CTY Begins

I arrived on July 2nd, as required, at CTY Madrid where I will be working for the next three weeks in the capacity of an RA. Let me start by saying that this program is wraught with misrepresentation. When I first was given an offer by CTY, I spoke at great length with Katherine Kidd, the director of CTY about the role in Hong Kong. Katherine spoke extensively about how as long as I was prepared, I would be able to spend a lot of time during the day, while classes were going on for the students, exploring the city. After Hong Kong was cancelled and I was switched to Baltimore and then Madrid at the last moment, I continued speaking with her regarding the opportunities to explore Madrid during my free time should it be possible.
The administrative staff here however are not so keen on us leaving the campus, at all. ever. They run a tight ship here, the students can't do anything without an adult present - not even go to a bathroom, an adult has to be outside. I would understand if we were in an urban area, but we aren't. We are in a rural area surrounded by nothing, there is nowhere for them to go - nothing mischevious that could happen. We might as well be in New Jersey. Some of these students are 16 years old. I was traveling alone to the city at that age. They are going with quite a literal translation of complete supervision. It's a recipe for disaster. It's the classic question for college students, if you are to vigilant, then they find alternative less safe means of doing the same things you are trying to prevent. Students who are smart will figure out ways to do things they want, but with the tight supervision, they may put themselves at risk and sneak around. We should be taking a much more hands off approach. oOne learns when every moment of their life is planned, they are just sheep being herded from place to place.
So, the first bit of misrepresentation comes from the website:
"Welcome to CTY’s program in Madrid, Spain—a three-week residential summer program for academically talented high school students in grades 7 and above. Housed at the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, a beautiful, private university located on the outskirts of the city, CTY-Madrid combines the strength of CTY’s summer programs with the benefits of a studying and living in a historically rich and important European capital." - http://cty.jhu.edu/summer/spain/index.html
Already there is a bit of a discrepancy going on - "located on the outskirts of the city" and "studying and living in a historically rich and important european capital." We are on a bus route that comes very infrequently, and it's an hour bus ride to the metro station, plus more time to get from the farthest station into the city itself. This is not the outskirts of the city, it's the country, it is rural.
Second, the promise of opportunity to explore. Keep in mind that many of us paid additional funds out of pocket that will not be reimbursed for the plane ticket here. We wanted to be at CTY Madrid because we wanted to be in Madrid when not working with the students. As Katherine explained to me, it's a great opportunity for the students and the staff. Except, the staff has created a scenario in which the RA's are incapable of traveling into the city on a frequent basis. I have been discussing this at some length during the RA meetings, yet mine is pretty much the only voice to be heard on this matter. We all agree outside of the room that we were worked over, but no one else will say anything. It was drawn quite a bit of attention to myself in the course of these past few days, and I have had little success in changing things as I see reasonable. We are technically free from responsibility for the children directly between breakfast and late afternoon activities. However, they have placed a small task of eating lunch with the kids, not interacting otherwise in the exact middle, breaking a 9 hour exploring opportunity into two very small opportunities, and with the bus system, making it impossible to go off.
I have a sneaking sensation that the other RA's are frustrated at times with me because I am continuing to push this issue, and not cave in. I am Jewish, and I am a New Yorker, when I am told that I am to get something, I expect it to carry through - we are, after all, the generation known for having a sense of entitlement as so many of older generations have pointed out in various instances to myself and others of my generation (we are also the instant gratification generation, which I think is incredibly interesting). Today, one of the administrators accused me of coming to CTY just to explore Spain, that I don't care about the children, and never gave me a chance to let him know that isn't true. Rather, I chose to do CTY because I think it would be a great way to do something great for students, and I chose Spain because I think kids learn best in new places when all their senses are awakened. And I would also of course like to do some exploration.
We will see what happens with the proposed plan that would give us each a day off. Falls short of expectations, and limits our ability to explore together. In my opinion, the program doesn't respect these students at all. Rather, it treats them like babies. If you desire people to respond in an adult manner, you need to give them the chance to and treat them as adults which may include things such as giving them some responsibility. This program doesn't seem to further them in that capacity. I question the pedagogical methods used on the residential side for the students sake.
So, what has happened. Since arriving I have been spending my time mostly in very poorly run meetings. They like to give us sheets of paper, and then read them to us, very slowly. And painfully. Questions aren't generally answered, and there is a loquacious tendency to repeat things that makes it at time excruciating. I don't feel like I know that much more than I did upon arrival having read the RA handbook.
I went out one night in the local area to find somewhere to sit down and get to know my coworkers. The solution we were able to find in walking distance was a chinese restaurant. Not very exciting. Possibly the only summer solution. Then, we had more meetings, and nothing interesting happened until Saturday, when we went to Madrid as a group. The ideas was to familiarize ourselves with the areas that we would be leading tours around. How exciting. We went to the outside of the prada museum, outside of reina sophia, were given some basic information and herded through the city.
After the tour, we could stay in Madrid and so in a moment of brilliance, I invited the two site directors to join us for tapas. I do mean brilliance here in the traditional form, as a positive thing. They accepted and we were off. What a night of fun, sharing stories, drinking wine together, getting plates of different things. We went from cafe to cafe, witnessing Madrid, doing Madrid. For about 7 hours we enjoyed their company, we being Diogo Shiva and myself and Ryan and Nick for the earlier hour or two.
At some point I went to the toilette, and when I returned, they had launched into Never Have I Ever while I was gone. I wasn't expecting to learn so much about my site directors, and the conversation turned to stories of past travels and other experiences.
At around 11:30, the two directors caught a taxi home and Diogo, Shiva and I went to find a pub or something for a bit more. We ran into some friends of Shiva that he met in Prague, and bumped into a group that does pub crawls in various cities around the country. Not my thing, it was mostly Americans at it. I would prefer to meet locales, practice my spanish and enjoy it. Sadly, I was probably the most qualified spanish speaker at that point. Diogo can speak some and understand, but he grew up with Portugues. Shiva's spanish has become a sort of project for the group, as he quickly learns to put together sentences and build his vocabulary. I successfully returned us home around 3, and promptly fell asleep after making a phone call on skype.
More meetings today, and preparation. CTY Espana, run here as well, just had their students arrive.