Thursday, March 28

When your teachers are rugby players: learning English in a marginal neighborhood of Valladolid


1.88 tall and 107 kilos. Kalo, a Fijian VRAC rugby player, places his hands on his head in imitation of a rabbit. No, he is not dancing the Meke, a traditional Fijian dance, nor is it a pre-match ritual: he is looking for one of the students who is also imitating a rabbit to play ‘rock paper scissors’. Kalo is one of the players who teaches English in Pajarillos, a Valladolid neighborhood where 40 nationalities live together.

The VRAC and El Salvador clubs go every two weeks to give support to the boys who want to attend English classes. The initiative began with the VRAC players two years ago, although this course the team from El Salvador has joined. Above all, foreign players and some Spaniards who have a good level of English go. Accompanied by Education students, the rugby players help children to get their ears used to different ways of speaking.

These language laboratories allow children to learn about other ways of life, cultures or traditions. “It is more to share than to impart,” says one of the Crealia El Salvador players, Trina Moir. She is also an English teacher at an academy and coordinates the regional women’s rugby and Division of Honor teams. “The most gratifying thing is that they come back to class, because if they are not really interested, they don’t attend”, confirms Moir, who remembers that now the boys are more punctual than when the laboratories began.

These boys (from 5th grade to 2nd ESO) go voluntarily in the afternoon to various workshops organized by the Pajarillos Educa association, which works on social cohesion and community participation. “Just by coming they already show a willingness to learn. If they want, they have it super easy; because if they don’t want to come, they don’t come and that’s it”, explains one of the three project coordinators, Álvaro Clemente.

The Primary Education students with a major in English at the University of Valladolid (UVa) take turns going to the Santiago López Social Center —the old school— to teach the kids twice a week, who spend an hour listening to people speak English , although Dariya —Moroccan Arabic— and Spanish are mixed among them. There are two groups: one primary and one secondary.

The students —made up mainly of Moroccan girls— say goodbye to books: the goal is for them to improve their oral expression and comprehension with future teachers and with foreign and Spanish rugby players who have English as their mother tongue or who are fluent in the language, since some foreign rugby players are New Zealanders and South Africans. How? Through linguistic immersion and games that involve physical movement so that the children are motivated and want to go to class. Each session is different, because this semester the teachers have been rotating. In the first months of the course, a group of university students carried out their internships at the center.

Matt Smith coordinates the participation of the players from El Salvador and highlights the great evolution he has seen on the course. He especially remembers the case of one of the girls, Soukaina, who when she arrived in Spain she did not speak Spanish or English, but she communicated in Moroccan or French. “I’ve been in Spain for five years and I’m still learning, if I could improve my Spanish like them her English…”, she says.

Kalo has been on the show since it started two years ago and stresses the importance of kids hearing accents other than British as well. “The mix of origins is very great and so they can go to any English-speaking country and understand them,” explains Matt Smith. The New Zealand player from El Salvador sometimes recognizes difficulties in understanding one of his teammates, even though his mother tongue is the same. Kalo, from the VRAC, remembers that last year they explained to them where they came from and things about their culture, which allows them to see “other ways of living”. “I remember that I told them that we cooked underground [el ‘lovo’ es un horno hecho en la tierra] and they freaked out,” he laughs.

The boys, who go to surrounding schools and institutes, were “nervous” when classes started two years ago, although they already have it well accepted and even the older ones rush the little ones to finish so they can start. “I like it a lot because we have fun and learn,” says Khadija, in fifth grade.



Carmen Fernández Aguilar is another of the rugby players who has attended the English laboratories. “Getting to know sports and independent women can serve to fight from the base against this type of inequalities, which still exist,” she says. Carolina Lobera, 17, considers it important that young people get involved because that way the children don’t see them as ‘older’ and they see them closer.

Some students, like Soukaina, are not completely fluent in Spanish or English and sometimes they need their classmates to translate a game for them. Precisely Soukaina is one of the ones who pays the most attention, although this is her first year in English classes. Other children, if they are having a good time, decide to extend English for an hour. Nora and Hind, high school students, have been since the project began and are happy with the English classes, even if they complain — between laughs — and tease the monitors.

Judith, Andrea and Ángela participate in one of the classes as teachers. They are clear that these classes are not only for the little ones: “In the Faculty they prepare you for an idyllic situation, in which the children are still and quiet, but then each situation is different: their ways of socializing or speaking are not the same and you have to adapt to it”, explains Judith. Next to her, Ángela points out that the children are gradually internalizing English, “even if they say no”. Moir stresses the importance of tailoring and personalizing sessions. “The kids see that you can learn in a fun and dynamic way, something that small groups allow,” he adds.

Adapt teaching methodology

“The idea is that university students are aware of the situation of vulnerability that exists and the different families that make up society,” explains one of the Education professors who leads the didactic branch of the program. In this way, future teachers learn to “adapt” to different learning styles so that all children “have the same opportunities.” Each month, the students address a topic so that the children learn vocabulary and improve their oral expression: the course ends in May with ecology, sustainability and birds, but they have talked about the world’s festivals, sports, inventions, arts, the universe…

In one of the classes that this journalist attends, a professor from the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy) is also present, who is a visiting professor at the UVa. Gianfranco Molfetta is also a teacher and has worked for more than a decade in schools with vulnerable children. “What is done here is even more important than school,” he says. The teacher highlights the importance of this type of initiative, and extols the role played by the University. “Students learn that everyone cannot be taught in the same way and they learn respect for all children,” Molfetta emphasizes.

Players who live in the most problematic area

The Language Laboratory is just one of the initiatives in which the Valladolid rugby teams participate: they also reinforce physical exercise and some even reside in homes managed by the City Council on October 29. “kirk [Tufuga] He lives there with his family and the experience has been very good. It is an opportunity for the players to feel part of the area in which they live”, explains the vice president of Club El Salvador, María Morán, who ensures that this type of project prevents the players from “losing the social perception of their sports environment and academic”. “The reception by the players has been quite good and even a little above expectations,” continues the president of the VRAC, Chema Valentín.

The English classes are integrated into the Arts and Educational Transformation Laboratories (LATE), which are leisure, sports, cultural, educational and social activities planned outside of school hours and are complemented by school support-reinforcement. Some of the most successful projects are the circus and cinema workshops, in which the integration of children prevails. “It’s complicated and it could end up being a ‘Moors against Gypsies’, as they say,” explains the project coordinator for the Pajarillos Educa Association, Mónica Salcedo.



“The idea was to get into the tumor of exclusion and create a transit of people different from what they are used to on October 29. But the space retracts a lot of paya people who live in the neighborhood, so we are thinking of using a more mixed system and working in other municipal spaces in the neighborhood. This is the answer given by Alberto Rodríguez, ‘Bertoni’, the director of the Colegio Cristóbal Colón in Valladolid —the most ghettoized of the city—and one of the souls of Pajarillos Educa.

Other labs and programs

With funding from the Junta de Castilla y León, an observatory has been created to identify good practices in the laboratory and see the practices that are carried out in other “’Pajarillos’ in Spain”, explains Salcedo. The first example that comes to Bertoni’s mind when talking about successes is that of Pajarillos Queda Deporte: teenagers are trained as soccer coaches so that they can then train younger children, who have to go to class to be able to go to training. In this way, the little ones go to class and the older ones receive training and become role models for the children.

Pajarillos Educa not only works with school-age children, it also carries out socio-labour insertion and social entrepreneurship projects, such as sewing workshops aimed at women without studies and in a situation of economic, work and family dependency.

Preadolescents, as such, hide behind sarcasm and irony, but they usually leave happier than those who enter the laboratories. Before starting the workshops, the children stand in a circle and hold an assembly in which they talk about how they are or discuss social issues. When entering the classroom they place an emoticon next to their name so that the monitors know how they feel: if they are sad, happy or neither fú nor fá. And at the end, a request that seems usual and that already has its own intonation: “the emoji before leaving class, please”.



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