Last week at School

I realised that as the school seemed to have lots of random days off and because my spanish was so very limited that I wasn't going to be able to do some activities with the kids as I had hoped. There was no way I could explain them to the children and the class teacher had her own planning. So I decided to just take in all the resources that I had brought with me and give them to the class teacher. I did this on the tuseday of the last week and she was so happy. She really appreciated everything I took and showed it to the supervisor the next day when she came round. She also planned an activity on the wednesday with some of the resources that I had brought, which really made them (and me) feel appreciated.

Because of the number of days the school had been closed (I was only in school for 10 of the 17 days I should have been and 2 of those were with a supply), I didn't really feel that I was contributing to anything. Until the last week. I think the irregularity played a factor, but there is another factor I believe had a hand. There are some volunteers, who once they arrive and get into a holiday mode lifestyle, they will sometimes just not bother to go in some days. When this happens, obviously the staff are let down. We are only volunteers, but they come to rely on us (or not, if they can't) and I realised the last week that it takes a while for the class teacher and children to build trust in a person. On the last day the teacher made a comment that it is always good to have volunteers, but some volunteers are great to have.

I think I went out there with larger aspirations than were possible with my limited spanish, the fact that I was only there for 4 weeks and the sheer amount of days the school was closed.

Once I had readjusted my views, I felt a lot less useless and the fact that the teacher bought me a leaving present and we had a huge cake on my last day really helped to change my views.

In the end I took a lot more, and felt that I had given a lot more to the volunteering than I was thinking I had in the middle of my time there. (picture of the class with their teacher and the cake!)