Final Goodbye to Madrid!

So this past week I had my last day at Colegio La Salle in Madrid, Spain.  I will miss my students and the wonderful teachers I worked with very much.  I wanted to write this post to reflect on my time student teaching abroad and recognize the value it has added to my experience.

Over the course of 4 months, we have been living, learning, and teaching in a foreign country.  There have been many obstacles in the process of assimilating into a new community, such as making new friends, cultural differences, language barriers, and a whole new educational experience.  Gaining more and more insight every day here, I have been able to immerse myself in the Spanish culture and learn how to live in whole new place.  Although I've worked through different obstacles in my everyday life here in Madrid, one thing that has stayed constant throughout my time was the time I spent at Colegio La Salle every Wednesday.  Each week I could look forward to going into school on Wednesday, have two periods of one on one english instruction, and two of full class teaching and observation.  I had a routine.  This routine has be an integral part of why my abroad experience has been so great.

Through my time in my international practicum, I delved deeper into the real everyday life of a Spanish student.  I experience a different style of school.  Colegio La Salle was a semi private/catholic school where students paid half and the other subsidized by government.  The school was semi bilingual in that the elementary students were taught bilingual in English and Spanish and the secondary students were taught primarily in Spanish and had English class 3 times a week.  I was really impressed at the level of English most of the students had.  Of course, we had students who struggled, or those who were new to the school, but majority speaking in my opinion the students were nearly bilingual.  Those from elementary grades to the high school I felt all had this way in which they could interchange between Spanish and English nearly seamlessly. I observed classroom management in Spain.  I noticed cultural differences in ways of respect between teachers and students.  The Spanish students were given a lot more freedom I believe than in the US.  They had less discipline and more disrespect was shown to the teachers.  From my observations it seemed as though as students got older, their behavior worsened.  These cultural differences were eye opening to me and gave me grand insight for my own knowledge of how to teach in the US.

All of my experiences in my international practicum have added to my toolbox of skills in which I can use in classrooms in the US.  I am more culturally aware and linguistically capable of communicating even when there is a language barrier.  I learned how to connect with students of diverse backgrounds, knowing that this is possible ever without a common language or culture.  I am so happy I completed this practicum, it added to my overall experience immensely.  I hope everyone felt they made an impact in their experience and gained valuable skills to bring into classrooms back home, as I feel I did.