No Nos Gusta Me Gusta Spanish School

Sucre, Bolivia’s capital, is a beautiful town of white-washed colonial buildings and pretty plazas. It is also a well-known place to study Spanish and after six months on the road, we felt it was time to broaden our knowledge of the language.

There were many schools to choose from and we based our decision on the school that promised flexible, customised learning to meet the identified needs of the individual student, where total immersion rather than coursework was the main focus of the learning experience.

For me, having worked as a primary teacher for the past seven years, it was going to be a different experience to assume the role of student and attend daily classes. Here’s what I learnt by attending this particular Spanish school.

Walking to Spanish school on Monday, Matt and I were like little children on our first day of school: we were excited, keen and eager to learn new things. In the principal’s office, we completed a written test and were assigned to different classes based on our results.

Classes began that afternoon and unfortunately, my enthusiasm faded after the first hour. My teacher copied notes from her notebook onto the whiteboard and we students were expected to copy them down. When giving examples for a particular point, she didn’t seek any input from us, she simply copied out the examples from her notebook. By doing so, she missed a great opportunity to get to know her students and understand what we already knew about the Spanish language. After all, there were only two of us in the class.

After two hours of coursework, we had two hours of practical – the principal explained this would be the real life application of our new knowledge. I looked forward to this, hoping I would finally get the chance to speak and practise putting new sentences together.

Alas, it was not to be.  In my practical session, I was required to complete three worksheets. None of these required us to apply any of the “new knowledge” we’d covered in the coursework lesson.  Plus, one was the exact same exercise I’d been asked to complete in Spanish school EIGHT years ago in Cusco, Peru. The session finished with our homework assignment – eight more worksheets!

After four hours of class, most of which was in English, I still had not had the opportunity to practise speaking Spanish. This was not total immersion.

I returned to school on Day Two with high hopes: surely the teacher would realise that we were an intermediate group and would stop teaching basic content. It didn’t happen. Our completed homework was greeted with a cursory glance: no interest, no feedback, no discussion. She then launched into her second round of basic grammar. I switched off.

I found myself making the same complaints that others have sometimes aimed at my profession: I felt my teacher had made no effort to get to know me or understand me as a learner; she had no idea of the knowledge I was bringing to her classroom and made no effort to record evidence of anyone’s learning as we proceeded through the lesson.

After eight hours of teaching, both Matt and I had learnt very little. We decided to drop out.

So, I learnt some important lessons from my Spanish school. My experience of being a student reaffirmed all that I have learnt about quality teaching, student engagement and authentic learning tasks (worksheets are rarely the tools of flexible, customised learning!). I hope it is a lesson I never forget.

Posted by Fiona

PS: Not all was lost – we had a great time in and around Sucre. Here are some photos and stories of our time there. More photos and galleries can be found here.

Celebrating six months on the road in Sucre, Bolivia.

The streets of Sucre.

In Sucre, zebras teach the public how to cross the road safely…..by stopping and having a chat in the middle of the street.

Bolivians have a sweet tooth.

‘Ll’ is pronounced as a ‘y’ in Spanish.

We were in awe of these stunning textile artworks produced by some Bolivia’s poorest communities. The traditional designs go back many centuries.

At Tarabuco textile market we made a purchase from this artist.

The place to be after school in Sucre. No Playstations here.

We caught up with Claudia and Thomas, a Swiss couple we met four months ago at the motorbike travellers’ clubhouse in Azul, Argentina.

We walked a pre-Incan road to explore some of the amazing scenery outside of Sucre.

Nearby was Maragua Crater with a small village is located inside.

The magnificent mask museum. Masks play a major part in Bolivia’s numerous folklore festivals.

Pizza night at our hostel – the wood fire oven is blazing (top left).

The roads out of Sucre were blockaded by protesting locals. They wouldn’t even let an ambulance through and the Police advised roads would be blocked all day. Luckily, the ambulance driver knew an alternative route and showed us the way. The back roads were steep, slippery pebbled roads and unpaved tracks. In the end, this route was blocked too. After much deliberation and consultation with other locals, it was decided we could pushed our bikes through this blockade. One hour after leaving our hostel, we were out of Sucre. Not bad as Bolivian blockades go!

Fione showing 10 fingures and 5 toes. We officially hit 15,000km just outside of Sucre.