Hard Times

     Nuestra profesora de ATAL (Aula Temporal de Adaptación Lingüística), Dª Margarita M. Mora, viene realizando estos días en diversos grupos una actividad, en apariencia bastante "loca" (si se me permite la expresión) pero con una finalidad magnífica: acercar un poco al alumnado ordinario las dificultades y el aislamiento que sufre un alumno que acude por primera vez a un centro, cuando se trata de un estudiante que no habla nuestra lengua en absoluto, situación más que frecuente en nuestro centro.

     You are a shy and vulnerable twelve-year-old boy or girl, new at school but that is not your biggest problem: sometimes, when someone talks to you, which unfortunately does not always happen, you cannot understand a word or a gesture, even a smile makes you doubt its actual meaning.

    This is a most common phenomenon is our school, lots of Ukranian, Romanian, Moroccan... arrive in our school straight from their origin countries and they crash into the language barrier. The ATAL (Temporary classroom for language adaptation) program is a great help, even though sometimes it is not enough since we need more hours and more teachers for this purpose. Anyway, by this program these foreign students get involved in the life of our school and learn Spanish very fast, faster than we could figure out beforehand.

     Ms Margarita M. Mora, ATAL teacher, has developed an activity which looks quite crazy as the jump from one chair onto another to bring that feeling of loneliness and confuson closer. After that, some of our former non-Spanish-speaking "foreigners" talked about their experiences with anecdotes and harder times to finally thank for all the support received during such difficult situations.