Mermaid on Land

If there is one thing I have discovered post-grad it is that just because you're not at school anymore does not mean you stop learning. In fact, I'm convinced the learning begins in earnest after graduation. As I was reflecting on the three weeks I've spent at Montclar, I realized that I have already learned more from the kids than I will ever be able to teach them. Before telling what I've learned from each age group, I'll explain how the classes are separated.  P0-P5 is preschool--P0 is for babies who are not yet 1 year old, babies in P1 are 1 year old, toddlers in P2 are 2 years old, and so on. Primary school is exactly what we would think of as 1st-6th grade. ESO stands for  Enseñanza Secundaria Obligatoria (in English Obligatory Secondary School). The students in 1st-4th of ESO are the same age as students in 7th-10th grade in the States. However, the curriculum of ESO is much more similar to high school than to middle school. Students in batxillerat...

Hello From the Other Side (Of the Pond) My wanderlust has gotten the better of me and I find myself thousands of miles away from home once again. This time I am in Igualada, Spain. It is a town of about 40,000 people and is an hour (by car) outside of Barcelona.  It has been a little over two weeks since I got on a plane to travel across the world so I can teach English as a second language. I have been called brave for diving into this new part of my life head on, but the truth is I hardly slept the night before my first day of school.   Being that I have a degree in Spanish and I have been around the language my whole life, I would like to say that there has been no language barrier but that just isn’t true. In this part of Spain, Spanish (Castellano) is rarely spoken. Catalan is the preferred language of Catalunya. However, everyone who speaks Catalan also speaks Castellano and kids learn Castellano at school. My host family usually speaks Catalan...