Breaking down the language barrier
Teaching English in Buenos Aires
Published in TNT magazine
“Ok children, listen to me,” says teacher Lujan, as her class of seven-year-olds buzz around the classroom on a post-lunch high. “This is Vicky from England, she’s come to help teach you English.”
“Bicky!” They call out in an overlapping chorus. All Argentinians struggle pronouncing the letter V. “Mickey! Mickey Mouse!” shouts one particularly excited lad, who’s got the wrong end of the stick altogether but seems quite happy jumping up and down to his own amusement.
In a classroom brimming with Latin spirit, I couldn’t help feeling so terribly English, hovering by the door giving an awkward little wave. The only way to keep control of such a lively class was surely to give them impression that I’d done this a thousand times before. It wasn’t going to be easy.
On touching down in Buenos Aires, my only teaching “experience” was an online Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course that I finished two weeks earlier. Yet now, here I was with 19 eager faces staring up at me, waiting for me to say something exciting, something exotic, something so terribly English.
It could have been a ‘what-am-I-doing-here?’ moment, but my reasons for coming were firmly engrained in my mind. Since falling in love with Buenos Aires three years ago, I had dreamt about getting to know it properly. And not just by sightseeing with other travellers. A short-term volunteer teaching project was the way forward.
Most people assume that teaching abroad involves a commitment of at least a year, yet it is possible to find much shorter placements that give you a taste of TEFL life. Mine lasted just one month - enough time to keep my job, while still being a sizeable break. I-to-I, the volunteer travel company that arranges the Buenos Aires teaching trips, say they get a growing number of interesting projects that allow travellers to “dip their toe into something without taking the plunge”. Employers are also wising up to the trend, with many now offering sabbatical-friendly contracts.
Back in the classroom, I had one saving grace in my English-teaching challenge. This was a bilingual school, which meant pupils already had a fair level of comprehension, having Spanish-language lessons every morning and English all afternoon. At seven, they were beginning to understand the grammar and could communicate in stilted phrases. (Although, I later discovered, they were at their most fluent when rattling off lyrics to the insanely popular American US teen drama High School Musical.)
Essentially, my role was more of a teaching assistant. Some volunteers could be disappointed not to be imparting all their TEFL-acquired grammar knowledge, but I was quite glad to forget all about the ‘past perfect continuous’ tense (an easy task considering I never did have a clue what it was and somehow managed to wing the online test with a few flukey multiple-choice answers). Also, in a city such as Buenos Aires, do you really want to spend your evenings writing lesson plans?
Situated in Urquiza, a pleasant suburb that’s firmly off the tourist map, Horatio Watson School teaches pupils from the age of three to 18. I also spent a lot of time helping the seniors prepare for their oral exams and found the majority far more proficient than the standard ‘Do you have a brother or sister?’ questions allowed. Consequently, we digressed on to far more interesting topics, including the president’s recent disputes with Uruguay and a news story about George Bush’s daughter having her handbag stolen in the San Telmo quarter. Some of them were incredibly clued up on current affairs and I was surprised to find the learning process was so two-way.
Of course, volunteering is never entirely selfless. My “work” involved making conversation; I was hardly a martyr. My hardest task was dealing with the concentration levels of teenage boys. (To get them back on track, my quick-fix cheat involved slyly dropping the city’s beloved football teams, Boca Juniors and River Plate into conversation. It worked every time.) Yet I couldn’t help wondering - was my small input actually making any difference?
Headteacher Estella Carollo is a great believer in the importance of English-speaking volunteers at the school. “It’s good for the students’ self-esteem to talk with natives; it inspires them,” she says. “It’s also important because, with our economy, most will have never travelled to English speaking countries.”
Horatio Watson may be a private school (a fact that may put some volunteers off – indeed the organisation double-checked I wouldn’t prefer to work with “really poor kids”), but it’s no Eton. Pupils don’t all have ponies and family yachts, and the school itself is hardly overloaded with funds.
The whole of Argentina is putting the pieces back together after its economy crashed cataclysmically in 2001, wiping out people’s life savings and pushing unemployment levels skyhigh. With this in mind, you can’t help feeling that instead of just milking all you can out of the embarrassingly favourable exchange rates (“Hey, let’s get a bottle of champagne with dinner! It’s only five quid!”), you can also give something back from your trip ─ however small.
But one question remains, and it’s the biggest of them all: even if the work is beneficial, should you be paying for it? Should anyone else, aside from the school and you, be profiting? Gap year organisations have come under scrutiny in recent times for the high price tags they place on volunteer projects and so I put the subject to headteacher Estela. “I see that it seems like a conflict of interests,” she says pensively, “but we need someone to put us in touch with people. How else would we get people to come here?”
The main gripe among fellow volunteers was the working hours, which were shorter than expected (something I-to-I now make clearer on their website) and made the financial outlay seem heftier. “I appreciate that accommodation and a full back-up service is included in the price, but I still think the fee is too expensive,” says Ann Butler, a career-breaker from Sheffield.
San Diego-resident Mark Lopez agreed. Yet he added: “The actual experience working with my class of characters was very rewarding though. The teachers were welcoming, the program director [headteacher Estella] was extremely supportive, and exploring the region was an amazing experience.”
The general consensus was that it gave an unforgettable insight into the nation’s people – who bowled us over with their warmth and generosity. A personal project highlight for me was helping at the Thursday-evening adult education classes, attended by a mixed-age group of women of various heritage, including Russian, indigenous Argentine and a particularly lively Armenian.
And, of course, who can forget the seven year olds? On my last day, after completing some vocabulary exercises and singing a song about parts of the body, the class insisted they needed to draw some goodbye pictures. The one of me smiling and holding an Argentinian flag was particularly endearing. “Dear Biqui,” it read.
Maybe I should have spent a bit more time on spelling.
I-to-I’s teaching in Argentina project has a minimum duration of four weeks (maximum 12). It costs from £995 and includes accommodation, TEFL course and airport pick up. See www.i-to-i.com or call 0800 011 1156.
Vicky Baker travelled to Buenos Aires with Global Village Travel. Prices start from £533. See globalvillage-travel.com or call 0845 347 0265.
