First Impressions :)

 What's up fellow teachers?

I've just finished my first week in Leon! It's been quite knackering but I've really enjoyed myself too. I'm really happy with my placement school; the teachers have all been very helpful and accommodating which has made my entry into Spanish school life feel relatively painless! I'm particularly grateful for the freedom that the teachers have given me this week. They have more or less given me free reign over their classes which, while a little daunting, has allowed me to experiment and try things out even in this early stage of the experience. I'm honored that they are putting so much faith in me and my nascent teaching abilities - muchas gracias for that!

Before arriving in Leon, I did some reading about teaching English to young learners, and I was quite excited this week to see a real-life example of something that had come up in my reading. Occasionally, before entering a particular class, their normal teacher would pull me aside and say something like 'This is a really difficult class' or 'They never speak, even to me!' Sometimes their little pieces of advice turned out to be accurate, but sometimes they didn't. I often had pretty calm and enjoyable lessons with the so-called 'difficult' kids. Of course, this was probably down to the novelty factor of a random English person coming in and commandeering Double Maths or whatever. However, it also reminded me of how our attitudes as teachers, both towards our students and English itself, can influence our lessons (for better or worse!) 

Speaking of the students, they've been absolutely fab! The vast majority of them seemed really keen to ask me questions and find things out about me. My schedule has classes with every different age group at my school, including the pre-school level, which has actually been great! It's really interesting to see what kinds of approaches work best with different age groups and how lesson plans need to be adjusted for different levels and ages. For example, my last lesson of the day today was with the Infant class. I decided to show them some classic songs for kids and nursery rhymes that I remember from my youth! I noticed that the songs which involved the students in some way, such as 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' went down far better than those that didn't. It's a small thing, but it strikes me as consistent with some of the things that we learnt during our training weeks. 

That's enough for now! Time for some vino tinto I think... ;)