Lucrezia from Ireland. I definitely don’t regret doing this programme and I highly recommend it to anyone trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be.

Lucrezia 

Irish

Vilafranca del Penedès 

Assisting teachers with pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. Planning and completing activities/games with classes, teaching new songs in English, helping the teacher with markings, helping students if they have questions. The relationship with the teachers is professional with many teachers being very kind and friendly with me, they are very open and honest and easy to talk to. The relationship with the students is good, most students enjoy having me in their classes. 

My host family has made me feel very welcome, allowing me to feel like I’m home. Some activities we’ve done together are going to the beach, the aquarium, funfair, and a BBQ lunch. We have tried to plan other activities such as visiting neighbouring cities, but it’s been a bit difficult as my host family is quite busy, even on weekends. 

Overall, my experience so far has been positive, I’m happy I took the chance to do this programme. It is very rewarding in the sense that you learn a lot about yourself, develop new skills, meet new people, you develop an interest in a new culture and language and potential career path. My current experience has outweighed my prior expectations, although it hasn’t been perfect, it is still something I’d do again if I had the chance.

This programme definitely changes and improves you both personally and professionally, you acquire or develop skills and get the opportunity to meet new people and learn a new culture and language. You get the opportunity to see how much personal growth you make throughout this experience; you learn about your capabilities as a teacher and the challenges they face when teaching a language such as English. It is fun and exciting being involved in students’ daily school life and being a part of their education for a few months. 

My advice for future voluntary speakers coming to Vilafranca is to keep an open mind. Especially if they are coming from a big city, coming to a somewhat remote town such as Vilafranca can be a big change and might take some time getting used to. It is a nice and peaceful town, I’ve encountered many friendly locals and workers in shops, cafes and restaurants. The town is known for their production of Wine so there is a really cool museum in the town centre called Vinseum which is all about the history of wines and its production in the region of Catalonia. Right in front of the museum there is the main church of the town called Santa Maria, the people of Vilafranca are quite religious and it is a beautiful church to visit if interested. On Saturdays, there is a big market with stalls around the town centre for a few hours and they sell everything from clothes and shoes to fruit and vegetables etc. As a coffee and pastries lover, Vilafranca has plenty! There are really nice coffee shops that do perfect cups of coffee and really nice pastries to go with it. I recommend going to a coffee shop called Enrich, with has great coffee, croissants, paninis, and really nice staff. Vilafranca is also known for their human tower contests or as they call them Castellers, they train about 3 or 4 times a week and there is a space with a little museum dedicated to it that you can visit. Depending on the time of year, there are a lot of events happening in the town. I happened to be here to experience Sant Jordi, which was really fun, on the day there is the tradition of giving books to boys and roses to girls. The train station is very close to the town centre and the train connecting Vilafranca to Barcelona is the R4 which runs twice every hour, it’s also very handy to get to a lot of other neighbouring cities such as Sitges, Calafell, Tarragona and Reus. 

My advice for future voluntary speakers working at the Vedruna Vilafranca school would be to make sure you do a little bit of research on the school first (taking a look at their website and social media page) and come prepared with a presentation about yourself(with a lot of information about yourself, hobbies, where you come from, pictures etc.) and some materials and ideas for activities to do with the classes (even a list of games will do). Communication with your tutor is super important. The school has students from ages 3 to 16 so a big range of activity ideas is needed. Some teachers might ask you to be involved in preparing activities so researching on Google for ideas is key. The school provides a lunch for the teacher’s everyday so make sure they are aware of any food allergies and dietary requirements etc. the class schedule is very handy and easy to get used to with a 2-hour lunch break and some breaks between classes everyday. Most students are really friendly and happy to have you in their school so they will get super curious and want to know everything about you. 

My advice for future Voluntary Speakers in regarding living with a host family is to make sure you respect their home and boundaries as well as have your boundaries if necessary. Overall, living with my host family has been positive and I enjoy being in their home and I was welcomed as a member of the family and made super comfortable. The first couple of weeks were great and I was getting used to their routines etc. the child of the family is 5 years old and the separation of his parents was difficult for him which is completely understandable (I was paired with a single mum with shared custody) so the boy has a very strong emotional and physical attachment to his mom and was not willing to be open to the idea of other people especially strangers in his home and around his mum. This is my host family’s first time participating in this kind of programme and my host mum agreed to participate to help improve both of their English-speaking skills. As of now (6 weeks into this programme) the host family has planned a few activities such as a day at the beach, the town funfair and an aquarium visit. Myself and the host mum have spoken about organising other activities.

A lot of great moments happened at the school and I will look back fondly at my time there, but some highlights are: my first week at the school when I was just getting to know everyone and I was getting lost all time, both teachers and students never hesitated to help me and from the beginning they were all so nice and welcoming. In some of my classes, when the students see me, they know we’ll be playing a game/activity, so they get excited and are so happy to see what I have planned for them. A few other best moments would be when I’d embark on little solo day trips on weekends exploring what Catalonia has to offer, for example, I visited Sitges, Tarragona and Blanes to name a few and they are such lovely places.

I definitely don’t regret doing this programme and I highly recommend it to anyone trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be. I always had an interest in teaching, but I never thought I’d be capable enough to do it so this experience as a Voluntary Speaker has taught me so much about leading a classroom and learning how to make learning languages fun for students. As someone who has never lived abroad before, I can honestly say it was a great decision and thought me more about independence and what I want to do from here on out.