Colegio Limonar

Having been in Spain for a little while now, I decided that I wanted to volunteer somewhere. I thought it would be a good opportunity to practice my Spanish and also meet Malagueños. After talking with my program director about specific places, I decided to volunteer at a school to help with the English classes.

The school is called Colegio El Limonar (Colegio means school that's usually for younger children and Limonar means lemon grove). The school is between where I live in El Palo and El Centro and I've clocked so if I have a reasonably fast bus driver and the bus isn't too crowded, I can get there in 8 minutes. The teacher I am working with is named Pilar and she is native to Spain (however we usually talk in English). I volunteer twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays. Fridays I am there for all of her classes (five in total).

(this is the administrative building, which used to be an old mansion)

The Spanish education system is set up very similarly to America's. The system is structured as so:

Educación Infantil- 3-6 years old

Educación Primaria 6-12 years old

Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO) 12- 16

Bachillerato 16-18 years old

School is compulsory through the ESO level. Colegio Limonar is an interesting school because is "concertado" meaning half-public half-private. This seemed weird to me at first, but if you look back at history, it makes sense. When Franco was in power, all of the schools were run by the state and very Catholic. When he died and the state became a democracy, the schools that wanted to keep the religious aspect had to become private. Since most did that, there was going to have to be a massive building effort for public schools. In order to avoid that, the government set up "concertado" schools. These schools are private, but the state will pay for anyone to attend through the ESO level. After that, if they want to continue, they will have to pay tuition. Because of this, the classes that I helped with at the ESO level were bulging with 30-40 kids per class. But the classes at the Bachillerato level were much more manageable with 15-20 students.

On an average day, I sit on the side of the classroom and read passages from books, help answer questions and sometimes do mini lessons. I have done lessons on English writing and American culture, such as slang, the college experience and the Pledge of Allegiance. One Friday when I went into school, Pilar was not there. I was told that she had a meeting with a friend and wouldn't be coming in at all. I was told that I should go to all her classes and help because the substitute that would be coming wouldn't speak English. I went to the first class (17 and 18 year olds) and did the mini-lesson on writing that I had prepared. By the time we finished, the substitute still had not arrived and the kids were asking to play games. We settled on hangman and we played in English to keep some educational aspect. It was really fun and funny because as advanced as the students were, they couldn't remember some letters of the alphabet!

As the day went on, the substitute never came and I went to all of her classes. It actually turned out to be really fun and the kids could understand me pretty well. The classes with the younger kids were sometimes difficult, and I even got a paper airplane thrown at me, but overall it was a great experience.

(school yard and academic building. ignore the writing, I found the picture on google)