Saying Yes, Saying No

December 12, 2024December 12, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I had my probation meeting today. No, don’t worry, it’s nothing to worry about – just the first part of the “settling in” process of the new job. It’s always good to get constructive feedback on your teaching, and even better to get positive feedback from kids, colleagues and parents alike. Emails remain the bane of my existence, my beast to be slain, and I dare to say that, had I gone into the teaching profession a hundred years ago, before the days of instant communication, I might even have been an exemplary teacher.

Most of all, however, I can’t help but find it delightfully ironic that my main piece of constructive criticism was that I still have a tendency to “say yes to everything”. Saying yes was something of a New Year’s resolution, and it’s been a bloody good one, to be honest. So far “saying yes” has given me: a new job, a short-lived but precious romance with an American beauty, a string of adventures from Paris and Prague to Poland, the chance to teach French again after several years’ oblivion, the title of Head of Debating & Public Speaking and, finally, a well-intentioned caution.

In fact, probably the only thing I’ve said no to this term was tonight’s post-carols drinks with the staff, and that was only because I’d have missed my train if I’d delayed even a minute longer.

I guess that’s just as well. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more exhausted after a Christmas term. It’s been pretty full-on, even by my standards.

I’m off to Poland tomorrow. Polish is absolutely not one of the languages I claim as part of my arsenal, so communication is going to be a bit ropey – but, hey, that’s nothing new to me. It has nothing in common at all with any of the languages I speak, so learning has been slow… on top of everything else I’ve had on this term. Sometimes I have to take a step back and think about all the plates I’m spinning at work:

Teaching French and Spanish to Years 7-13 (spanning two different exam boards for GCSE as well as A Level and the IB)
Heading up the Debating & Public Speaking events and competitions
Living on-site as a boarding house deputy and working two overnight shifts a week
Volunteering with a local school
Tenoring in the Chapel Choir and staffing any and all music trips
Attending as many home fixtures as I can to support the boys

No small wonder I’ve had no time for a relationship or driving lessons this term…! The stress of the latter might just have broken me, if I’d managed to fit my lessons in anywhere at all into my crammed schedule – which is highly unlikely. I think the only reason I managed last year was because I was six years into the job and had taught most of the kids for years, so I could walk straight from my driving lesson into teaching Year 10 GCSE Spanish without batting an eyelid.

Most rational teachers would be practically collapsing into bed tonight after a term like this one. Instead, I’m lugging two rucksacks across the country to catch an early morning flight to Warsaw, so that I can spend the first four days of the Christmas holidays in some bleak corner of Eastern Europe searching for wolves (or traces of wolves). I blame all that time spent reading The Tiger this summer. I’d be tracking Siberian tigers if I could, but I’ve traveled across the world once already this year in search of a dream, so I’m settling for an adventure a little closer to home this time.

At least it’s meant I have something to say in return when my students tell me about their Christmas plans in India, Florida and/or the Maldives. “Wolf tracking” seems to fall under the banner of decidedly unusual responses to the question “any plans for the holidays?”.

Thunderstruck is playing in the one functioning ear of my earphones. The train is fifteen minutes late but racing to make up for lost time. I’ve fired off the usual end-of-term fusillade of messages to friends and family, bursting upon the surface of my WhatsApp in two-minute intervals like an underwater volcanic vent. Old habits die hard. Thunderstruck was the great gift of my American adventure, and it’s been a real mood-lifter ever since. Unsurprisingly, it’s my most played song on Spotify this year.

I think I’ll listen to it a couple times more as the train nears its destination. I could use a boost. BB x

2023: A Year in Pictures

December 28, 2023 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

January

2023 begin much like it is today: wet and windy. In keeping with the last seven years, the year began somewhere new: this time, in an AirBnB in Wilpshire, some two hundred and thirty-five miles from home. It had been a wonderful New Year’s Eve, but a fleeting one: cracks were starting to form in my relationship. I decided to ignore them and looked inwards instead. A few weeks later I saw a pheasant on a stroll around Wakehurst and had no idea that the very same bird would seek me out when things began to unravel several months later. Hindsight is a curious thing.

February

The villagers of South Willingham lost their bid to save the local forest from being turned into a bike park. I know it will bring much-needed money to the area, but a part of my heart always breaks a little when somebody carves up another patch of the earth for human entertainment. I wandered among the trees and soaked in the winter light. No footpath leads through the woods, so I might be the last person to do so. I also passed my driving theory test, but didn’t tell anybody about that for a while.

March

The man who doesn’t take a day off unless he’s dead or dying was very nearly brought down by a fever this term, reaching its peak the day of the House Music final. My very conscientious partner drove all the way up to my place to drop off a get-well-soon care package and gave me clear instructions to rest, but I dragged myself to the school theatre to support my boys in their bid for victory – and was not disappointed. Rutherford took home the House Music shield for the first time in over a decade. I didn’t fully recover until the following Monday, but I rode the high of their success for months afterward.

April

Seeking answers, I sought out the Camino – and the Camino provided. Within days I had found an incredible cast of characters, and had the Easter holidays been longer, I would have gone with them all the way to the end. I walked a hundred and thirty kilometres in just under a week with a Brit, a Dane, a Canadian, a Spaniard, a Dutch girl, a couple of Californians and the most charismatic Italian I have ever encountered – and I have encountered more than a few. I told myself I would be back to finish the job, but I didn’t think at the time that I would throw myself back at the Camino a few months later.

May

Matters of the heart came to a head. I drifted back to Wakehurst and sat on a grassy bank near the American plantation to clear my head. The pheasant appeared and sat beside me, keeping me company for the best part of half an hour. Say what you like, but animals seem to have a sixth sense for when humans are in distress. My mother’s cat made a beeline for my brother when he was in the doldrums in much the same way. It did not heal my heart but it did a lot to patch it back together. In the meantime, I went at my living room and restructured the place, hoping to find a new sense of direction by altering my perspective and my surroundings. It’s a lot easier to move a bookcase around when you don’t possess several hundred books, though.

June

I broke things off with her and felt awful about it – but seventy-eight reports, a bout of vomiting sickness in the boarding house and preparations for the school trip to Seville helped me stay on track. The Leavers’ Ball was more of an event than a formality this year, seeing as it meant saying farewell to a cohort of students who had joined the school at the same time I had. An immensely nostalgic music tour to Salzburg rounded out the month and found me playing the violin at the same bandstand I had played back in 2006, some seventeen years ago. In a very up-and-down year, June was a particularly erratic rollercoaster of a month.

July

I’m quite convinced that the answer to most questions can be found on the Camino, and I had unfinished business from the Easter holidays, so a mere two days after returning from Austria I was back on a plane and bound for Bilbao once again. You’ve probably followed me on that particular journey already, but if you haven’t, you can always start again right here. Three weeks and nearly five hundred kilometres later, I arrived at the end of the world and stared across the Atlantic to America. Someday soon, I’ll take my adventures across that ocean. But not yet.

August

August was a quiet month. August always is. I popped up to London a couple of times and saw some old friends, which was much needed – I have distanced myself from a lot of old acquaintances after the way they upbraided me over the Gospel Choir fiasco, and it took quite a bit of courage to resurface, even though it’s been some two years since. The social current flows fast in the capital city. London remains a charming place to visit, but I’m sure glad I don’t live up there. I’m a lot better at dealing with cities than I used to be, but I’m definitely a country boy at heart.

September

Term started late this year, meaning August was already over by the time the students returned. It wasn’t a scorcher like last summer, but the warm weather stayed with us for quite some time. A new wave of weekend activities and a house camera kept me busy at weekends, and I finally managed to host a party in the flat over the first Exeat of the year, using the old projector to beam karaoke onto one of my walls. I also got back into drawing, completing a giant poster for one of the walls.

October

Storms Agnes and Babet tore across the British Isles and put an abrupt end to the long summer days. Sussex remained relatively stable while the roads of the Lincolnshire Wolds turned into rivers. I spent the October half term with my parents and even made it to Manchester to see my brother’s first ever publicly exhibited artwork on the first floor of a fancy riverside hotel. I also wrote a pantomime for my school, but internal politics made it impossible to get off the ground. At least I have the backbone of a script that I can carry over to whichever school I head to next.

November

We lost the first round of House Music, but only by a single point – so there’s hope for my boys yet. More importantly, I bit the bullet and started learning to drive. Finding the time to schedule in two hours of driving during a working week is ridiculous – and probably the biggest reason I’ve put it off for so many years – but, steadily, I’m starting to get the hang of it. Or rather, I was, until a combination of sickness and cover lessons made it impossible to schedule in the last two lessons of term. Here’s hoping I can pick up where I left off in the new year.

December

December hurtled around at the speed it always does, though this year the last stretch did seem longer than usual. I managed to strong-arm Riu Riu Chiu back into the Carol Service at last, which the kids seemed to love, and helped to draw up the motion for the Students vs. Alumni debate, though I was not especially fond of the heavy economical slant in which it dragged the proceedings. My brother spent Christmas with his partner, so it was just my mother and father and I this year. Midnight Mass was bizarre – half an hour of forced carols before the Mass itself began at midnight (rather than the usual 11.45pm start) – but, traditions must be maintained. I blew the dust off Duolingo and got back into learning Italian after more than a year’s hiatus, though I daresay I’ve picked up a little in that time from my students.

This time tomorrow I’ll be in Madrid. Since leaving university I’ve made a point of seeing in the New Year somewhere new, but this year, for the first time since we met, I can finally celebrate it with my Spanish family, so I’m headed for the pueblo to see in 2024. I haven’t seen some of my cousins since my youngest counsin’s first communion back in 2019, so it’s a reunion that’s been a long time coming. Here’s to a good one, folks. BB x

Summer Ramble on a Ha-Ha

July 14, 2022July 14, 2022 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Bastille Day. The temperatures hit 26 degrees Celsius this afternoon. The BBC Weather app is predicting a high of 34 on Tuesday. The folks on the radio are starting to use the words ‘ration’ and ‘hosepipe ban’. I sat outside on the south-facing ha-ha and stared out across the Weald towards the South Downs for about an hour. I brought a few books to read – four more than I actually needed, as is my habit – and spent about ten minutes “reading” the mega-drawing, reliving the memories recorded on that gargantuan scroll.

I saw a monk in the quiet garden sitting in silent contemplation and reminded myself how lucky I am to live and work where I do. Isolation does no wonders for the human condition, but there’s a reason enlightenment is rarely sought in the cities. Sometimes the key to more positive thinking is just to get outside for an hour or two, even if there is no destination in mind. I certainly feel a lot happier for it.

Over the forest to the south, I saw a pair of hobbies displaying. I haven’t seen such a thing in a long, long time. I’d forgotten what masters of the air they are. Little wonder they’re among the few predators capable of catching a swallow on the swing. They cut through the air like feathered lightning, making the hovering kestrel nearby look like one of Da Vinci’s clumsy flying machines by comparison.

A few minutes later, the white buzzard flapped into view. It wasn’t around for more than half a minute, before two crows sent it back the way it had come, back into the wooded dark of the Weald. A hat-trick of British birds of prey in as little as five minutes. Reminded me of a sunny June afternoon when I was a kid, when to my disbelief I clocked no fewer than six raptor species circling above the house at once: kestrel, buzzard, sparrowhawk, hobby, two red kites and a peregrine. To this day I have no idea how they all came to be in the same place at the same time. In Gibraltar, maybe, but not in Kent.

The race for Boris’ replacement is picking up momentum. My parents were quick to bat aside my guess that Sunak would take the throne, but the odds seem to be in his favour at the moment. I’m no political pundit, but I feel it’s worth recording these things from time to time. Since reading Philipp Blom’s Nature’s Mutiny last year (a collection of anecdotes documenting the Little Ice Age), I’m all the more convinced it’s important that those of us who spend our free moments writing make a point of logging the everyday. Who knows what it might tell future generations about the way we lived?

I’m getting itchy feet again. I think I might go on just the one *little* adventure before the summer is over, and I’m thinking it ought to be France – not least of all because of the relative ease of getting there by boat. It sounds like nothing less than chaos surrounding airlines at the moment, which are struggling to meet the logjam of two years’ worth of cancelled summer holidays when they haven’t yet recovered from the post-COVID staff shortages. I don’t plan on going far, but I have always wanted to see the Bayeux Tapestry, and one of the better things to come out of 2021/22 has been a rediscovery of my love for French, thanks to an especially heartwarming Year 7 class I had the pleasure to teach this year. I confess I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about going back to teaching two languages at the start of the year (after my experience teaching lower set Year 9 in my PGCE year), but these kids really turned it all around. So… Normandy? I’d better do some research, but… I’ve got to say, the opportunity to spend even a couple of days in a place of such historical importance… It’s dangerously tempting! BB x

Sh!tsh@w: A Recovery Plan for a Rough Year

June 26, 2022June 26, 2022 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Sunday 26th June, 12:47pm.
The Flat.

We’ve made it. Blimey, but I thought that year would never end. School years come and go in cycles, and I consider myself an extremely patient man, but this one has been particularly trying. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve come close to questioning my career on more than one occasion, and every time I’ve been pulled back up to the light by the trinity: the kids, the music and the torchlight of my ancestors. I’ve never been overly fond of the yawning hole in the year that is the summer holidays – I have a desperate need to be busy that two months puts a serious strain upon – but I did breathe an almighty sigh of relief when the clock struck twelve on Friday night. It’s just been one of those years.

When I look back, I can’t help but label my third year as a teacher as the year when everything went wrong. The year when all my endeavours came to ruin. Consequently, it’s also the year when hope has been even more important than ever – and hope, shapeless and mysterious, has ever been my polestar.

This year my Gospel Choir was disbanded, cancelled on the grounds that I, as a white man, was not the appropriate choice to run such a group. I conceded without a fight. It hurt, it hurt right down to the core of my soul to be told so openly that my efforts – and even my taste in music – were so wholly inappropriate. It wasn’t an attack on me by any standards, but my word, did I take the issue home! My head was spinning for weeks and I took some time out in Spain with my cousins to heal. What had happened flew in the face of everything I’d been taught by my various Gospel mentors over the years, and everybody I spoke to seemed baffled. For my career’s sake I briefly considered abandoning my attempts to dabble in music absolutely, and would have gone ahead were it not for the discovery that my great-grandparents were both musicians. I cannot let them down. It wouldn’t be right. I also owe it to the kids under my aegis to find a way, so that the last three years of hard work will not be in vain.

Rising from the ashes, my new a cappella group has been fun, and I hope the kids have enjoyed it, even if we’ve never been concert ready when the time came. The simple truth is that Gospel music, as well as being eye-opening and soul-enriching, is easy to learn. It’s meant to be, because it was never written with trained musicians in mind. By contrast, a cappella arrangements are impressive when done right, but hard to pull off, even when you have a group of semi-professionals. It pains me that my efforts to instil a genuine love of performing have yet to bear fruit with my current cohort, but the kids rock up each week with big smiles and they enjoy the music, and I guess that’s good enough for now.

December hit me with a one-two punch that nearly knocked me out cold. I wandered out of a five-year relationship and within twenty-four hours I had a head-cold that left me half-deaf – and later, more excruciatingly, under the maddening influence of diplacusis dysharmonica. The timing could hardly have been worse: first the Gospel fiasco left me questioning almost all my choices in music, and then the mother of all earaches made it physically impossible to listen to any kind of music whatsoever for all of two months. It felt like the world was conspiring to bring me down.

I wasn’t especially keen to admit it, but I’ve been in orbit ever since. I tried a couple of times to kindle the sparks of a relationship with somebody new, but my attempts sputtered and died like the fireworks in the rain, and I confess I’ve probably been too proud to bend the knee in full to the world of online dating purely on principle. So I’ve been a family man to my kids more than ever this year, giving them as much of my time as I can muster of an evening and finding opportunities to praise and guide wherever I can. They give me hope and I try to do the same for them. I’m convinced teaching is the best job in the world.

I’ve tried to be more supportive of my brother this year. He hasn’t chosen the easiest path, and there are few people in the world I look up to more. I’ve also kept up with my youngest cousin through our English classes every week, or at least the weeks where he doesn’t have an exam to revise for. Family means a lot to me, squaring well with my dreams of being the best dad ever someday, which is partly why being out of a relationship has been so disorienting. At least if there’s been one success this year, it’s been a closer connection to my kin. Maybe rediscovering the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness earlier in the year helped.

Finally, I know I can be a better teacher. I’ve done well by my kids this year, but I can improve. I know I can. I think all the knocks I took this year left me on one knee, still standing though not as strong as before. I reckon it’s about time I got up on two feet again.

So it’s time to plan ahead and set things in order. Two months of summer stretch ahead, and I’ve got plenty of things to do, starting today.

I’m going to get fit.
Fitness has never really interested me, but a healthier body can only prop up a healthier state of mind.

I’m going to cook for myself again.
I’ve taken advantage of being fed at school for too long. I used to love cooking when I lived for myself. It’s time to rediscover that joy.

I’m going to learn to drive. Finally.
It’s a milestone that I can’t ignore anymore, and I’m finally at the stage in my life where absolute freedom of mobility is starting to interest me. Even if I don’t pass my test this year, I need to make a start. Starting is always the hardest part.

I’m going to read more. And I mean read, not just say it and buy more books.
I’ve set myself a target of a chapter a day, whatever the book, in addition to at least one article.

I’m going to plan ahead.
I want my teaching to get better and better, so I’m going to dedicate some serious time to planning some fantastic teaching methods this summer.

I’m going to write again. Not just on here, but the book.
My journals have been with me to almost every lesson and on every school outing, but I’ve made little progress on the novel since the real teaching life began. And that’s criminal.

Last but not least, I’m going to get out and see the world.
Not traveling – I can’t justify having more than one holiday per year anymore, and I had my holiday at Easter. But I need to widen my circle of trust. I need to allow myself to meet others, and if I’m guarded about making that connection online, the only way to do it is to get out and about.

I’m no fan of coming up with action plans at work, but my future is counting on me to make this choice now. Melodrama aside, I could do with some change in my life. And that change starts today! BB x

A Taste of Adventure

March 28, 2022March 28, 2022 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

One of the very best things about my job is my role as the middle school Gifted and Talented Co-Ordinator. As one of the few not on the G&T list in my grammar school days you might jump to the conclusion that there’s a chip on my shoulder there, but that’s not quite right. A more likely excuse is that in my sixth form days I was involved with my school’s Arts and Humanities Society, a pre-university lecture/seminar group run by my history teachers, and it was so pivotal in my development as an academic that I have spent the last few years wanting to set up a society of my own here. The simple fact of the matter is that, four years into my teaching career, I’ve found the niche that allows me to do what I’ve always wanted to do: explore learning for its own sake.

So far, what that has entailed is two after school lectures, one every half term, on subjects that my students might otherwise not encounter in the classroom. I got the ball rolling last term with a talk on the Aztec, where we went on a whirlwind tour of the history of the Mexica, the geography of Mexico and the fierce deities of the Aztec pantheon – as well as the tale of Cortes, la Malinche and the fall of Tenochtitlan. Since I’d much rather the sessions were seminars rather than dialogues, I make a real point of taking questions and posing some of my own as I go so that these talks are more of a journey together than a lesson with me at the front. In the best of all possible worlds – the world I’m trying to create in a Monday afternoon classroom – I’d like to come out of the hour knowing that I haven’t added to their knowledge so much as given them new avenues to explore. That’s why I conclude each session by asking my students what they’d be interested in learning about next time. Today, there were a lot of requests for Chinese history: the Tang Dynasty, the Civil War and the Opium Wars. Perhaps that’s because we took a ride with Zheng He and his treasure fleet this afternoon.

Today’s talk was on Explorers, after one of my students requested a lecture on adventurers like Cook and Lewis & Clark. It was so much fun to research, not least of all because I have been lucky enough to do no small amount of exploring myself in my twenty-eight years on this Earth. I started off with the graphic below and, after we’d agreed Mr Young really doesn’t suit a beard, I picked my students’ brains about the locations in each one. Using the clues of this man’s local dress, and the mountain gorilla, and the facade of the rose city, and the scallop shell, they smashed every single one. Proud teacher moment.

I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing my kids go from strength to strength in the language classroom. But I’d call myself a seeker of knowledge for its own sake long before I call myself a linguist, and this is where somebody like me is in his element. Seeing the electric enthusiasm of my students sparkling like Saint Elmo’s fire from their outstretched fingers as they vie to share their collected wisdom with their peers, answering questions I haven’t yet posed four slides in advance because they read this book here or their parents showed them that thing there… There’s few things like it. It’s one of those “this is why I teach” moments, and the best thing about it is that you’re not having to do an awful lot of teaching. The knowledge is there. All you have to do is open a few doors.

This afternoon, over the space of an hour, we traveled the world. We sailed around China, Africa and the Indian ocean with Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and Zheng He. We crossed the Atlantic with Leif Eriksson and the Basques and wondered what took Christopher Columbus so long. We learned to navigate by the stars and explored the constellations. We met mild-mannered mountain men, meddling missionaries and bloodthirsty bandeirantes. We searched for Amelia Earhart’s final resting place, climbed the Matterhorn (and fell down the other side) and, saving the best until last, we sat down and had a difficult conversation with that most impressive of adventurers, and one of the greatest linguists (or even, in the opinion of this author, Britons) of all time: Sir Richard Francis Burton. Somehow I managed to cram it all into the space of an hour.

Well. Almost. We ran overtime by about five minutes, but not a single one of my kids reached for their phone, or started to pack up and leave. And that may well have to do with the fact that I chose to end the talk with the personal story of a friend of mine who gives us all a reason to believe in hope again: Luke Grenfell-Shaw, triathlete, fellow Arabist and CanLiver, and champion of the Bristol2Beijing tandem ride across the world. The best thing about that? Once again, I wasn’t even adding to their knowledge. Two of my students lit up at the image alone. They knew this man. They had heard of him.

I can’t tell his story. I won’t. Read about him for yourself – there are few men in this world like Luke. And though I poured my heart and soul into this evening’s talk, I’d like to think that it will be Luke’s story that my kids take home tonight. The world is vast, and explorers and adventurers have already been over so much of it and documented everything. But that doesn’t mean the age of adventure is over. People like Luke are living proof that adventure lies within, in our hearts and in what we choose to do with the world around us.

Godspeed, Luke. We’re rooting for you here.

https://www.bristol2beijing.org/

In the meantime, I’d better find myself an expert on Chinese history! BB x

“…So I Became a Teacher”

October 13, 2019October 13, 2019 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Ten years ago, British comedians Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong ran a cracking comedy show on the BBC. The show has always been one of my standout favourites in British comedy, delivering some truly brilliant sketches including Perfectly Innocent, Kill Them, The Embarrassed Prime Minister and the Polish Plumbers, to name just a few. One running gag that hits close to home but still makes me chuckle is the comedy duo’s Be A Teacher ads, lampooning the common reasons why people “fall into” teaching:

“Failed in the real world? Then why not be a teacher?”
“Quite bright, but lazy? Need a safety net? Be a teacher.”
“Good enough to get a degree but not good enough to get a job? Be a teacher.”
“If your ambitions haven’t quite come off, remember: there’s always teaching.”

It’s a little tragic that one of the most important and time-honoured professions in human history often seems to fall into the category of “one of those jobs you do when you’ve tried all other avenues”. Conversations at school and university often went one of two ways whenever teaching came up: either “I just want to do something more worthwhile with my degree, you know?” or “God, I hate kids. I could never do that”. They’re hardly groundless as arguments go. Who in their right mind would want to get back into the classroom almost as soon as they’d left it? There’s surely something intrinsically sadistic about that kind of decision, and that’s before we even get onto the nitty-gritty of marking, differentiation and pupil management. And as for the hating the kids part… well, they say never work with children or animals – but maybe that’s just because you can’t ever truly predict or control either of them. And it is so very human to want to be able to do just that.

For me, at least, it has never been a question of “lapsing” into the education business. It is, like so many things, a family affair. Both of my parents were teachers. My Spanish great-grandmother was a teacher, and she married a teacher. I’m just continuing with the job. I might have had my wobbles along the way, but I don’t think I’ve ever really doubted that I’d be a teacher someday. Sure, that’s easy to say on a Saturday night, when most of the kids are out and boarding duties have been light, but it really is one of those professions that teaches you all the time, usually in ways you don’t expect.

I’m writing tonight because these last two weeks have been tough. The reality of teaching foreign languages to the English – ever the most stubborn of peoples when it comes to learning foreign languages – is beginning to bite. Not a week goes by when I don’t hear the line “Sir, why do I have to learn a language? Why can’t I just speak English?”, or variations thereof. The Modern Languages and Cultures graduate in me would love to give some solid answers, but these are fourteen-year old kids, for pity’s sake. A university-level argument on the merits of multilingualism pales in comparison to the fact that they have to revise twenty words they may very well never have to use in their lives – besides the end-of-year exam, of course.

So what use is the degree, then? What was the point in spending £9000 a year on the study of French, Spanish and Arabic history and literature if I am to spend the next four years teaching kids how to count up to thirty-one or discuss their plans for the weekend? These are questions I have been asking myself a lot these past two weeks. I came back to England with a mission, to do my part in a desperate campaign to save this country from collapsing into ignorant isolationism, knowing full-well what it would mean. And yes, whilst working in a boarding school does allow me to continue to channel my passion for music – easily the best part of the job by a country mile – the teaching side of it is hardly as scholarly as I’d have liked, sometimes.

At times like these, I do miss university. I miss staying up late with my housemates discussing political or social matters, I miss the excitement of sharing in the knowledge of others, and of sharing your own in turn, and I miss the challenge of stretching my brain. God, I miss that. I’ve been reading like a fiend these last few weeks out of a mad desire to tackle something more intangible than the days of the week. I ordered a book of ancient Spanish poetry off eBay the other day and pored over it during prep one night, something I admittedly would never have done at university. But then, my brain was stimulated in other ways then.

So what’s keeping me here? Why do I go on teaching?

Because I believe it’s nothing more and nothing less than one of the most important jobs in the world. For as long as there have been humans, there has been teaching, and even before then, there was teaching and learning after a kind. In the words of a colleague of mine, “I don’t care how much more you earn in the office, your job could disappear from the face of the earth overnight and nobody would notice. Not so with teaching”. You might see it as giving up on your own hopes and dreams to encourage others to pursue theirs, or that might have been your ambition all along. Teaching is the job that keeps on giving – both in reward and in workload, yes, but the rewards make up for it. I am a far braver, far more tolerant individual thanks to teaching. You don’t go into teaching to share your love with just the kids who love the subject back. That’s neither practical nor necessary. You do it just as much for the kids who don’t listen as for those who do. Teaching the subject you love to children with no love for it whatsoever will sap your zeal, strangle it if it can, but it does encourage you to see things from a different perspective. And, frankly, any job that does that on a regular basis is a job worth pursuing, if the ultimate goal of human existence is to understand each other – which is what I have always supposed it to be.

I still can’t fault Armstrong and Miller, simply because that sketch is bloody hilarious. But if you’re enthusiastic, passionate about your field, patient and have a drive to listen and learn, I cannot encourage you enough: be a teacher. Money might make the world go round, but somebody has to encourage and inspire the next generation (besides, the last thing the world needs is more businessmen). So go on. Be a teacher. BB x

Last Straw

March 23, 2018 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Easter has arrived in Tierra de Barros. True to form, as it does every year, the glorious sunshine lasted only as long as the last week of term: now that the holidays are here, the clouds have returned. I remember reading once that it rains more on weekends than weekdays because of something to do with carbon emissions. I never did go down the rabbit hole, so to speak, but given the current state of affairs, it seems plausible.

I’ve made the decision to cancel all of my private classes as of this evening. It’s been on a slow-burner for the best part of a term (I might have considered it more carefully back in first term, were it not such a lucrative source of income). It’s going to be a financial dent, but it’s for the best. Had things panned out differently, I wouldn’t be so keen, but it’s beginning to take its toll on both me and my flatmate.

Making the decision to come to Villafranca de los Barros for a second time was, in part, a financial move, as I knew I had at least two potential second jobs waiting for me here and a healthy spread of contacts. Life, however, is seldom predictable, and as it turned out, I lost out on all three counts: my old job in a local concertado turned out to be in the hands of a local teacher this year; the spare auxiliar post at the prestigious private school across the road was streamlined into the wider auxiliar programme, cutting that option off as well; and, rather than granting me a healthy group of older students, my contacts this year inundated me with requests for classes for their under-10’s. And, like the fool I was, and without the financial security of the two second jobs I’d been holding out for, I took up the latter without thinking.

Since October, I’ve spent an hour every night from Monday to Friday dealing with raucous three-year olds, who have little to no interest in history, literature or current events, and would much prefer to yank the curtain pulls until they snap, or mangle my pencils, chalk my floor and otherwise wreak havoc in my flat. Were the flat mine I might be able to laugh it off, but it’s not, and the circle cannot hold. I moved most of the breakable materials into the storeroom within a couple of weeks, after the inquisitive little monsters found it in them to touch everything in sight, up to and including my flatmate’s school things, which despite my warnings he continued to leave in the line of fire on his return from work every day. And now, on the last day, the line has snapped: we found his satchel this morning with a broken strap.

It’s a shame that this had to come up on the last day, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything different. In his shoes, I’d have simply shrugged and gone to work with a broken satchel, taking it as part of the fruits of life, but then, it takes an awful lot to provoke me. Complaining and provoking slows life down and sullies the waters so, and I don’t hold by it; as long as you’re still breathing at the end of the day, there’s really no use crying over spilt milk. But he’s an Andalusian, and the six o’clock noise – bang in the middle of his siesta time – was going to drive him to the brink sooner or later. And I have myself to think of, too; my novel has ground to a slow trudge since taking on these lessons. Back in October, I was writing a chapter and a half a week. Since then, I’ve penned one a month. And isn’t that what this year was all about – to be here in Spain and to have the time to write? Next year I won’t have that luxury, mark my words.

So that’s that. The buck stops here.

It’s not all doom and gloom. The clouds are still here, and they say there’s more rain on the way, but the worst of the storm is over. The birds seem to know it, too: I’ve been lucky enough to see quite a lot of migration from the comfort of my own flat in the post-private lesson lull this week. On Monday I saw seven black kites heading in a straight line right over the flat, as though following the camino de plata in their northward journey. On the bus back from touring with the school play in Elvas on Tuesday, I saw several swifts racing overhead. And yesterday, circling high on the thermals, an enormous phalanx of storks filled the sky before reaching the perfect height and soaring on to the north on outstretched wings.

One year, I’d love to be in Gibraltar when they come. I hear it’s quite the thing to see. BB x

T-12

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The Heavens have given us a temporary respite. The spring rains that began a month ago today are still falling hard, and set to fall harder still over the next week or two, but today the clouds are colourless and clear. I no longer live in a state of quasi-permanence beside the brasero and soon I’ll be able to put my jumpers back in the wardrobe once again. Spring has definitely arrived here: my morning walk to school is a symphony of song from the park, albeit a symphony where every part seems to think they hold the solo, from the strings of the serins and the woodwind of the blackbirds to the kestrel fanfare, stork drumrolls and the uncompromising neither-here-nor-there noise of the starlings. It puts a smile on my face every morning.

I’m conscious, as I often am at this time of year, of my time running out. Where the year seemed to stretch on into the middle distance back in cold, gloomy February, March holds up a mirror as if to remind me how much the cold warps one’s perspective. As it stands, I only have twelve weeks remaining, of which nine and a half are working weeks and only four bring as-of-yet unscheduled weekends. In my desire to be busy once again I’ve burdened myself up with responsibilities that eat into my timetable like caterpillars: a private lesson in Almendralejo, choir rehearsals in Zafra and play rehearsals at 8.15am on a Thursday morning. Combined with commuting time, and those inevitable private lessons that are at the incredibly inconvenient time of six o’clock in the afternoon, my time is slipping through my fingers and the year will be over before I know it. And with a summer job and a proper job at the end of it waiting for me back in England, that’s more than a little disheartening. Something’s got to give.

Reading is keeping me afloat. I finished She the other day and I’m onto another classic, Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. After the insightful but heavy high-Victorian ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ of Haggard’s dialogue, it’s a breath of fresh air to hear people speak in an altogether more human register some twelve years prior. Once again, I’m reminded that, if it weren’t for my all-consuming love for Iberia, I would have followed my grades at gone for a degree in English Literature. I might not have enjoyed reading as much at the time, but I’m certainly making up for lost time here and now, even if that does entail reading two Haggard books per month. Still, I don’t read Haggard for the dialogue: the old adventurer might be unable to tear himself from his medieval register, but there is wisdom scattered in his words like pearls on a stormy beach, and I love mining his books for quotes in such a fashion. I just need to modernise my reading tastes so my own writing doesn’t become quite as jaded. Hardy might be a step backwards in time, but he’s more than a step forwards in modernism. BB x

Walk Before You Run

December 19, 2017December 19, 2017 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Today was just one of those days when I got to the last five minutes of my last class of the day and found myself disappointed it was already over. It’s the last week of term, and whereas in England that would mean an entire week (or two) of ‘Sir, can we have a fun lesson?’ and other such pleas, there’s none of that here. It’s not that the kids aren’t vocal – they’ve been clamouring for their exam marks for weeks – it’s just that they’re less whiny. Maybe that’s a good thing that comes out of the absence of Christmas fever.

We’ve been playing Jeopardy today. I forgot how long the game can take, leaving it – as usual – to the last twenty-five minutes of the lesson. ESL Jeopardy can take as long as forty minutes, if not an hour, if the questions are stimulating enough. And it is immensely entertaining to see them show off both what they’ve learned and what they know. Though I’ve yet to have a class crack the $500 Cities question (namely: Game of Thrones’ House Lannister is based on the English House of Lancaster. House Stark is based on what northern English city?). It’s a toughie, but there’s an imaginary $500 riding on it. And it’s fun to be the game-master for a week… or even a year.

Reinette did me proud on her first spin. I wish I could say the same about me! Suffice to say that after two months of reading and writing (and let’s not even count the university years), I was probably getting ahead of myself to expect to do 45km over rough terrain on my first attempt. Not for want of trying, though! I had three alarms set within ten minutes of each other around six thirty in the morning, wolfed down a breakfast, geared up and rode out into the frozen morning.

I got as far as Ribera del Fresno, the next town, in time to watch the rising sun shine golden upon the mist. It’s easy to think that we’re in a total flatzone here in Tierra de Barros, but once you’re out in the sticks on a bike, you learn very quickly that looks are deceiving: the terrain is as marbled in elevation as it is in colour. There and back again was a good 21km, which isn’t a bad first attempt for a guy who hasn’t done any decent exercise in the best part of a year or two (give or take the odd run).

The Lycra is real, though. I think I encountered five or six other cyclists that morning, and only one wasn’t clad from head to foot in skin-tight branding. And he happened to be an old-timer in grubby blue overalls and a thick campo coat. I must have looked a little odd, riding off into the countryside in a worn Valecuatro jacket and denims. I suppose I was committing a major cycling faux-pas. Ever keen to fit in, I guess I’ll have to invest in one of those nightmarish sports-suits at some point in the near future. When I’m good enough at cycling to justify the expense, that is.

It’s been a frosty last couple of weeks. Not frost as I know it back in England – the crystalline, sparkling frost that brings out the kettles and car-scrapers – but a hard, dry frost that you only find out in the shadows of the countryside.

I stopped outside of Ribera to take a breather. I’ve become less dependent on my camera of late to record my memories, and also of my journal. I’m trying to train my memory instead. It’s such an easy thing to lose, especially when everything is at the touch of a button these days. So let me show you what I saw. Mist in the valley. A tatty sign with the word veneno daubed in big red letters. A couple of plastic bottles frozen stiff above the ground, and the white lid of a chemical tub, half filled with ice. Ravens calling somewhere far away. A kite on the wind. Cars racing down the road. A campesino stood by his van, looking out across the valley with thoughts probably not too dissimilar to my own.

This is why I cycle. Not to get fit. Not to get from A to B. It’s to get out there and see the little things. And long may it be that way. BB x

Losing All Control

December 16, 2017December 17, 2017 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Term’s winding up here. Four work days remain, and I’m umming and ahhing about taking on another lucrative private class offer. An extra 24€ per week wouldn’t go amiss, certainly, but do I really want to be taking on yet another three-year old? Four years of university education and I’m spending three hours per week making kids watch Nursery Rhymes. It’s admirable that so many parents want to ‘initiate’ their kids into English conversation, but conversation is hardly the right word. Where are the older kids? Years of swotting up on interesting facts and stories is lost on three-year olds who are busy learning their own mother tongue. The brain might not be a muscle in the strictest sense of the word, but it needs a workout, and I don’t know whether I can justify giving myself over to more hours of daddy day-care, even if it is for an extra hundred euros per month. I have a book to write.

The Gideons’ efforts at the school gates fell on deaf ears

I spent about forty minutes going through our latest Vodafone bill with Fran last night, as it looked to be anomalous. It turns out they included a month’s adelantado, which they could have spelled out. It certainly wasn’t the clearest bill I’ve ever seen, with costs added and discounted all over the place. Our electricity bill was cause for a breath of relief, so I can’t complain, especially when we saw just how little of Fran’s salary came through after taxes… Our landlord told him to plan ahead ‘pá que no te desmadres’. In a little over thirteen years of learning Spanish, I have to say, I’ve yet to encounter a word quite as fantastic as desmadrarse, meaning to lose control. To de-parent oneself… Fantastic language, Spanish. Now all it needs is a word that describes the certain kind of location-specific road rage that one finds in mobile phone shops the world over.

On the subject of losing all control… I’ve got wheels (they’re multiplying)! And it doesn’t even need that much Grease… It took long enough, but after various setbacks, I finally have a functional mountain bike at my disposal. Spain being the small world it is, the girl from whom I bought the thing turned out to be none other than one of my star students from my 4º class two years back. It needed a few necessary amenities, but after a (rather expensive) wave of the magic wand at Carrefour, I’m all tacked up and ready to take her for a spin.

And yes, it’s a she. I’ve christened her Reinette, though I couldn’t say why. Reinette has always seemed like a good name for a bike in my mind. Maybe I once saw a Reiner as a kid and got confused. Regardless, Reinette she is. I’m going to wake up bright and early tomorrow and take her for her first adventure. The destination: Hornachos. It’s been so very long since I had a bike of my own, and it felt absolutely exhilarating to be back in the saddle when I took her for a test run last week.