Reflections on the YL training and day 1 of my UKLC Placement at Colegio Santa Teresa de Jesús de Vedat in Torrent

Now that I am here in Moncada, Valencia and I have visited the school I will be teaching at, I am very grateful for all the information and the ideas for activities that Jen and Emile have given to us. I am sorry I have not written before but I was so exhausted after the journey here and so busy this morning that I did not have time until now to write anything. The lesson of 12 years I watched today was really bad-the students were sat down the whole time doing exercises from the book, they all looked bored and the teacher got the students to read the texts in English out loud something which were told never to do. The teacher also at various times spoke in Spanish to the students and then complained when they also spoke in Spanish many times during the lesson. He chucked two of the students out of the classroom altogether and everyone just looked like they were not -I do not blame them in the slightest as I would have been bored too. The teacher today did not seem to have set up any rules for the students so I will make that a top priority to set rules from the 1st day I start teaching each group.
I think the activities Jen and Emile have given to us will prove invaluable during this placement and I am happy that I can make at least one lesson a week for each of my groups of students fun and exciting. I feel like the things I learned have built very well on my existing knowledge gained from the CELTA course I did in Cambridge. I can see how many of these activities will work effectively in these classrooms to get students up and about. I will let you know in due course how I get on with trying out these activities. I will definitely be using the visualisation that I and other students in the training week came up with for one of my classes I have been told I will need to teach the future tense (will, going to and refresh on present continuous), and all 3 conditionals.
Moving on to the positives of being here in Spain: Cristina my tutor was really friendly and she introduced me to so many different people that I fear I will never remember all their names. I also found out that I was not the only new person as there was a another new teacher due to one lady who had gone on maternity leave. He was just as confused as I was but seemed to be enthusiastic. Also by total coincidence there was someone at the school who had actually taught in my village (Comberton, Cambridge) in England! What are the odds of that happening in such a small place!
Hope to write soon and let you know how I get on with teaching my first class.