The Catalan Diaries: La Salle Comtal 25/01

In Stephen Fry's Chronicles he chronicles the time before university when he became a teacher or a teaching assistant at a boarding school. He wrote that it was the first time he had ever felt true happiness in his younger years and that the job was satisfying, interesting and fulfilling. He also wrote that he never realised how exhausting it is; constant lesson planning, constant interaction with new people and students, deciding on homework, choosing the syllabus, covering other teachers lessons... ad infinitum. Well not all of those things relate to me as I am only a humble Conversation Auxilliar but I can still relate to feeling knackered! But also happy. The job has been great thus far, nice kids, lovely school, great teachers and a fantastic location. Everyone here is extremely friendly to me - one teacher has arranged for me to meet her daughter who is a student at Barcelona's university and I can go out and have a laugh with her friends - she's friends with an Australian guy - and all the other teachers have gone out of their way to make me feel settled. I'm lucky though, as I was talking to one of the other language assistants called Becky, a nice girl from Nottingham, and she said as soon as she arrived they piled on loads of work and told her to prepare for exams! She said she was especially anxious because the assistant before her was fired and she was given the girls notebook which she said had copious notes on lessons and teaching! So, comparing my experience to hers, I have to say I've got a great school.
My personal tutor is Jose Luis, who is the main primary education English teacher. He's a really good bloke, at first I didn't know why he was helping me with everything so extensively until I found out he was infact my personal tutor - I was under the impression that my tutor would be someone from CAPS.
Well he's properly taken me under his wing so to speak - I think he likes the whole big brother looking after the younger scenario we have going on. The only thing I will say is, it was a bit disconcerting when he winked at me and called me a "good boy" just because I had described my fondness for Paella to one of the other teachers. It was a bit weird and also a bit depreciating.

Well, let me give you a little education on the school before I post some photos of the escola and the nearby area - which is of course the Gothic Quarter.
The school is a primary, secondary and nursery all in one. The ages range between 3-16, and I will be teaching all ages! This week I haven't been teaching the secondary lot as they have been doing different activities than usual. Infact, I haven't been teaching at all, but I have been sitting in on Jose's lessons to get a feel for it and to observe the level of the different grades.
So we have the kindergarten, which has three years:
P3, P4 and P5 - the number relates to their age. These guys are easy and fun, they mostly draw, play with puzzles or watch cartoons.
Then we have the primary school of which I will be helping in Jose's classes, as well as the other English teachers. I will be taking the kids in groups of 3,4 or 5 to my office and then we will be practising conversations. I have spent the afternoon working out the activities for next week and its all sorted now. I'll be reviewing various games etc. on this blog so in a way this blog may morph from being a traditional travel blog to a teacher training one!

So in primary school there are grades 1 to 6. 1 being 6-7 year olds, 2 is 7-8 years and so on. Then at thirteen they start secondary school which carries on to 16. From here they have the choice of working or continuing their education at their version of a sixth form college.
So I'll be having contact with all the different age ranges and currently the most difficult aspect for me is trying to work out the level of English they all have. And the secondary problem to that is the levels vary widely in each year range. There is a girl in grade 4 for example whose father is from Chicago and for this reason her English is wildly better than the others. So I think I'll be picking the best and putting them together, ranking groups according to their level of English.

Anyway, I have some photos of the school which is better than my words;

This is the street view of the school early in the morning.
Its a square building and you wouldn't notice it or even know it was a school if you weren't told or maybe the children weren't at the front door come 9 o'clock waiting for it to open.

A Piece of graffiti I'm guessing one of the students did as the school don't seem to mind in the slightest.

The street view of the school facing the Palau de Musica which is an amazing building and very famous in Barcelona. The next photos show off the splendour of its Art Nouveau façade, inspired of course by Gaudi but not actually built by the man. Here they have world-renowned musicians, mostly classical, but also some more "mainstream" acts.