Some comments from my first week

The school's very big, it has over a thousand students and it's very old as well. It's got a massive playground and they've actually recently lost a bit, which has been taken over for a park. The school is owned by nuns apparently. It's a large building, it's got lots of floors and stairs, students go there from primary to baccalaureate level.

The teachers have been friendly and the ones that can speak English have been trying to chat to me. My tutor took me to lunch with her on the first day, which was nice of her and it was good to meet other teachers at lunchtime. The staff room I go to is just for some secondary teachers, it was good to have the chance to mingle with other teachers at the school. The school's got a small staff dining room which serves hot food.

One surprising thing is, there are students with special needs in the normal classes but there's no teaching assistant or extra help. There's one student in one of my year 1 classes who has different work set for him to do, my tutor said he has the mental age of an 8 year old. Another student in the same class seems content playing with a scientific calculator while the others work. Will ask my tutor next week about him.

The students' level of English seems to be fairly low. My tutor asked me on the first day if I spoke Spanish. I said 'no' and she said 'well I give the instructions in Spanish!' :) This is for secondary students. They know 'hello' , and how to answer to 'how are you?' and if I ask or speak about anything else then they're a bit stumped. It could be my accent that they're just not used to. When I've been talking to them about what they're doing and correcting their writing, I get a sense at times that they might be copying from books and don't understand what they're writing. But anyhow, these are first impressions, will get to know a bit more next week.