I.E.S Castillo de Luna

Yesterday I went to the school in Rota where I will be teaching for the next 8 months. It was pretty interesting, and I met a lot of people all at once, so I'm not going to remember anyone's names when I go back to start teaching on Wednesday. Everyone was really nice, and I'm excited about having a chance to practice my Spanish while I'm there, as a few of the teachers and office assistants don't speak English at all.

Here in Spain, they are lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of the level of English that its people speak. To offset this, the Spanish government has instituted a new bilingual program in which students in both primary and secondary schools all across Spain will start taking certain classes (I think mostly science and possibly technology courses) in English. This is the main reason behind the Language Assistant program. My school hasn't instituted this program yet, but wants to for next year. This means that they will be working with students who have gone to school entirely in Spanish their whole lives. A lot of the teacher's don't even have a very high level of English, which will make it difficult for them to teach the material.

Originally I was told that I would be mostly working with the teachers to set up the program (ie. researching to find materials, and helping the teachers with their English), but now it looks like I will be doing a little bit of that and a little bit of assisting in the English classes. The teachers all want to take advantage of having native English speakers here while they can, which is fine by me. And my schedule is looking decent, as I will only have to work Monday to Thursday, for 3 hours per day. And I'm crossing my fingers that it will be a little bit flexible in case I want to do some travelling!