AuxMadrid Portfolio

Three months in and everything is still going smoothly. My transition from living in the Canary Islands to Madrid has been incredible. Although I miss the sunshine, warm weather, the beach, and of course the friends I made while there Madrid has been great. There is so much to do and see, I have been so busy between work and my social life its hard to keep up sometimes. Work has also continued going well. I have watched my children´s English improve each day and I feel a close bond with them as well. We have formed a great relationship and they really listen to me and respect me. My relationship with the teachers that I work with as well as the other teachers at my school has continued to grow. I feel very supported here which is a nice change of pace. I would really like to renew here in Madrid and at the same school next year. I hope they will have me. We also just had our first class trip. It was also my first time being allowed to participate. At my past schools I was always se...

I am two months in now and everything is going well. The main reason everything is going so well is that my team has great communication. I think communication is the key to success. The teachers that I work with have weekly meetings with me to discuss how our lessons are going, how we can improve and what we need to plan or prepare for the upcoming week. They have also provided me with the sylabus for each subject that I am working with. This helps immensely because I now know what we will be teaching throughout the year and I have time to think and plan things for us to do in class. These are two things that I didn´t have while being an Auxiliar in the Canary Islands. I never knew what we were teaching nor did I have meetings to coordinate with the teachers that I worked with. This has been a huge improvement for me. So far this school year has been the best yet.

So I started work on the first day of October. My first day was pretty easy. It started with a tour of the school and being introduced to the teachers and staff. This is my school´s first year as a bilingual school and everyone was very excited to meet me. Since it was the school´s first year as a bilingual school I am the only Auxiliar becuase they are introducing the new program to the first grade and each year it will grow one grade level. I have worked with first graders in the past and enjoyed it, also all of the teachers and staff were very welcoming and friendly. I was off to a great start. Working with only one grade is great! It has really allowed me to get to know each student individually and its much easier to remember names haha. Both teachers that I am working with are amazing. They are very helpful and we have a good working relationship. They understand that I am an assistant and not a teacher which is amazing. We are a good team and help each other and evenly share c...

I arrived in Madrid at the end of September, excited to start the new school year. This is my third year as an Auxiliar, but my first year in Madrid. Previously I was living in the Canary Islands on Gran Canaria. I traded the island life for the city life and was curious to see how different the two would be. Getting settled was a bit of struggle, only because the apartment hunt was insane. I literally saw 20 different apartments in five days, but I finally found an apartment in the city center just 30 minutes by Metro to my new school. I was extremely lucky and was placed at a school within the city limits. Already I was having good luck which made me feel optimistic about the upcoming school year. The previous two years my schools were in very small towns. During my time in Gran Canaria, I worked in three different schools. I had some very good experiences, but also some very bad ones. Two of the schools were amazing, but one was pretty bad. The school in general didn´t have many...