Over the last few months I’ve been living near Barcelona, Spain, in the small town of Olesa de Montserrat, where I also work at the Escolapies School as the English speaking assistant through the CAPS Home to Home organization.
The experience so far has been great, I’ve lived in 2 homes already. The first was the home of 4 of my students. This immersed me in the culture and language of the country as well as the more mundane day to day living. The greatest aspect of this was being able to communicate with my students on their opinion of my classes and gain feedback. The second house, and my current home, is the house of another teacher whom I work with and her family. It’s been a rewarding experience, once again being immersed in the same culture from a different point of view, the most important aspect of this was to have another teacher to consult with regularly, someone who was in the same profession as I was, however someone who was more experienced and new the inner workings of the school.
The job itself has been so rewarding to improve on my teaching techniques and knowledge of the mechanics. The school is run perfectly. I notice it’s a very rigid studious school environment, however Escolapies also takes a very artistic liberalized approach to its teaching very similar to the Montessori schools and their teaching philosophy.
My only words of advice for a family who wishes to host a language assistant is that it helps to have at the very least a basic understanding of English as it can be trying when a language barrier exists. It’s also noteworthy that in northern Spain other languages exist alongside Spanish this includes Basque, Catalan, and Gallego and even though they’re relatively similar and all have Latin origin it can still confuse you if you come to northern Spain (Barcelona area) expecting a total Spanish environment like Madrid and its surrounding area.
In a couple of weeks I move to my new host family. Everything has been great so far and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants the experience of a lifetime.
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