Downs and ups

Yesterday was hard going. My 1st Gestion class couldn't (or refused to) respond to "What are you wearing?" and generally gave the impression that they knew no English at all. My 4 ESO were uncooperative and sullen. My 2 ESO were just noisy and wouldn't try to speak English   (though they were better on a reading task).

What a difference from today! By the end of today's teaching I felt that this must be one of the best jobs in the world! My 1 Gestion class (the same one as yesterday) picked up on the ideas from "What was the last thing you read?" (taken from our course in Chester) and even managed the pronunciation of "read" distinguishing "to read a book" from "I have read a book". For my 1 ESO class I was asked not to do the lesson I had prepared but to get the students ready for a visit by an Australian Olympic athlete who is coming to the school next week. I elicited lots of different Olympic sports while I was frantically trying to think what to do next, and the whole class went well.

In my free period I had really interesting chats with three teachers (a PE teacher, an infants teacher and another whose subject I can't remember (science, I think) but I now know that she has been at the same school for 29 years and loves her job).

One of my 4 ESO classes (not the same one as yesterday) got really engaged with the topic of good and bad manners and came up with lots of ideas. I have done this subject with other classes and it always seems to work. And my last class of the day was my observed lesson, with another 4 ESO class. Alex, their regular teacher, had told them that I was having an "important examination" and the students were astonishingly well behaved. They answered questions and even spoke to each other in pairs in English. At the end several of them came up to wish me good luck. By 2pm I felt I had had a worthwhile day.

So to celebrate and having the afternoon free, after an unusually good lunch at school, I got the bus to the beach and had a walk there. Now that the weather is getting milder even Gandia is growing on me!