News of Monday’s off-timetable Arts’ Day was welcome now that teaching responsibilities are in full flow, and while it turned out that an 8am English lesson still had to be taught, the rest of the day was testament to the companionable ethos of the school.
The day was split up into three hour-long sessions: literature, art and music, and for each session the students had been able to chose from three texts, paintings or pieces. This meant that one student might spend her day looking at Romeo and Juliet, Picasso and Carmen, meanwhile I spent my time with Scheherazade, Velásquez and Beethoven. Finally, according to these choices, every secondary school pupil was paired with a primary school one (and had to personally pick up their smaller half from their form room and escort them hand-in-hand around the school).
I thought at this point that I’d witnessed the height of the day’s cuteness; my most troublesome 6ft-something 16 year-olds cracking a smile with their teeny tiny cherubic wards, but I was mistaken.
These 4 year-olds sat, legs swinging, unable to touch the ground, hands raised in order to share their thoughts on Las Meninas and no one for a second behaved as though their opinions were any less valuable than those of their gruffer teenage counterparts. Arts’ Day was a beautiful thing.
On Tuesday, Colegio Sagrada Familia once again showered itself in glory as I was introduced to Interactive Group sessions. This is where volunteers - be those semi-retired teachers, ex-students or slightly confused Londoners - come into the classroom and run a 12 minute activity with a small group of students. After the 12 minutes, the volunteers rotate and by the end of the lesson all of the students will have completed 5 activities. The logic behind this system is that, given the 30 strong classes, Interactive Group sessions are a rare opportunity to guarantee that 95% of the class will be engaged and learning, and, unsurprisingly, the sessions don’t go down too badly with the students either.
Wednesday rolled round and so did a full-timetabled day, but the domestic goddesses that are Hollie and Natalia wiped away any dreary Hump Day sentiment with an all homemade spread of salsa, guacamole and fajitas - vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Obviously there are advantages to Coruña catered dorm living, but when sat round that kitchen table, swapping teaching stories and complimenting cooking, the self-catered apartment style doesn’t seem beatable.
Thursday was a fairly unremarkable day, save for the fact that my sparkly dinosaur stickers were rejected by some 16 year-old boys. Outrageous, I know, but it’s all ok - they accepted my smily foam faces instead.
I’ll leave Friday for the weekend blog.
P.S. having a name that means ‘until’ in Spanish causes even more confusion than you would expect - avoid if possible.
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