the understanding that one can be late because s/he simply had something else to do that took more time than expected, 2)gratitude for the 10-15 minutes of free time spent waiting , and/or 3)no further thought! After all, "being late" is a relative term, isn't it?

I don't know -- maybe it's nearly impossible to function well in the US without sticking to a schedule, without planning ahead all the time... but I will miss this -- this general acceptance of allowing for spontaneity, allowing for life to go as IT has planned, and not as we try to mold it. It's liberating, isn't it? To relinquish control of something of which we had no ownership in the first place? I like it here, I like it a lot.