Submitted by Christen Coleman on the 2020 winter session program in Barcelona, Spain sponsored by the College of Education and Human Development…
The last two weeks of my study abroad program have been spent at the St. Peter’s School of Barcelona. The school is a private international school for students from 12 months to 18 years. On our first day at the school, we were given a tour and saw their nursery, preschool, and went through multiple grades’ classrooms. It was interesting to see toddlers walk through the hallway with their teachers as high schoolers passed by. I had the opportunity to observe a sixth grade classroom with a partner and work with the students one on one. As the days at the school went on, I grew to have a relationship with all the students in the classroom and learn about their interests.
It was interesting to work in an international school where students are from all over the world and switching between languages within conversations. The sixth grade students learn Spanish, Catalan, French, and have the option to learn German. The students were already fluent in English and Spanish and the language teachers taught the lessons fully in the language they were learning. For instance, the hour long Spanish class was taught all in Spanish and the teacher only spoke Spanish so the students translated so the teacher and I could understand one another. I felt I learned the most about the culture of Barcelona from being in the school surrounded by locals and learning new teaching perspectives. On our last day at school, our program had the chance to sit down with the school headmasters and some teachers and we had a discussion about St. Peter’s compared to American schools and suggestions we had from spending two weeks in their school. This experience was a highlight of my study abroad program and I hope to one day return to St. Peter’s School of Barcelona.