Fun, frolics and a little teaching too

Once again a 2 week gap between posts, apologies and another promise to attempt to be more prompt in the future.

So we moved on from Halloween to be told that our job for the rest of the year was to effectively teach drama, in English, to our kids. Sounds fun I hear you say and maybe it will be once we actually get started with the plays; but first came choosing fairy tales with appropriate morals and adapting them into scripts suitable for 4-8 year olds. Not an easy task to say the least but final revisions aside I think I'm done *fingers crossed*. The lucky stories to be chosen were The Ugly Duckling, Pied Piper of Hamelin and The Wizard of Oz, all of which I didn't mind before I started this process... All of which now, after spending 2 weeks showing the films multiple times over to my classes in the vain hope they might understand the plot, I now am thoroughly fed up of. Joy of joys, this drama project takes up the rest of the year, so we shall see how my enthusiasm and sanity copes as the plays progress.

Despite my Wizard of Oz fatigue, always had a soft spot for the scarecrow

To start with, the school has brought in an outside company to give a course in how to teach drama to kids. While some of it has been interesting and may well be useful in class, the fact it is in Catalan is a bit of a sticking point meaning we have to rely on a translator. Also, I can't help but wonder how my classes who won't even stay quiet to do something fun like arts and crafts or watching a film will fare doing something as active as drama. One of my third year (7-8 year old) classes today being a case in point, a class I have rechristened as "devil spawn" such is the level of their appalling behaviour. I managed to get through less than 10 minutes of The Wizard of Oz in a 45 minute lesson, due to repeatedly stopping the video until they were quiet enough to listen. It should be an interesting experiment if nothing else :P

Away from the ups and downs of the weird and wonderful world of teaching, I am thoroughly enjoying my time in Barcelona so far. The flat I found is great, in a really central area with lovely flatmates. The assistants on the same programme as me in Barcelona have formed a tight knit set which I guess was originally a support system and is now not just that but a genuine friendship group. Last week saw the first of hopefully many mid week meet ups (it was pointed out that most of us spend our week nights in our rooms chained to our laptops). We saw the new Twilight which was trashy but watchable, my particular highlight being sat in the middle of 4 Irish people and the hilarious Irish vampires, brilliant :D Then we headed to a really cool bar where the drinks are on a stock market that changes prices according to demand and incites a rush at the bar when the market sporadically crashes. A really good night :)

Post film drinks at the Dow Jones

Friday was a night out with friends from the dance school I've started going to, great to have picked it up again after quite a few years out if it, plus it means I'm not getting dance envy watching Strictly this year ;) It was a messy but great night, "body" shots of tequila were consumed (I'll leave that to your imagination) and much fun was had, the strength of my hangover the next day providing suitable evidence of this. At another salsa night out, the music stopped and the lights came on around the time the club was due to close... THEN Gangnam Style came on. Needless to say it didn't take much encouragement to get us back on the dancefloor even if it was 4 in the morning...

The weekend before last, my Mum came to stay which was the perfect tonic to all the stress and downsides of moving to a foreign country. We ate lots of yummy food, drank lots of nice wine, strolled around the sights in, luckily, beautiful weather and talked for England. It was also a great excuse to play the tourist, since between moving abroad and starting a daunting new job etc, I probably haven't seen as much of Barcelona as I'd like.

Mum at the amazing Magic Fountain show

I'm aware this post is a pretty hefty one though to be fair it is covering 2 weeks, however will wrap up soon. Comedic/cute classroom moments: 3 kids in 1 day spontaneously drawing pictures for me which now take pride of place on my wall. Also, as a wrap up to Halloween I found a brilliant version of the Skeleton Song (you know, the foot bone's connected to the and all that). Imagine a class of 5 year olds doing this, a week's worth of hilarity. Incidentally for any other primary TEFL-ers, I'd recommend Super Simple Songs, really good resource:

Finally, an idea I've stolen from Amanda Folwell (check out her great blog, "La folle qui va bien" for another insight into teaching and living abroad) but she's since told me she stole the idea from another friend so I don't feel so bad :P A brief new vocabulary list to finish off each post, just to reassure myself I'm learning something at least and in case anyone else is interested. Until next time, read, comment and question away por favor! :) x

la huelga- strike (Spain has something in common with its froggy neighbour, they love a good strike)

chulo- cute (colloquial)

gélido- freezing cold (incorrect usage of this by the Spanish so far, clearly no experience of English winter)

la pajita- straw (for drinking)

el chupito- a shot (no clarification of the type of shot I'm referring to needed of course)

Halloween, Catalan Style

So, last week was Halloween which lead to a 4 day weekend :D Fortunately for me, All Saints Day, which is a public holiday here, was on a Thursday and most schools choose to take what is known as the "bridge" ie. the Friday after off too, thus making it a long weekend, happy days.

In Catalunya, Halloween is celebrated as a festival known as the Castanyada. Great once again for us as afternoon lessons were cancelled; instead the kids put on a concert with every year group singing songs for the rest of the school. Also, a veritable feast of chestnuts, sweet potato, sugared and chocolate almonds, jelly sweets and moscatell were available for consumption in the staffroom, which as new staff unaccustomed to Catalan fare we were heartily encouraged to try, no complaints here :P 

Another tradition of the Castanyada (at my school anyway) is the two newest members of staff dressing up as the Castanyeras, old ladies with head scarves, walking sticks and the like of generic old lady accessories to give out chestnuts to the kids, all of whom had made and decorated their own cones to receive them in. They were all very excitable and some of the keener ones even asked me and the other assistant whether we were the Castanyeras this year; clearly they'd been smart enough to realise that as the newest staff, we would be first pick. However, mercifully we avoided this fate; clearly they thought that as English teachers, completely unaware of this particular practice until the day before said occurrence, it would be kinder to spare us. Not just that though, part of the fun is the kids trying to guess which teachers are the Castanyeras. Due to our obvious Anglo-Irish looks and limited Spanish, I think we would have been busted pretty damn fast...

The last couple of weeks has been spent doing Halloween themed lessons with my classes. I've attempted to adopt a new approach, in that I have an exciting (speaking, videos, colouring, games etc) and dull (book work, reading, writing) plan for each lesson. I present them with the options, obviously they choose the fun lesson, to which I reply that it is their choice and if they choose to be well behaved, we will do the lesson they want, but if they choose to be noisy then we switch straight to book work. The success rate of this tactic appears to have been relatively high, especially when as soon as they get rowdy I hold the book up and count down from 5 as a warning. The suggestion of doing "boring" work seems to have been enough to calm them down, time will tell if it continues to do so.

The best bit of my Halloween lessons has been the excuse to trawl through childhood memories of appropriate songs and videos to do with my classes. Anyone remember the cartoon gem that was Funny Bones? The kids lapped it up and it was nice to engage in a bit of children's TV nostalgia on my part. Now to find a way to legitimately use Top Cat and/or Thunderbirds... mission before the year is out. The opening of the Nightmare Before Christmas was a good way of testing them on the themed vocabulary I had just taught and it was funny to hear the girls singing along as they designed their Halloween cards "this is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween". Incidentally (and unbelievably), I've never actually watched that film the whole way through, but seeing the opening of it 10+ times has made me determined to in this year's festive season.

Rounding up now with comedic/cute classroom moments; one of my third year classes spontaneously giving me a version of "You Don't Know You're Beautiful" by One Direction. I guess I can't criticise their stereotypical teeny bop pop music taste too much since they're only 7, and I did manage to show one of my classes the Thriller video for the Halloween lesson, so hopefully by the end of the year I will have played some small part in furthering their education of 'good' English culture and music. Finally, a ridiculously cute 4 year old from one of my first year classes grabbed my hand when I was helping to give out chestnuts for Castanyada and said to me in Spanish, "Miss Lizzie, how beautiful you are". Cue heart melting on my part :) nice to remember moments like that when I'm screaming at other classes to sit down and be quiet :P

Stay tuned for my next post about starting to attempt to teach the kids to perform English plays which we're essentially expected to write and direct, a challenge to say the least. Mum's coming for a long weekend in a few days time so expect a brief summary of me playing the tourist for the weekend and lots of photos at last, as I'll have a camera cable by then :D As usual, comments/questions very welcome but not a necessity. 

I leave you with an episode of Funny Bones, enjoy :)

Welcome to the jungle...

Firstly, apologies for taking this long to update, I am intending for it to be at least once a week in the future and will do my very best to stick to it.

For my first (proper) post, since I'm over a month into my time as an assistant, it seemed pointless to regurgitate the generic moving abroad, stressful first few days settling in scenario, so thought I´d go for a general overview of my school and teaching so far.

The school I'm working at is Institucio La Vall in Sabadell, a wealthy suburb of Barcelona. It is what is known as a concertado school, which is a bit tricky to explain but I´ll do my best... a kind of semi private school that receives public funding from the government, but has usually been founded and primarily financed by a private organisation. For many concertado schools, including mine, this is often a religious organisation/order. 

The school is an all girls one and the staff consist of only women as well, which I found to be intriguing as well as quite strange, to be in such a female dominated environment. Having asked one of the teachers out of genuine interest and curiosity, she mounted an incredibly passionate defence of this separation of the sexes, which in this case lasts until the end of secondary school. Apparently, studies have shown that girls and boys thrive more, both academically and emotionally, in single sex educational establishments. While I don't pretend to be an expert on this topic, I am not entirely sure if this logic stretches to the teaching staff as well. I would have thought that young children require both male and female positive adult role models to learn from and aspire to, but as I said, just my humble opinion.

La Vall, exterior view

The Institucio as a whole covers all ages from nursery all the way through to the end of secondary, but I am working at the Colegio (primary school) with the younger classes whose ages stretch from 4 to 7 years. In the process of applying for this job, I did actually request to work with younger students, since I often found the unwillingness to participate and attitude of older teenage students to be a challenge during my year teaching in France. However, that certainly does not mean that little ones do not present their own set of equal demands.

As I had thought, their enthusiasm is fantastic and very infectious, safe to say I have never had to really prompt my classes for a response. In fact I usually get a veritable sea of hands with kids straining out of their chairs to be chosen to answer. They are, for the most part, very sweet and I have quickly become accustomed to the choruses of "Hello Miss Lizzie!" that greet me around the school, which is often accompanied by them throwing their arms around my waist or leg (something else I have discovered, how tactile Spanish schoolchildren are, in a way that does not and probably would not be allowed to happen in English schools, not passing judgement on it though it was a little disconcerting to begin with, just an interesting comparison).

On the other hand, there are undeniable challenges. Getting a full class of 4 year olds to sit down in a state of relative quiet, especially when the standard "Miss Lizzie, you speak Catalan/Spanish? Me no understand!" starts and soon spreads round the class like wildfire, is the first and most frequent I encounter. The petty squabbles that naturally erupt between 5 year olds and result in hair pulling/bursting into tears, usually over something like a refusal to lend a coloured pencil, are difficult to police. As a generalisation, my first and second year classes are OK whereas my third years are more difficult ie. boisterous and downright rude at times, but everyone has their nightmare group(s) and I've quickly learned that a firm hand is definitely required for some classes and a softly softly approach for others.

I'm aware this has been a fairly long post, so I'll wrap up now. Apologies for the lack of pictures so far which is due to me having mislaid my camera usb cable in travelling transit, expect a slew of them in about a month's time when my Mum comes to visit and brings me a new one. In the meantime though, I'll still try to end each post with a photo and/or funny story as a sign off. My funny story of this week is a girl from one of my third year classes who came up to me and asked, with complete sincerity and innocence, "Miss Lizzie, please can I go blow my snot?" 1- impressive vocabulary for a 7 year old, but far more importantly, adorable and hilarious.

Any comments/questions are more than welcome, thoughts on anything discussed here ie. single sex education, challenges of and differences between teaching older and younger students. Equally, please feel free to read at your leisure without the requirement to comment or question.

As for my picture, limited options due to reasons already detailed, and while this one is not exclusively about this post's content, it's moments like it that make me forget the bad days at school with the bratty kids, rather I remember and appreciate how lucky I am to get to live in such a beautiful city.

Surely needs no titular caption, beautiful night-time view. 

x :)

So it begins...

Hi everyone! (or should that be hola)

An introductory post to start off with; myself, my life and why I'm starting this blog.

I'm Lizzie, a 22 year old French & History graduate, originally from Preston and currently living (and working) in Barcelona. I finished uni with no worthwhile job prospects at home or much hope of finding any in the near future. I decided going abroad was the best bet and having already spent a year teaching in the south-west of France as part of my degree, plus considering the number of TEFL jobs available for native English speakers with even the merest teaching experience, I applied, was interviewed and got my present position in the space of a week.

The company I work for is pioneering a new programme, placing native English speakers within the Spanish education system in the hope of prioritising and improving oral English in schools, where previously writing and reading have been given precedence. I work at an all girls Catholic school on the outskirts of the city, teaching 4-8 year olds for approximately 11 hours a week.

As for my reasoning for writing this blog, other than the fact that it appears to be a necessity when starting any relatively new and exciting phase in your life, I started some form of blog for my year in France which rather pathetically petered out after a few entries. I am determined to see this one through, firstly as a nice personal record for me to look back on. Also, as a self professed not natural teacher with only basic knowledge of Spanish (one of my goals for the year is to become at least semi competent), I thought it might be interesting to ponder on the great, the challenging and sometimes downright bizarre musings of living in a foreign country, the profession of teaching and TEFL in particular, and my perceptions of the Spanish education system as a whole.

The name of my blog is (I hope) an appropriate and relatively cute pun, encapsulating the job and my personal aim of bringing an English sensibility, of language, culture and attitude, into my classes. Also, fantasy fans should be able to spot the reference in the title of this post... That's all for now folks, I will try to update at regular intervals. Comments and questions would be most welcome but not mandatory.

:)