Lo Barnechea, Santiago de Chile. 15.35.

After a relatively quiet week left largely to my own devices, my third and final week here in Santiago has got off to a thundering start. Not only did I get to observe an English Language A lesson on Othello – easily my favourite Shakespeare and one of my chosen texts for next year – I actually got to teach a large chunk of it, steering the lesson firmly into the context-heavy waters of racial and religious subtext.

It could hardly have felt more natural. Granted, it was only half of a double lesson that was in my hands, but it was everything I wanted my experience of teaching literature to be. I remain very much attached to the idea that one day, God willing, I might get the chance to teach the literature of my own language, too. It’s a tremendously uphill journey, as my degree is in Modern Languages and Cultures and my training is entirely in French and Spanish, though I did skew almost all of my modules into the realm of literary analysis during my university studies. It’s also worth noting that my grades in English Literature – and my passion for the classes – were simply streets ahead of my interest in languages at school, which, I admit, were something that came naturally to me rather than a particular passion of mine. No, I haven’t read nearly widely enough in English as one might have done reading English Literature at degree level, but then, I’ve read a great deal less in French, and here I am teaching Albert Camus and Gael Faye for the third year in a row. Go figure.

It must have gone down well, because I’ve been invited by the Director of the Senior section of the school to teach another Y12 class the same material, but in more depth, on Thursday morning. Realistically, this is what I expected what my placement to look like, albeit in Middle – but this is much more my sort of thing.

I also popped in on a Y11 French class, which was suggested as a possibility in my very first week, but has been held back due to the ongoing cycle of assessments. Students start French much later here (which seems logical, with France being seven thousand miles away), so they were only learning the basics of introductions and masculine/feminine adjectives, but it was good to get my eye in – because on Thursday I’ll be taking the entire class as they move into the realm of verb conjugation. Fortunately, it’s only the regular -ER verbs I need to concern myself with, and being native Spanish speakers, they should be able to grasp the concept of verb conjugation considerably more capably than my English students. They reminded me a lot of my Y11s back home: lively, bolshy, but keen to do well and to impress. Two thirds of them are carrying on with me to A Level, which I’m still raving about. I don’t imagine it’ll be a trend moving forward, but I’ll do my best to try and engineer that kind of success in the years to come. After all, with languages on the decline across the UK, my job does depend on it somewhat!

My final commitment for today, after a lovely lunch with the Senior English department, was to drop in on the school’s MUN/Debate Club, hosted by Sebastian, one of the English team. I’ve got to hand it to their ambition, tackling the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine for one of their first debates, but they handled it superbly, and some of them stuck around at the end for feedback, just like mine do at the end of a Burke or Interhouse Debate. After a couple of weeks where my attention and interaction has largely involved my colleagues and their respective schemes of work, it feels incredible to be working with the students directly at last. It reminds me just how much I love this job, which is surprisingly reassuring, even in the middle of my summer holidays.

Saying it makes it so. Today is the start of week five. Four weeks remain, which will be down to less than two by the time my responsibilities in Chile and Greece are concluded. Once again, I have contrived to whittle down the gargantuan private school holidays into a much more manageable break by keeping myself as busy as my sanity will allow, though with a full seven weeks of ever-changing plans, this summer really does take the biscuit. I might feel guilty about relinquishing time I could have spent refreshing my memory behind the wheel of a car if I weren’t so busy… but you know as well as I do that that would be an out-and-out lie. Between the mountain lions, albatrosses, hummingbirds and Shakespeare, I couldn’t be happier with how this summer has gone.

Tomorrow calls for Carol Ann Duffy (…!). We haven’t crossed paths since she and her stolen snowman were unceremoniously shunted to one side in favour of Seamus Heaney and his litany of potato poems during my GCSE years. I’ll hit the books tonight and come armed and ready to muck in with a Y11 class, who are presenting their analysis tomorrow. The fun never stops! BB x