We had Year Nines to start off with first thing, and for this class, we wanted to focus on theatre. With our project we wanted to focus on different aspects of Creative Writing, so we decided o focus on:
- Characters
- Writing a Story
- Adapting a Story
They all made their characters and wrote their stories using their characters (but for this exercise Year Nines would be using the story they made up yesterday as they got through work and exercises a lot faster than we anticipated).
For this exercise, we firstly explained what they were going to do, and we told them to imagine that they were watching the story they wrote on stage; how could they imagine it looking? Where were their characters standing? What were they wearing? What did the stage look like?
We put a list on the board of what they should think about;
- Set
- Props
- Costumes
- Lighting
- Sound
We asked them to go through this list and to write what they would need or how they would imagine each of these items would look on stage.
The students all got really into it really fast, they discussed in their groups together and the seemed to find the exercise really interesting and they all put a good bit of effort into it.
When they finished, they all read out their lists and explained it.
After everyone had read out their list, Jass and I walked around the room and gave every student (and their teacher) a booklet we typed, printed, and stapled together, that had all the work they done over the past few weeks. In the booklet, there was all the characters they created, the prompts they used, and all the stories they wrote. Everyone was really happy to get this, they genuinely seemed to like it and they seemed excited to see their own stories written typed up inside of it.
Jass and I then thanked the students for being a great class, we said goodbye, and we headed off to Year Sevens.
For Year Sevens, we done the same thing again, we asked them to think of how they would put their stories on stage, and how the points above would be.
Like Year Nines, they got straight into their work, discussing excitedly how they would imagine it looking.
Once they were done, we got them to read them out, and like before, once again, we gave out booklets with all their work inside if it.
Again, the students really loved it, they opened them instantly to look for their own stories, and they were really excited about it (one student even came up to correct us on a spelling mistake in a characters name).
Like before, we thanked them and said our final goodbyes before heading to our very last class as teachers.
Year Eights class ended up being different than the other two, since their classroom is connected to the stage, and since the theatre was empty, we decided to bring them in so they could use the stage to imagine their play. However, some students asked if they could perform their story on stage for the rest of the class to see, we didn't have any problems with that, so rehearsals officially began. They split into their groups and went around to separate parts of the hall to start practicing. From every corner, there was laughter and talking and shouting as they excitingly rehearsed.
Nearing the end of class, they all went up group by group to perform their story. Each one was entertaining and quite funny, and both Jass and I (and even their teacher) were amazed about how quickly they were able to come up with a performance for their story in such a short period of time, and how they managed to make them so entertaining and well done.
We all applauded as the last group finished, and as with the other groups, we gave out their booklet with the collection of their work inside. As like before, the students were all really happy to be getting a memento of all the work they've done over the past few weeks.
Jass and I said our last goodbye to the students and the teachers and we left the school, officially finished our few weeks of being teachers.
As we walked home from the school, we reflected on the past few weeks teaching in the school. It has honestly been a once in a lifetime opportunity, we've gotten so much great experience from teaching the kids, and learning from the kids also. As well as gaining new writing ideas and experience from them. All of the teachers told us that the work we've done was really great and that all the students have been really enthusiastic about the project as it went along. While there were so many positives from this experience, there were also many challenges. One of the biggest challenges we have faced has definitely been the language barrier. While the students all spoke really good English, at times it was still hard to understand them, and sometimes they didn't know how to word things correctly. Although we weren't the only ones with some difficulty understand, the students sometimes didn't understand what we were saying, we had to get into the habit of speaking slower and pronouncing our words more clearly. These are all challenges we overcame throughout the few weeks (well, apart from the last day as I lost my voice and once again, I was hard to understand, whoops.) Teaching in the school was probably the best opportunity either of us has ever gotten, we are so grateful that we got to experience something so wonderful and that we got to be apart of these students creative journey. It has made both me and Jass think if teaching is something we would actually want to pursue in our futures.
We both came over expecting to learn a little bit of Spanish, a few phrases here and there, but that proved to be wrong. Neither of us learned any new phrases, we learned a handful of words (the word for credit card, and perhaps) the only Spanish words or phrases we do know are the ones we learned previous to coming over. However, we did become very good at interpreting what people were saying when we didn' understand them, this happened especially when we were ordering food and whatnot.
Being over here has been a real culture shock. We had to get used to the way of life over here, which is much different than in Ireland. One thing we never really did get used to is the Siesta, having shops close from three to five daily was strange, I can't count how many time we tried to go buy something just to find all the shops closed. A good cultural difference that we came to enjoy is Tapas, whenever you order a drink over here, you're giving a little plate of food (although we didn't really order much drink apart from the first three days). While not really a cultural difference, we both were shocked by the way roads worked over here, in Alpedrete, there was not one traffic light anywhere, and zebra crossings don't seem to work the same way as in Ireland, and when we did find traffic lights in Madrid, there were no buttons to press on them, weird.
Through all these language barriers and cultural differences, we've learned a lot about this country and ourselves. We were given this great opportunity to teach and explore and whilst we done all of that we also learned a lot about ourselves and each other. We both feel that getting to take part in Erasmus and getting to come over here to Spain, has been the best experience of our lives. We are so grateful that we were chosen and trusted to do the work and make sure that we did a good project for the students.
We are both going to miss being over here, we've gotten very accustomed to our way of life, and we really are going to miss the amazing times and the amazing experiences we had.
We are now looking forward to enjoying our last day in Alpedrete before we say goodbye.
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