My Experience As An Auxiliar de Conversación in Madrid, Spain

What is an auxiliar de conversación?

An auxiliar de conversación is a language assistant at a public school in Spain. Most language assistants help with either English or French courses offered at a public school. Their duty is not to be a teacher, but to assist the teachers for those language courses. Since Spain has bilingual schools, some auxiliares de conversacion may assist with courses like Physical Education or History that are taught in English.

My name is Lindsay Atkinson, and I started as an auxiliar de conversación at a school in the Comunidad de Madrid in October 2021. I am writing this blog post to share my experience in this position. I am fascinated by the different education systems around the world, which is evident since I am also in Spain completing a Master’s program in Global Higher Education.

What type of schools can you be placed in?

As a language assistant, you will most likely be placed in a public school. You can be placed with any level of students, including infantil, primaria, secundaria, or bachillerato. 

When you apply for a position as an auxiliar de conversación, you apply through the Ministry of Education. On your application, you can include your preference of what region of Spain you would like to work in and what age group of students you would like to work with, but there is no guarantee that you will get your preferences. The ministry can place you in any of the 17 autonomous regions of Spain and with any age group of students. 

I did get placed in my preferred region of Madrid due to some special circumstances. In addition to working as an auxiliar de conversación, I am studying in a graduate program located in Alcala de Henares in the Comunidad de Madrid. So, I was placed at a public secondary school in a pueblo called Camarama de Esteruelas, which is just 30 minutes outside of Alcala de Henares. 

My school placement is CEIPSO Federico García Lorca, which has a primary and secondary school campus located within walking distance from each other. There is one other auxiliar de conversación at the secondary school where I work, but I have been able to get to know the five auxiliares de conversacion at the primary school.

What are your job duties?

Your job duties will differ greatly from teacher to teacher, but they do not include any grading of students’ work or being left alone with the students. Your job is to assist the teacher however they need you to. I have found that most of the teachers I work with view me as a resource for their students to practice speaking English with a native speaker. So, I mostly do speaking activities with the students and rarely do writing activities. But the preference is entirely up to the teachers that you work with. 

My job duties have included taking students out of class for one-on-one or group speaking activities as well as occasional activities with the entire class. I have made activities for a variety of curriculum units, including units on sports, jobs, travel, health, and crimes. I am also responsible for creating activities to introduce students to American holidays, like Thanksgiving, and holidays with different traditions in the United States, like Christmas, Hanukkah, and Valentine’s Day. Plus, my students in fourth year classes read a book each term in English and I read it with them and make summary activities. The books we have read thus far are The Giver and Paranoid Park. 

In all honesty, even with clear communication, there can be times when I do not know what the teachers I work with expect from me on certain days. So, just in case, I keep a series of digital activities on my Google Drive that can be altered to match different levels of ability. And, if all else fails, I have found that playing Pictionary using the students’ most recent unit vocabulary is always a good backup activity.

What is your schedule like?

Your schedule is completely up to your assigned placement school to create. As an auxiliar de conversación in Madrid, you are supposed to work 16 hours a week. Ideally, your schedule would thus be only 16 hours at the school but, depending on when English classes are offered, you may have some break times included. For instance, I have a one hour break on both Monday and Wednesday. So technically, I am at my school for 18 hours a week but I only work 16 of those hours in the classroom. 

Normally, you will only work your 16 assigned hours over the course of 4 days. So you will get either Mondays or Fridays off. I have Fridays off because I have courses for my graduate program on that day. So my schedule is 4 hours on Monday, 5 hours on Tuesday, 3 hours on Wednesday, and 4 hours on Thursday. 

My schedule includes working with 13 different classes. For 3 of those classes, I work with them twice a week. As an auxiliar de conversación in a secondary school, I work with students from age 12 to 16, and my schedule includes working with all levels of students in this age range. After the age of 16, students in Spain move from mandatory education to voluntary education. So they can either move onto a new level of school called Bachillerato or they can pursue other opportunities. 

What is it like interacting with Spanish students?

In my experience, interacting with Spanish students has been very culturally rewarding. One of the very first things I learned from the students during my time as an auxiliar de conversación is that my name (Lindsay) as pronounced in Spanish is very similar to lince, which means lynx. So, every time I introduce myself to a Spanish person, I am telling them that I am a lynx. 

It is also culturally rewarding in the other direction. I get to introduce my students to American customs and traditions. I try to foster a relationship with my students where they know that they can ask me any questions they have about Americans and I will answer them, which I have already found to be a great way to reduce stereotypes. 

As an auxiliar de conversación, I do have a different experience interacting with the students than their teachers do. I only interact with them a few times a week and I do not give the students any grades, so when they see me, they know that they will be doing an activity that is different than what they normally do with their teacher and there will be no grades attached. 

And, even with all of my activity planning, my general teaching philosophy is that I honestly do not care what the students want to talk about, as long as they are willing to talk in English. And, in doing so, I have been able to get to know the students better. For instance, I have a student who rarely speaks who actually talked to me about his culinary interests for almost ten minutes. And another shy student talked to me about self identity and expression through clothing for almost an entire class period. 

However, engaging with students does have its challenges. First off, the students are learning British English, which does differ from the American English that I speak. And sometimes, I can look like I do not know what I am talking about because of the differences in language usage and spelling between these two types of English. For instance, I often use an activity with the students called Lyrics Training. This is a website where you play a song and the lyrics are listed on the bottom of the screen with some missing words that you have to fill. Usually, I act as the typer and fill these missing words in after the students shout them out. But there have been multiple instances when I was trying to fill in a word but it just was not accepting my spelling of it and I had to use the cheat feature, which showed that it was the British spelling of the word and not the American spelling. 

You may also plan an activity and find out it is too difficult for the students to complete, and thus have to redesign the activity on the spot to adjust it to their level. Or you may have students that are difficult to engage with, and have to make note of what does engage them.

What is it like interacting with Spanish teachers?

The most important thing I have realized about working with Spanish teachers is that you have to have a conversation about expectations and planning as soon as possible. I did not initially have this conversation with them, and spent my first two weeks not really understanding what was expected from me by each teacher that I work with. I work with 5 different teachers over the course of my work week, and it turns out they all have very different expectations of what I should contribute. For instance, I work with one teacher that always expects me to run the entire lesson for the entire class on the days that I am there. Yet, I have another teacher who sometimes does not need me for a lesson and will let me leave to work on preparation for future speaking activities instead. 

As far as interacting with Spanish teachers outside of the classroom goes, your best hope is to be placed in the same teacher room as them. In Spain, a teacher room is a break room that certain teachers from certain departments are assigned to take their breaks in and keep their books and personal items in. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most out-of-the-classroom interaction takes place in these teacher rooms. However, all teachers have a break each day called Recreo which, at my school, lasts for 25 minutes. If you are lucky, the teachers at your school may be open to doing something together during this break. At my school, many of the teachers will go to a nearby cafe to have a drink during this break. Just like with any job, connecting with your coworkers is an important part of the position and another culturally enriching opportunity that you have as an auxiliar de conversación.

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