Overall Reflection

I am finally back in the United States now. While the experience was amazing and I am very thankful that I had this opportunity, I am glad that I am home. This experience really taught me a lot. The students at St. Paul’s school were amazing and seemed to be much more well-behaved than students at most public schools in Kentucky. They also have much better penmanship by far. The fact that they are trilingual is still amazing, especially since they learn reading, writing, and math in their second language. However, I did not think the schedule for first grade was effective. I think children that age need a schedule that does not change constantly. They do not even receive math instruction daily. I never was able to adjust to the schedule of the class, as it was different daily. There are so many other classes and such that cannot be pushed to other times, which makes it hard to accomplish much during the day sometimes, and activities that should only take one class do not get finished for a whole week.
A lot of the teaching strategies that I saw were strategies that I’ve seen used routinely in Kentucky schools or that I have been taught at WKU. There were no big curriculum approaches that I took away from this experience. I would have liked to have seen them teach the students how to write in cursive though, because their handwriting is so neat. Even the sloppiest student’s handwriting isn’t very sloppy. That is one thing that students in America struggle with. I think that the students at St. Paul’s value education more than students in Kentucky because their parents do. I think that causes students in Spain to try a little harder and put forth more effort.

The school was everything I thought it would be and the children were very smart and well-behaved as I thought they would be. I did not really encounter anything I didn’t expect to. Thank you WKU for giving me this experience!