Week 1

 Hola,

So far week 1 has been fantastic!

Day 1 (first day in Primary school): On the first day David drove a few of us to our respective schools. He dropped me off, left, at which point it began to sink in that this was to be my place of work for the next month. 

I was introduced to a few of the teaching staff and met my main tutor at the Primary School, Patricia. She was lovely and very reassuring, which calmed my nerves considerably. I started by observing her English lessons, but realised that apparently in Spain to observe means to sit at the very front of the class, so had many little eyes staring at me. I briefly introduced myself and told the class my name to which they all replied, 'hello Matt', which was very sweet! 

Day 2 (first day in Secondary School): This was considerably more daunting. Having been a teenager myself, there's an expectation that whenever a new or substitute teacher starts it's time to test boundaries. I arrived at my first class of ESO 3rd students assuming that similar to yesterday I would just say my name sit down and watch my tutor teach. However, I was pretty much expected to take the whole lesson. I told them my name but that was pretty much all I knew, my brain, still recovering from the travel and the previous day had turned to mush. I struggled to remember where I lived, what I liked, disliked or any other sort of information that I could turn into an interesting class discussion. Blanca, my tutor for ESO 3/4th helped me out quite a bit, and played a game with them where I had to guess the rules. The game comprised of all the students standing up and either saying one or two numbers which would go up in order to 50. If a student was forced to say 10,20,30,40 or 50 (or got the numbers wrong) they would sit down and be out. The winner was subsequently the final person standing. 

I then finished the lesson and went to the staff room, were the thought did enter my mind, was this really for me? But instead of mulling over the previous lesson, I planned for my next lesson which was in an hour or so.

The second lesson went much better. I attempted to draw a few things about myself, for example a dog, the class would guess what it was, I would explain I have a dog, elicit the word pet, then ask them if they had any pets. Next I would draw fish and chips, explain this is a popular food in England, ask them what their favourite food is and what should I try in Leon? I continued this formula, which although not incredibly interesting, was a good way to introduce myself and get the students engaged and talking about themselves. I then finished on the game, which to my luck they had not played before. They seemed to really enjoy it and we have since played it in following lessons.  

The next few days I began to find my feet. I taught the ESO 3rd students about English idioms and got them to use it in their own sentences. This went very well and much better than the previous lesson! I have since led PE lessons with the infant students, made paper aeroplanes in ART class and got the ESO 4th students singing Adele. Each class and teacher has a different dynamic and method of teaching, but I believe I'm slowly but surely finding my feet.

I will write another blog about all the non-school related activities soon.

Hasta luego,

Matt