Esteph’s Blog. 

This is our last week (*sob*) in Elche, our last week of the UKLC Leonardo Project and I feel like I’ve come a long way from when I arrived, green as a palm leaf, to Denbigh for our training week. It’s true a lot was crammed into that week, but still I remember thinking that it would never be enough for a whole month of teaching. But here I am three weeks in with so much material and so many ideas still to use! I will be very sad to leave the sun, the palm trees, the tapa, the company of the fantastic bunch of people who make up the Spanish teaching crew, and all my lovely students.

I have been working at Salesianos with Alex, which has been absolutely fantastic. We were thrown in the deep end on the first day with four classes, and we haven’t stopped teaching since. We have total freedom to teach what we want and the teachers are very supportive. Similarly to most other guys working in secondary schools, we teach a total of 18 classes but see each class only once a week for their freer English class…which has its pros and cons! It’s a hell of a lot of kids to get to know, so, despite getting each child to introduce themselves in the first week, I’ve long since given up on remembering 300 names! On the plus side it makes for a lighter work load, as two or three lesson plans will do for one week, and I can teach each lesson until I’ve got it down to perfection J

            The first week I focused on introductions, which was really successful, and after a few changes I found my best ‘get-to-know-you-lesson’ consisted of the ‘write your name and draw two things you like doing’ activity followed by noughts and crosses (apparently called ‘three in a line’ in Spain) which is always a hit because they get so competitive! Finally I do the question swap game, where they all get up, move around and speak English to eachother. Awesome. By the end of week one I had this lesson so perfect I was getting applauded at the end of it!

            If only all lessons went that well! Week two I moved onto The Empire State Building lesson, which didn’t go down quite as well as it did with us eager teacher trainees in Denbigh. I often found myself frustrated at students’ lack of imagination when confronted with the puzzle of how you can jump off the Empire State Building and survive. ‘Impossible’ they all said. And then, when persuaded that it definitely was possible: ‘I can’t think of anything.’ Arghh! I did eventually did get some good stories out of them, and one thing that rings true from our training week in Denbigh is that you get the energy out of the students that you put into your lesson, it’s all about selling it! 

            Third week in we moved onto Prison Break! A lesson thought up by someone on the previous Leonardo Trip. I thought, it’s got everything…violence, creativity and it’s all about breaking the rules…what’s not to love for a teenager? Well.

 The lesson starts with students calling out objects beginning with C and animals beginning with S. I split the students into groups and give each group two objects and one animal with which to plan my demise. They love it. Hmm I wonder why! This leads into murderers being criminals and criminals being thrown into jail. I then get them to design the most secure jail in the world and send them off with paper and pencils expecting barbed wire fences and dragons…what I actually see is a football pitch, a Mercadona and a swimming pool! Eh!? At first I was mystified as to why teenagers saw prison as a holiday park. Alex, obviously far more down with the kids than I, put me straight. I’d thrown them in prison, they’re designing a prison for themselves and therefore, it’s got to have a football pitch. Duh. The solution? I put loads more energy into getting the students enthusiastic about making a prison no-one can escape from, or, failing that tell them to throw their classmates into jail.

As well as Salesianos, I have been teaching evening classes at top school with a group of intermediate adults. A whole different kettle of fish! I generally only have about three students, maximum five, which makes group work difficult. They are very motivated and really want to speak English, so I have been preparing discussion topics for them and working on error correction and bringing in more colloquial English phrases which they won’t have been able to learn from their other teachers. My most successful lesson so far has been one where they discussed good and bad laws in Spain and then in groups made they’re own perfect country - choosing the language, whether there would be a death penalty, a religion etc. They all loved it and loads of good language came up. I thought teaching such eager learners would be much easier than a class of teenagers, but it’s a real challenge; they constantly ask questions and want to learn new language which requires a lot of skill to explain. I still have a long way to go!