Thoughts on Spain and teaching

Now there's just one week left I thought I'd make a few observations on Spain and teaching, in no particular order.

• Can an economist tell me why electricity is expensive in Spain? It doesn't seem to make sense that they are so concerned about not using heating etc. because of the cost.
• Is it just our flat, or is it normal that you can't use, for example, the heater, the oven and the kettle at the same time without the electricity tripping out?
• How do noisy, ill-disciplined Spanish teenagers turn into the friendliest, most helpful people you could wish to meet (if the teachers in my school are anything to go by)? Is there a magical transformation at the age of 20?
• I have had a few lessons cancelled because students have been doing exams. If we are in exam season would our placements be better at a different time of year?
• People with much more TEFL experience than us have put a lot of effort into producing coursebooks. Most (but not all) of my ESO classes follow the Mosaic books which seem to me to be really good. The teacher's guides in particular give useful ideas as to how to use the material. My own ideas rarely come up to these standards and I have found myself more and more sticking to the coursebooks. It saves preparation time too.
• It seems that the teachers have to get though a lot of material in a given number of weeks including specific grammar and vocabulary as set out in the coursebook. I wonder whether my presence sometimes makes life more difficult for them as I am trying to use a different approach.
• If the life of a teacher at school is teaching at school and preparing lessons all evening and weekend, just squeezing in time for food and rest, I'm not sure that it is for me.
• It seems to me that a lot of  the techniques we learned on our CELTA courses and in Chester are not practical in a packed Spanish classroom. Just getting a class to stand up, sit down and turn round creates mayhem. As soon as they moved the students started yelling to their friends (in Spanish of course) as if it was the end of the lesson.
• Often the Spanish teachers try to "help out" a lot by translating things into Spanish which is sometimes helpful but not if I am trying to get students to ask questions to work out what something means.
• Pinning down the teachers to discuss what I am to do next week (or a few days later) can be frustratingly difficult. I appreciate that they are busy / tired/ have to pick up their children but planning ahead doesn't seem to come into it. I have had a couple of occasions when I have started a lesson on an agreed topic or section of the coursebook only to find that the class has already done with their teacher a day or two before. We had to improvise.
• For 8 of my timetabled hours I start with 10 to 15 minutes with the PE teacher explaining what the students are going to do in their lesson, then I go to an English teacher to take over the lesson. This doesn't seem a very satisfactory arrangement to me. I can't tell how long I will have for my English lesson, and the Spanish English teacher can't really get going with anything else. I am happy to help the PE teacher, though, and he is keen to have more English in his classes. I now know much more about long jump, high jump and triple jump than before! He found it particularly helpful when I went though his questions for a Kahoot game and put some of them into better English.
• There are only two classes that I have twice a week. All the others I see just once a week. This means that I don't get much of a rapport with the students and I certainly haven't learned names. I asked teachers for lists of the names of students in some of my classes but I never got them. 
• I am very glad that I had experience in a summer school last year, where I had the same class all week, got to know the students and was able to do some CELTA style games and activities. If teaching here in my school in Gandia had been my very first experience of teaching I would have been feeling very dispirited by now.
• It is interesting to see how students who have been taught in a different way can do grammar exercises but not put together a sentence in English. It shows the strengths of the CELTA methods.
• I am just hopeful that this month in Spain will look good on my CV. Otherwise I feel that the negatives outweigh the positives.

Into the last week ... where's the time gone?

Not so much lesson planning for the last week as most classes are revising for exams, so it's about helping with sentences for Kahoots! quiz questions and supervising the playing of games. The students love this way of revising! The infant end of the scale involves minimal planning and the observations reminds me of when I took my own children to nursery school. It's just a bit more modern, with digital whiteboards showing Super Simple Songs from the Internet. The Natural Science primary classes are working on projects that flow from one lesson to the next so the classes are mainly monitoring. Although lesson planning is challenging, I'm a little disappointed that I'm not challenged more.
Today I'm planning three lessons for the coming week for 6 Primary, with an aim to encourage as must speaking as possible. Last week I used Emile's story about The Barber of Paris, where the students have to listen to the story, recognise the pictures they've been given, and reconstruct the story with the pictures. That turned out to be a very engaging lesson with less Spanish spoken – the students had to listen too carefully to the story.
For the next lesson I used an idea from the British Council teaching resources about planning to write a story. The planning process would involve speaking and putting ideas on the board. That was a big success even though it ended up with students arguing passionately in Spanish about their preferences for horse-riding or a science fiction adventure. I'm planning to continue with the story ideas this week until everyone has written their own very short story, and somehow tie it in with the course book grammar and unit revision.
I think I wrote in my last blog entry about how impossible it is to stop students chatting in Spanish – they're doing what comes naturally. Smaller classes are a lot easier to manage unless there are one or two particularly disruptive kids, and then it's hugely challenging even for the experienced teachers. As far as lesson planning goes, I've had the best results with activities on paper, away from the iPads, where students were engaged with the language. At Los Naranjos the youngest children are learning English from when they are about two years old now. Other years began English later. Their teacher tells me that she's hoping those children will become more fluent very early on, and therefore more comfortable with English as they move on to higher classes, and maybe even chat in English!
Nice that the weather's been getting warmer. A teacher put a heater in the staff room last week and everyone was pleased! It's all true: Spanish schools are cold!
Lesson planning permitting I'll go to Valencia this afternoon. Looking forward to a bit of sightseeing and meeting up with whoever is around, and Michael who arrived yesterday to observe us all the coming week.

A bit of advice

Hola chicos y chicas.

I have a rare period of rest today so I thought I'd pen a little blog because I'm feeling nice and reflective and calm (ish). I wanted to write some words of advice for the people coming in Feb to help a little bit. Some of the stuff might only be relevant to me but I thought maybe it would be helpful anyway.

1) Learn students names. I might only be speaking for myself here but I find the classes in which I know (almost) all the students names way easier to control. It might not be possible because I know that some people never see the same class twice, in which case you'd have to be superhuman to remember their names, but where possible learn as many names as poss. It's much easier if they're being chatty and you need to call out specific students.

2) Don't be too hard on yourself. Spanish kids are a bit mad (in the nicest possible way) - if you can get them to be quiet all at once and listen to you for like any period of time then that is a difficult task accomplished. Don't expect that you'll get through all your lesson plan, you'll have given them something valuable even if you only do half.

3) Don't rely on technology. Some of the schools have almost no technology and some of them are quite high-tech by all accounts. Even so have some kind of back up plan up your sleeve if nothing works. I print out lots of pics for my students because the projector is in a v awkward place in the room and half the class can't see it. Holding a picture for them is also good because it centers their attention on you.

4) Enjoyyy yourself :) if you have fun then so will they. Even if you're a shaky nervous mess the first few times like me just pretend that you're having the absolute best time ever. You'll feel better and the students will probably respond more positively.

That's all for now - hope it's helpful and not just pointless ramblings of an exhausted English teacher, I can't really tell.

Besos x

Safari anyone?

After a torrential week on the weather front that left my route to school impassable. I literally thought I would never feel warm again but, finally the sun has come out and as I sit here on my roof terrace lesson planning spirits are lifted and life feels good again. Although the old saying goes that 'in Valencia it never rain' that is true, until  13 English Erasmusers hit town. But, be not discouraged February lot. When it's sunny, it is very sunny. Just remember to bring slippers, extra jumpers and a hot water bottle as well as those all important sunglasses and suncream.

All in all, teaching is going well in Vinalesa. My tutor is starting to release the reigns a lot more now that we are in the swing of things and she is really allowing me to be creative. Tomorrow I am conducting an imaginary safari  with my kids around the school. Armed with our binoculars (made from toilet roll ends painstakingly decorated in our lesson last week) we will trudge around school searching out animals, lakes, rivers, rainbows and so on to revise that all important vocab and grammar. I don't  think I've said "Can you see a...." so much in my life. It's so rewarding when the kids 'get it'. Will let you know how is goes.

Until then, hasta luego!

Life so far....
Planning, teaching, eating out,
feeling settled in.
Rain,snow, exploring,
Too many beers and gin.
New friends, old friends coming and going,
So many positives, but a few strains showing.
Everyone's working hard, nose to the grind,
Making up for it on the weekends so what's there to mind.
It's flying so fast, time's slipping away,
Enough left to enjoy though,
Were only a little over halfway!

Week three is here already! It came with some sun, which is very welcome after last weeks chilly spell. It's always easier to look on the bright side of life when the sun's shining. For me, in Schola, week 2 was a good one. I have continued to get to know the teachers and students and build on positive relationships. I am enjoying teaching, especially the additional speaking lessons I give on a Friday as I am able to be creative in my planning of them.
My students range from children to adults. Learning to speak English has become very important in Spain over recent years and more and more people are looking to develop their skills. My students started off being quite nervous with me - a native speaker. They were worried about their pronunciation and getting it wrong. As soon as they'd heard my attempts at speaking Spanish and had a good laugh as a consequence, it was clear that we'd created a safe space within which it was good to have a go and  also OK to make mistakes. Once they relaxed and their individual personalities started to come through, that's when I really started to get to know them, their stories, their ambitions for the future and their passions. I love that. The opportunity to build relationships with people is the best gift that teaching gives you. And another thing I've learned is that the one thing that all of my students and the other people that I have worked with here, have in common is their overriding sense of pride for their country and culture. Even with minimal English they will speak passionately about the food, the wine, their famous regional fiestas, their lifestyle and their love of life. They want you to know all about it. As well as being taken on that trip to the mountains, I have been given a detailed itinerary of must see places and things to do on a visit to down town Valencia (I'd actually need to spend at least 3 months here to get through this itinerary - but I suppose that it's a good excuse for returning sometime in the future). The Spanish people's  love of life and how to live it is something they readily want to share with you. Their verve is infectious and perfect for jump starting January 2017. They think that people from the UK are too serious. My understanding of spoken Spanish may not very good yet but my appreciation and embrace of the culture is good and it's adding another dimension to my outlook for this year.

Half-way through!

Buenos tardes, blog-ogglers. More like "buenos tardies", considering how late I am to this particular party.

Let's start from the beginning.

The week of training in Chester was, in a lot of ways, a complete joy. One of the best things about TEFL is how effortlessly it brings together people from all walks of life, and as the week progressed I was constantly amazed by the wealth and breadth of experience, knowledge, wisdom, and, above all, silliness.

I found a lot of the input extremely helpful and brilliantly delivered. Jen (smiliest woman bar none) and Emile (badass polyglot, cool as a cucumber) took us through a lot of very interesting material to do with young learners, and equipped us with some very handy games, activity approaches, and planning advice. There were plenty of ideas to steal, and boy, did I steal 'em!

Personally, a slight downer about the training came in the form of the group lesson planning. Planning lessons in a group can be a frustrating experience, as every teacher has a unique approach. When you get five or six teachers to plan one lesson it can often become an exercise in diplomacy, rather than planning, and the end result is a mish-mash that no-one in the group is very happy with. That being said, it was a great way of sharing and stealing ideas, so swings and roundabouts...

So, after a crammed week, we hopped on a plane and "yo, Holmes, to Valencia!".

It was on the plane that I really began to contemplate what a wicked thing this whole shebang is. We're being flown out, put up, given the opportunity to gain some essential and hard to come by experience...and we get to hang in Valencia for a month?! Not too shabby! Thank you very much, UKLC!

We got dropped off at our apartment, which is GORGEOUS, and, like the ridiculious Brits we become when abroad, cracked out some tea, biscuits, and Red Leicester.

The ensuing two weeks have been a non-stop ride, full of thrilling highs, a few considerable lows, and ALL THE LESSON PLANNING IN THE WORLD.

Advice to prospective Erasmus-ers: Don't get roped into teaching on your first day.

I did, and it's my own silly fault, really. What started out as some "Getting to Know You" activities became whole, completely unplanned and really quite manic lessons. A low point was teaching a whole lesson to about 30 17-year olds on Great Expectations, with no plan and only a vague recollection of the book itself. WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

Something that added to my sense of impending meltdown was the sheer, unrelenting noise in my school! Good lord, those kids can holler. I normally don't mind it, and as the days have gone on I've honed my "Teacher Voice" into a booming, (hopefully) authoritative baritone beast. But yes, on day one my ears were ringing.

My tutor, Salut, is the nicest, most patient person I could ever hope to meet. In fact, all the teachers I have met have been utterly lovely. One of them recently asked me if I would come round to her house and play with her kids (in English). I was really touched, and of course accepted. I've become so much more confident in my lesson planning as the days have gone by, and I can't tell you how gratifying it is when a lesson you've spent hours preparing comes off well in class. On the flipside, I've had one or two classes where I've been severely tested, and the frustration and anger can knock you for six, I tell you. But you dust yourself off, try not to take it personally, and onwards, towards Utopia!

Lying, Stereotypes and Cardinal Sins (week 1)

I was once given some great advice that you shouldn’t worry about the future; just trust ‘future you’ because you’ll always deal with whatever’s thrown at you. Easier said than done though! As we were leaving UKLC and heading to Spain via mini buses, a Premier Inn, pancakes, a flight and a further mini bus, my nervous excitement was riding pretty high. It needn’t of reared its ugly head though, as ‘future me’ was fine and the school was great.

All of the teachers were and still are LOVELY! It’s only when you go to other countries that you realise that the stereotypes of British people, which you normally dismiss so quickly, are actually quite accurate. Spanish people are so warm and friendly. They open up to you straight away. Don’t get me wrong, British people are obviously amazing, they’re just varied. Imagine the most friendly ‘people-person’ you know in Britain…that’s all Spanish people! (In my experience anyway).

Despite thinking that I wouldn’t want to start teaching until the second week I actually started on the second day and got a hell of a lot of mileage out of lying. I milked ‘two truths one lie’ for the whole week adapting it to talk about likes and dislikes and using the past simple to talk about things that did (or didn’t) happen to you. It was great fun and a good way to exploit the students’ interest in me as an alien life form from England.

The funniest moment had to be when I committed a cardinal sin and accidently made a room full of Spanish kids chant “I don’t like paella”! It was one of my lies from the game, which I had to think up on the spot to adapt a lesson I didn’t know I’d be teaching. We were on our second or third drill before my tutor burst out laughing and pointed out how sacrilegious it was. We all had a good laugh about it and I drilled “I like paella” just so they could all sleep at night.

One thing worth noting is that the friendly chatty Spanish stereotype described earlier does extend to the children so you can forget about having everyone sit in silence whilst you calmly work through your lesson plan. Class rules, or no class rules, you’re not going to change Spanish culture in an hour. Maybe if you had a permanent job in Spain you might stand a chance, but realistically you’ve just got to work with it!

No school tomorrow

All schools in Gardia are closed tomorrow because of the weather. Slightly awkward as I was due to have a meeting with one of the English teachers about what I should do with her classes next week, including two on Monday morning. I'll have to be creative! I was also due to pick up a book from the other English teacher so that I could use it to prepare for a lesson on Monday. He needed it this afternoon. At least I know the general subject it is on (business meetings for one of the vocational classes).

Better late than never! - What I remember from the training week!

After avoiding my family coughing and spluttering in my face all over Christmas, my body finally decided to give in and develop ‘that thing that’s been going round’ in the car on the way to Chester. What a great way to start a training week. I was already a mixture of nervous and excited and the lurgy felt right at home in that cocktail brewing in my stomach. But true to Carolyn’s word, all bar the lurgy dissolved pretty instantly as we got straight into the training.

The style adopted by the trainers of putting you in the position of a language student worked really well for me. It seemed easy to work out what would be fun and what would work with your own classes, if all went according to plan. Emile and Jen have different styles but both seemed to have entertainment at the core of what they did, which carried on from what the CELTA taught me quite nicely. It was nice to find out that there wasn’t such a heavy focus on grammar with younger learners.

Everyone at the training was great and the fact that everyone was from different walks of life made for some rich discussion and a great learning environment. The others being so nice did however make me feel pretty guilty when my cold started doing the rounds. I’d only just managed to survive the training with a menu of pills, lozenges, coffee and steamy showers (boiler permitting!) and whilst I was glad that the EFL gods had relieved me of my burden in time for Spain, I hoped they hadn’t cursed the others. Fingers crossed they’d also blessed me with a good school. As soon as I received my placement a fresh batch of nerves was on its way. Eep.

Slave of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Yes, my school is the Colegio Esclavas Sagrado Corazon de Jesus. It is attached to a magnificent church and the school is infested with crucifixes. One of the teachers sometimes starts his lessons with the Lord's Prayer (in English). I haven't admitted to my atheist convictions at school - yet.

This is my first contribution - sorry it has been so long coming. Nearly at the end of our second week in Spain. I can hardly believe it.

The teachers at my school are all very friendly. Even the ones who don't speak English make an effort to communicate. Oddly they apologise for speaking Valencian rather than Spanish, although I don't recognise which is which and can't understand either.

I have done quite a bit of teaching and some classes have been successful, others less so. There is limited opportunity to put into practice much of what we learned on the Celta and in Chester as most of the classrooms are just big enough to hold all the students and their desks, and there is no coloured chalk (yes - chalk and blackboards, not whiteboards and marker pens) and printing is only black and white. For about half of my timetabled classes I have to spend 10 minutes or so with the PE teacher explaining the activity his class is about to do before going to my "main" class which I don't think works very well, though I have learned some activities for introducing rugby and athletics. Tomorrow it's triple jump with one class followed by a lesson centred on tourist attractions with another.

The teachers usually ask me to focus on a page of the coursebook or a grammar point or some vocabulary. I think that the books are quite good. The teachers' guides that accompany the students' books have some good ideas. On one occasion I had been given the wrong information and the students had already done what I had prepared so I had to improvise, which actually worked out well. The students seem to have no experience of listening to English in class or speaking it even when they can do the grammar exercises, and there is a lot of Spanish being spoken. And the students mess around most of the time. This seems to be accepted as normal in Spain. Sometimes the teachers, who are in the room with me, try to "help out" which can be very frustrating if I am trying to get a student to explain something in English. If a teacher just translates a word into Spanish that does't help me when my real aim is not to ensure that they know a word but to speak in English. At first I was trying to include far too much content in a 50 or 55 minute lesson (reduced to 40 minutes or less if I have PE first or the teacher wants to go through something else to start the lesson) but I am now getting more used to gauging the right amount of material better.

It's all useful experience (I hope)

My overriding impression of Gandia, however, is the cold. I couldn't believe that there was no central heating in the flat when I arrived, just a rather ineffectual radiator. We now have some more heaters, but the flat is cold. I have spent a lot of time in a much poorer country than Spain (Serbia) but everywhere is heated well there in the winter even though it is very hot in the summer.  The first week was sunny and cold but now it is wet and cold. There were tremendous thunderstorms today followed by hail. Our balcony was covered in huge hailstones. Were they deliberately trying to prepare us when the heating didn't work in Chester? Surely instead of suggesting that we should bring swimming trunks and sun cream UKLC should have told us to bring thermal underwear and thick jumpers. It is cold in school, too. Students tend to wear coats, scarves and gloves in class. This can't be conducive to good learning. I tend to wear a T shirt, a shirt, a jumper and a jacket, plus a coat for walking to and from school.

Anyway, time to eat now and then prepare another lesson for next week so that I don't have to spend all weekend at it. Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days so I don't want to leave everything to Sunday.