My third week at school...

On Monday, the 5th of November, we had class with the split group of 4t.ESO. Their work for that day was to bring information on a city. Since most of them come from other countries, it was a good idea so that the rest of the class could know a bit more about their hometowns. In some cases, I felt that children didn’t want to hear about their countries anymore or they didn’t remember that much and so some worked on Barcelona, a neighbourhood or a city they’ve visited.

They had the tourist information in Spanish and during these two hours we helped them write in English. We didn’t want them to translate the information they had into English but write very clear and simple things on their city, following the Spanish pattern. Some of them didn’t bring anything, so as we had the computers in class, we gave them the possibility to look for it.

What they had to do for the following day was to find photos, maps, pictures or anything, and write it out neatly at home so that they could hand it to the teacher in order to correct it before the oral presentation.

We did other exercises from the course book during that week, reviewed the comparatives and superlatives and agreed to make the oral presentation in front of the class next Monday, in the split hour.

That week we also did the first “guàrdia”. Our tutor explained us what we were supposed to do and put it in practice the next day. During the “hores de guàrdia” teachers have to check that everything is under control in the building. No students are allowed to be in the corridors, no doors can be left open, and so on. So what we did first was to walk up and down the 4 floors, close doors and come back to the “sala de professors”. There we find that some students were kept in detention and had to do some assigned tasks, and so we stayed controlling them for the rest of the hour.

As days passed by and we got to know them better, we saw that although they seem to be bad students, they can do many things if you teach them how, or if you just help them and guide them. Nevertheless, you need to understand that behind those rebels misbehaving, there is a difficult background.