Seriously... How do teachers do it?

It’s hard. Teaching is hard. Its such a different type of hard than studying physiology or biochemistry too. I can assure you, for me, teaching is much harder. With physiology and biochemistry, you can study more, you can find new study methods, and you can ask for help. However with teaching, the information isn’t nearly as complicated, but your "success" (however you choose to define a successful teacher) is heavily dependent upon your students. You can’t force them you care like you can force yourself to study. Even if give them all the information they need, give them the most basic homework assignments, or cram their lives with lectures you can’t force them to learn or care. The most you can do is try to make it as interesting as possible. Although seemingly simple, it becomes exponentially more difficult when you consider the fact that these students learn all of their subjects in their second language. 

Since they are learning in their second language, teaching becomes even more complicated. Simply put, my students' English levels are not very high (my students are between the ages 12-15). Thus when you try to make jokes and make things interesting, they typically don't understand the jokes. This is especially true with witty and sly humor. Which, of course, is essentially all I have in my arsenal. Perfect...

So if you take the fact that the subject matter fails to interest the students and pile on the fact that they only understand 50% of what you say on a good day, what can you do? What I am left with is speaking at a glacier pace while only utilizing a basic vocabulary. Additionally, my teachers do not let me explain concepts in my own words very often. Normally I am limited to regurgitating textbook definitions. Which you can imagine is unbelievably mind numbing. 

Another interesting side note about bilingual programs in Madrid. The students are learning all of their subjects in English (i.e. Biology, chemistry, physics, P.E., history, social studies, etc.), use textbooks that lack a substantial amount of detail that is present in the Spanish textbooks. So the students in the bilingual actually learn less than their non-bilingual counterparts. This is actually a huge point of controversy and many people believe they shouldn't exist. Some who are against the program believe that if the students do not excel in their bilingual programs and do not learn English sufficiently, they will be left in a linguistic limbo where they do not gain enough knowledge of the subjects in either language. For this reason, some departments within a school and sometimes the entire school refuses to participate in the bilingual program.

In summary, I absolutely love Madrid. But I do not absolutely love teaching. I desperately miss being challenged intellectually (shout out to Raney’s biochemistry class and my senior comprehensive project) and its making me look forward to med school more and more. I have the option to stay in Madrid another year and continue being a teaching assistant, but I am not sure its worth putting off med school another year. Thankfully its not a something I need to decide immediately. In the meantime, I'll go to Retiro Park and watch a magic show. I'll never be too old to watch a magic show.