Teaching

Due to various trips I've made almost every weekend so far, my experience of Zaragoza has been largely restricted to that of the working week, if twelve hours per week can be considered as such. Nevertheless, I feel very much at home here, particularly since moving flat and investing more time in both football and at the school.

My school, IES Miguel de Molinos, is your typical state secondary school, situated north of the river in a soulless but harmless part of the city. I immediately felt welcome there thanks to the small and friendly English department, all very keen to learn every English idiom under the sun. I have been invited for meals at their houses and got a good chance to learn more about teaching and the country this way, whilst also proving handy Spanish practice for me. The most important thing I was told before coming here was that you must never turn down an invitation whilst on a year abroad, be it for meals, parties, sport, day trips or anything. Given the speed at which it flies by, I would certainly agree.

The students I teach (12, 13 and 16 year olds) are generally light-hearted and easy going, though the sixteen year old's have little or no interest in English. There is certainly an attitude that the ship has sailed in terms of grasping the language, making for quite strenuous lessons at times. Certain individuals amaze me every week however. When a 12 year old is asking for vocab such as 'snot' or 'antlers', it really puts the English to shame. My French at that age was restricted to fruit, pets and numbers.

As the year has gone on, I have enjoyed the teaching more and more. This is largely down to getting to know the teachers and better preparing the classes - both things I would thoroughly recommend to anybody teaching abroad. It makes life so much easier and means you never dread a day of work. My Spanish has improved as a result, whilst the students will also look forward to your classes and (usually...) respect you as a teacher.

In the coming weeks, I have prepared classes about London, Jack the Ripper and the Olympics. It seems if your classes are London-orientated, it adds a certain mysticism almost. Suddenly everyone has a hundred questions. I always use a powerpoint full of images, often my own photos or strange and entertaining ones pinched from the Internet, another tactic I have found to work. Ultimately, the more relaxed the class and the further removed it can be from their usual classroom boredom, the happier they will be to speak - and that is all the job requires.

I am strangely looking forward to having a run of consecutive weeks without these bank holidays Spain seems to love/over-do so much and getting into more of rhythm; something which has always scared me a bit in the past. Maybe it's all making me old.

Hello

Having finally made the move over to Spain in September, I had intended to keep a blog from the word 'go' but it was soon sidelined by one hectic week after another. Now back in grey and wet Brighton for the Christmas period and aided by the good tea and bad weather both absent in my life over the past few months, it seems an opportune moment to look back over a new and exciting time in my life. 

Anyway, I hope that this blog will give a broad overview of my experiences so far to those of you I should have kept better in touch with, whilst offering a bit of practical advice and some travel tips for others in my position – that of a 21 year old student keen to make as much of a year abroad as possible. Got a lot of backtracking to do first though...

As a British Council language assistant working just 12 hours per week, my first three months in Zaragoza can be broken down into three key components. There is the teaching, the travelling about and the integration into a new, foreign and exciting way of life. Thankfully, all three have by and large proved a success so far.