Experiences of an Expat: Education Full Circle

Writer’s note:The life of an ex-pat can vary from person to person. Many ex-pats hunker down in little ex-pat communities, surrounded by specialty stores that sell all their favorite goods and live next to numerous people who share their language, customs and culture. My question: what is the fun in that? This Travelations series is dedicated to my desire to occasionally be confused for a local.

I’ve been a private tutor for several years and I also had the privilege of working as a bilingual preschool and primary school Spanish teacher for one year while I was living in the US. I can honestly say that no matter how poorly I was paid, there were always days that I would leave work feeling so incredibly lucky to have had the chance to see my hard work truly affect a student in a positive way.

I have several jobs here in Buenos Aires, and education is still a huge part of my daily life. I work as an Au Pair for an amazing family with 3 children, ages 10, 13 and 15. Clearly, they are much too old for a nanny so I serve mainly as their teacher and English speaking friend. As is always the case with teaching, there are days when these kids would do anything to avoid doing their homework or supplemental English workbooks and those days are always a difficult test on my patience. However, I feel such a special sense of pride when these children, who have come to feel a lot like my younger siblings, achieve something great such as an excellent grade on a test or completing a supplemental workbook.

Of course, good grades and physical evidence of progress are always wonderful, but I find my happiest moments are those when I see my other influences on their lives and their influences on mine.

A perfect example of this phenomenon happened just this past week. I accompanied the youngest, Ana and her best friend, Noel to the Buenos Aires Rowing Club. This visit was not about rowing, this was just a little play time with a couple of 10 year olds. As I helped Ana and Noel unload the car, I was handed a pair of roller blades and told they were for me. I stared at the skates and gave them a sad response in Spanish, explaining that I never learned how to roller blade. They shrugged and asked “Querés tratar?” (Want to try?). I smiled and answered with a definitive “Sí”.

I cannot tell you how humbling it is to have a 10 year old spin, pull off an impressive jump and then skate over to you and offer to hold your hand as you stumble to a standing position with wobbly knees. As I awkwardly half-glided, half-tripped my way to a smooth surface, I held tight to little Noel’s hand and tried to not make eye contact with the athletes scattered all over the club. Once I made it to safe ground, I dropped Noel’s hand and started working on my balance. I quickly realized my balance had improved quite a bit since I last attempted roller blades, which might have been at the age of 9. Within a few minutes I was speeding around in circles. I was by no means without stumbles, but I didn’t fall once. As I glided with my arms out, showing the girls my awesome airplane move, I thought to myself, “Two 10 year old girls just taught me how to do something I have failed at so many times before. This is my job and I love my life”.

Still smiling from our roller blading adventures an hour later, Ana, Noel and I hopped back into the car with the two boys, Juan and José. Everyone was tired from their respective athletic endeavors and the car was quiet. However, a few minutes into the ride the song “Soul Sister” by Train came on the radio. I have spent a lot of time working with the kids on this song, helping them understand the pronunciation and meaning of the words and singing it together. Without any sort of prompt the entire car starting singing “heeey heeeeeeey heeeeeeeey”. I was thrilled to hear them recite the words together and notice their improved pronunciation. As I sang, “I don’t wanna miss a single thing you do” and heard my kids singing along with me I thought to myself, this is education full circle and I am so glad to be a part of it.