Gander in Gandia

Teaching in Gandia (just outside of Valencia) has been SUCH an incredible experience so far. Its really small but also very pretty,  people are so friendly and generally go above and beyond to help you- especially the teachers I'm fortunate enough to work with.

I teach in a school called Escola Pia- a semi-private catholic school, and I teach primary years 5 and 6, secondary school and their version of the first year of sixth form (which is split into science and humanities).

The inner courtyard of my school. Palm tree!

Our apartment is huuuge. BUT COLD. Spanish apartments are designed to be cool not warm so if you ever do this in January/February bring.all.the.layers. Having said that BLUE SKIES AND SUNSHINE EVERYDAY. It does wonders for the soul.

Since I've been horribly late at blogging my experiences I'm going to break this down into week one and 2.

WEEK 1:
We took the train to get to Gandia and were met by one of the teachers I now work with called Gema (one of the sweetest humans I've ever met) and she showed us around Gandia. Both amusingly and terrifiyingly she kept repeating (about Spanish schoolkids) 'THEY ARE SO LOUD. Be ready. But also very kind'. She was not wrong.

My first lesson was with her class and I got to observe and help in the classroom. All the children have iPads here and thats where they access their textbooks worksheets and homework. They are also able to project what they have on their iPads onto the projector so for presentations its pretty neat.
The downside: During the lesson you do occasionally see them checking social media, youtube or even worse, GOOGLE TRANSLATE 😱😱😱. I've now made a point to tell them to all turn their iPads downwards in the beginning of the lessons if they are not needed to avoid such blasphemy.

My second lesson was with my main tutor who basically handed the lesson over to me from the get go. She showed me a vocabulary list, asked if I had any ideas and then told the class- 'Aishah is now going to give you the lesson'. My initial reaction was WAAAAAAHT😰. Once I got over the shock (which lasted about a second because that's all the time I had to react) I improvised the stages, and was actually glad I was made to do it! If I had known beforehand I was to teach my first set of lessons on the first day I would have been a lot more nervous. It went very well considering it was unplanned and I now know I am able to improvise lessons at a moment's notice (yay). I ended up teaching 2 more lessons on my first day including my first ever primary school class where we sang and mimed a song to do with past simple and they LOVED it.

The rest of the week was spent planning the lessons, establishing the rules with each class and dangling stickers in front of their faces. Each time I established the rules I learned I needed to be clearer, and all Michael's advice from Chester rang true. There really is always time to establish a rules and rewards system. I'm stilll in the process of establishing the system in a clearer way particularly for my primary years classes. Wait. Did I mention most of the classes I teach have about 30 students in them?! Another issue I found was that at times teachers would be speaking to the children in Spanish as I was giving instructions D: This was very easily resolved once politely mentioning it to them though. Sometimes in the beginning of my lessons when establishing the rules I would name the teacher and tell the class that their teachers forget Spanish and can only speak English when I start teaching (cheeky but works 😏)

I was officially observed by my tutor for one of my lessons, which of course ended up being one o the stranger ones I've had. The evening before Anna T and I decided to wander around Gandia a bit, and we ended up taking pictures of some of the street art. As we were coming home there was a guy on the floor making preying mantis out of leaves (both incredible and confusing) so obv Anna had to get one. And I took a picture of her holding it.

Anna T + leafy preying Mantis

Cute right? So my lesson was on art so I thought it would be a great idea to add in the pictures I took of the murals, street art and the graffiti behind Anna. As I got to this picture on my presentation to the class, they all cheered and clapped and one girl insistently put her hand up and beckoned me to listen to her.

She then went on to say how they knew the kid that did the graffiti! I was impressed- she mentioned how he came to the school and everyone was really good friends with him and he was about 15 and a well known graffiti artist. And that he doesn't come to the school anymore.

At this point the teacher came up to me and quietly told me that he had had been involved in a car accident last year and tragically passed away and it affected a lot of the kids and teachers in the school. My heart imploded at this point. The kids seemed happy that his art was still being seen but it was quite a heavy moment nonetheless.

Ended the week on a lighter note and sang and mimed songs with my class 6 of primary which was great.


WEEK 2

There are 2 PMAR classes I teach each week that consist of students who are behind their classmates either because of learning, behavioural or other circumstantial challenges. They have a reputation of 'not wanting to learn' but they are actually my favourites to teach. They have up to 16 people in their class and respond so well to games, so I'm excited to try new activities with them each week.

I've also realised exactly how warm and helpful all the teachers I work with and even teachers I don't work with are. There is an overwhelming amount of kindness here and I hope everyone else has found that in their experiences too. I'm getting better at establishing the rules, and I conducted my first boardrush this week which was a lot of fun. I also looove how seriously the children take having points or stars by their group names. And the love of stickers. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STICKERS.
 

Tragically, I have managed to contract the flu for the last part of this week (grr hiss), so I taught a bunch of lessons just in complete denial that I needed to collapse into a sad ball and recover. Fortunately the students I taught during the end of the week were amaaazing and seemed to have a lot of fun doing the activities I prepared for them which made it worthwhile. Forcing myself to rest and recover even though I want to do a million other things with my weekend. This week has SPED by, I'm a little in shock that its the end of the second week already- I don't think I'll be ready to leave  in just 2 more weeks. I have too many things to learn, too many activities to try out and I'm not ready to leave the sunshine.

Here's to a better and not-flu-filled third week.

Hasta Luego

Aishah.