Wow, only a week left

I know teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, but I'll admit, I've got one! I finish school on Friday, June 1st and now that it's only ONE week away, it's starting to set in that I'm not gonna see these kids anymore after that :(

It's gonna be weird not seeing their smiling faces and not having little "Monkey Zaira" as everyone calls her, jump on me and latch onto my leg everytime I walk into the classroom.

On one hand, I'm gonna be really glad to be done, but on the other hand really sad. Even though overall, I haven't really enjoyed this year at school as much as I enjoyed last year, I like the bilingual classes better this year. 

Since there are 2 bilingual classes, 1st and 2nd grade, and 2 bilingual teachers, Valeria and Jose Luis, we combine the two classes for science and math. We've had a great time all year with these classes (3 hours a week) and the kids have learned a TON. Combining Valeria's and Jose Luis's different strengths has resulted in awesome results and these kids are seriously badasses at understanding English. I literally talk to them how I talk to a regular American kid. Granted they don't understand every word I'm saying, but they usually get the gist of what I'm saying. That's what I'm gonna miss.

Unfortunately as the economic crisis in Spain gets worse (it's REALLY bad by the way, for anyone who didn't know), I think that the bilingual program is gonna be one of the first things to go. Education has already been deemed one of the areas that's gonna receive heavy budget cuts, so I would not be at all surprised if the bilingual programs had dissolved in the next 2 years. 

It makes me sad to know that these kids are gonna lose a good majority of their English the moment their home room teacher isn't bilingual. It's such a shame because if they were to continue in the direction that they're headed now they would basically be bilingual by the time they got to high school.  

Butttt, what can ya do. Hopefully some of their parents will realize this and will enroll them in English classes somewhere else, because sadly to say, without the bilingual program, I have very little faith in the Spanish education system's teaching of foreign languages.