PERIOD: from 4th to 18th March 2018
RECEIVING SCHOOL: 21st Primary school of Athens “Lela Karagianni”
PARTICIPANT TEACHERS:
- Gema Mª Rubio Muñoz (school counselor and Secretary, CEIP San Julián – Cuenca).
- Rosalía García Ruiz (kindergarten teacher, CEIP San Fulgencio – Albacete).
- Herminia Romero Diaz (primary teacher, CRA Los Almendros – Carcelén).
It´s so difficult to express how wonderful the experience in Lela Karagianni School has been. It has been the best job experience of our lives.
We are going to try to do a summary of our job shadowing in Athens which it has been a huge experience and very difficult to express with words.
Our flight arrived at Athens airport on Saturday 3ed of March. When we arrived, Mikel and Maria, two teachers from Lela Karagianni School, were waiting for us at the airport. They picked us up and showed us a bit of Athens. Afterwards they companied us to our apartment.
We are very glad with the teachers for their hospitality. They showed us Athens, the school and they helped us a lot.
We were for two weeks visiting the Lela Karagianni School. Lela Karagianni is a public school situated in Athens, the capital of Greece. It´s close to the city center, in a depressed area, where most of residents are immigrants and refugees. Some of them are refugees from Iran, Irak and Siria Therefore; most of the pupils are not native.
During our job shadowing we visited different grades, classrooms, subjects, etc. As well, we participated in different educational activities (inside and outside the school). We even went with the children to watch “Don Quijote de la Mancha” and we visited another school in the same area.
We learnt different methodology. Some of them use classic method and other use personal and alternative method. For example, the tutor of 1st grade teaches to his pupils with a very dynamic method. He plays the violin while he is teaching, and the pupils pay more attention and the lessons are more interactive.
IF WE COMPARE THE SCHOOL WITH OUR SPANISH SCHOOLS, we think that, in general, the school that we visited doesn´t have too many material resource but we were very surprised because the teachers were really involved, they work very hard, they love their job and the pupils take advantage and looks very interested.
The Greek teachers told us that teach in a class, where most of the students are not native, is very difficult, especially for the language, because most of the students don´t speak Greek or English when they arrive to the school. In spite of it, the majority of them are very good students.
IF WE COMPARE THE GREEK EDUCATION SYSTEM WITH THE SPANISH ONE, we think that we share a lot of thing (period, levels, interests, worries…).
However we think that there are some differences, for example about special education. In Athens doesn´t exit the school counselor like a role inside the school. There is an external professional, a philologist, who evaluates the students, but it´s an optional resource and the families have to decide if they want to use it or not.
Other difference that we observed was the timetable. They have three break times and we think that it´s a great idea, because when the students came back to the classroom they were motivated to the new lesson, while our Spanish students looks tired after three or four lessons without breaks to play, run or time to disconnect.
In addition to this wonderful and useful experience at the school, we visited the most important and famous places and monuments in Athens like the Acropolis, and we spent a very nice day with Greek teachers.
To sum up it was a WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE!