Comenius Visit to Spain November 2011

Melody Valois, Lauren McCann and Freda Eyden

In which parts of Europe do our Comenius partners live?

Santander Spain

Liepaja, Latvia

Antalya, Turkey

How did we get to Santander?

First, we flew to Bilbao, a city in northern Spain

We were met by teachers from our Spanish partner school, who drove us

from Bilbao to Santander

Our partner school in Spain is called Colegio San Juan Bautista – La Salle

This is John Baptist de la Salle. He set up the first La Salle Institute in France in the 17th

Century.

There are now La Salle schools in 85 countries throughout the world.

• John Baptist de la Salle set up his first school to help the children of the poor to learn simple reading, writing and arithmetic. They were also taught Christianity.

• During his lifetime and beyond, his model of schools for the poor spread from France to many other countries.

• Their teachers were, and still are, called ‘brothers’, even though women have played a major part for many years.

The school is in a small village about 1 hour’s train ride from Santander

Here we are on the morning of day one, arriving at Los Corrales de Buelna to visit the school for

the first time.

What a surprise! We didn’t expect to see lots of little cats in the school grounds!

We were made to feel very welcome

The Headmaster and the local Mayor greeted us at our first meeting

The Mayor of Los Corrales

The Headmaster making a speech in English

We all exchanged presents and flags!

Miss McCann loved the Turkish sweets!

Then it was time to get down to business!

During our three days together, we talked about…

• The education system in each country• Special features of the culture in each country• Projects we could work on together• How we would stay in touch with each other• Setting targets and dates• Future visits to the other three countries

Each day we walked through the village to a small restaurant for lunch

Here’s what we saw on the way…

The food was lovely – what would you choose?

We went for a short walk around Los Corrales. Here’s what it looks like…

This part of the school is in a different part of the village

Here are some of the youngest pupils learning English – they were very good!

Here are some of the older Primary children. Have you noticed that they don’t

wear school uniform?

They have the same rules as we do!

The school is bright and cheerful

Does this remind you of anywhere?

Here are some of the pupils’ drawings for the Comenius project …

Everywhere there are signs in three languages; Spanish, English and French

The LibraryThe Headteacher’s

Office

We thought we could copy this idea and have signs in English, Spanish, Turkish and Latvian in all of our

‘Cultural Jigsaw’ schools.

On St Cecilia’s Day, we were invited to a special music assembly

The children had prepared some words and a famous

local musician sang and played lots of musical

instruments

We visited the older pupils in the Secondary school.

They learn how to work with electricity…

… and how to repair cars!

On the last morning of our visit, we gave our Spanish friends a present and a special card to

thank them for their kind hospitality

Here is a picture of the whole team

Here’s looking forward to making more friends on the next trip – to Turkey!

We were each given a special ‘Cultural Jigsaw’ certificate

Before we left Santander, we had a quick look at the town. Here’s what we saw…

Our last day…

Hasta la vista!