Information Sheet for Coming Language Assistants
Dear language assistant,
Are you curious about what it's really like to be a language assistant in Estepa?
If this post gives you a general overview of what our school and town have to offer, don't miss the opportunity to dive deeper into a real-life experience. 👉 Read Neil’s story in our next entry: “Life as an Auxiliar de Conversación in Estepa: A Unique Cultural and Educational Experience”.
Discover how one of our former language assistants became part of our community, both inside and outside the classroom—from singing in the local choir and playing volleyball to helping in class and travelling around Spain. Neil’s experience captures the heart of what makes Estepa such a special place to live and teach.
We would like to warmly welcome you to this entry, specially written for
you. We hope that it gives you a flavour of the vast range of activities that
the students and staff are involved in within IES Ostippo. I hope that some of
the energy, commitment, hard work and fun that are part of everyday life in our
school are evident throughout this entry.
Enjoy your visit!
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First, let me give you some information about our beloved school. It is at the top of a cute hill in Estepa, Estepa is a quite
typical Andalusian town, surrounded by fields and fields of olive trees,
crowned by a beautiful mountain and with some beautiful sightseeing spots. In
Spain, Estepa is well-known for its
popular Chritsmas Sweets and the excellent quality of its olive oil.
If you are interested in living the real Andalusian experience, this is the place to come.
By coming to live to a
town, and not a larger city, you will be able to get an authentic Spanish immersion which is quite difficult to get
if you are living in a big city .
You can watch a video of one of the
Scavenger Hunts we have played in town. You will be able to take a peek at our
village.
Also, living
in Estepa is much easier economically
speaking, since you won’t need any kind of transportation to move around and
the rents are much cheaper than in Seville, Córdoba and Málaga.
Estepa is well connected to those cities since we have
a motorway leading directly to them and as language assistants have to work
just four days a week, they can devote the long weekends to visit the big
cities nearby.
What are the
options available with respect to accommodation? Usually we help our assistants
find accommodation, by either sharing a flat with other languages assistants,
or living on their own.
Another
advantage of choosing our school is that some of our auxs eat at the canteen of
the Primary School next door. They help the teachers by serving food to the
kids and then after the kids' shift they have lunch with the teachers (which
provides them with a great opportunity to socialise and to practise their
Spanish).
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| Taylor, Katie, Eleanor, Ana (the Bilingual Coordinator) and Francis (our maths teacher) learning to make Christmas Sweets |
And how is
life in Estepa once you are happily settled? Well, language assistants have to
coordinate with the ANL Teachers and prepare the lessons and some material but,
apart from that, you are going to have quite a lot of free time in your
evenings. So, here are some leisure activities we suggest(which by the way are
mostly free and some may even help you make an extra income). Here we go:
· Do you play any musical instrument?
There is a quite active concert band in Estepa. They prepare some concerts
during the year. Apart from the concert band, there is a music school, so you
may as well register for some lessons (they are not free but you just have to
pay like 50 euros for the whole year)
· Do you like sports? Basketball?
Football? Tennis? Paddle? Skateboarding? You can practise any of these sports
at the Sports Centre (which is almost touching our school) and other local
facilities. Some of our former assistants have attended some basketball
practice and they really enjoyed it. They also used to go hiking quite a
lot. There is a broader selection of
sports so if you are interested in learning more, just let us know and we will
“investigate”!.
· Do you like reading? Our librarians
Dámasa and Manolo will be delighted to get you a Library Card and to show you
the library collection. You can borrow up to four books for two weeks. Reading
children’s and young adults literature in Spanish will help you improve your
Spanish a lot.
· Seeing movies? We have a cute cinema
where movies are shown at a very competitive price (4 euros).
· Do you like playing with children? Do
you like teaching? Do you like money? Many of our assistants have earned some
extra money tutoring children at the children’s houses. Kate and Helena used to
play with them: sometimes she prepared a game or a craft activity, other times
she would read them a book, play with dolls, make Christmas cookies…George and
Tailor preferred tutoring teenagers so they would have conversation classes,
work with songs, review for a test…
Would you like to take a peek inside our school? Here
you have two videos my students recorded last year to show you
our high school and a virtual tour of our Annex building: Welcome to the AnnexBuilding
Our High school website is www. iesostippo.es/ , our IG accounts are https://www.instagram.com/iesostippo/ and https://www.instagram.com/ourenglishcornerostippo/ and our Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/iesostippo/ . You can also have a look at them to get an
insight of the school.
Also, We
think it may be of your interest to have a look at the following documents.We
hope you find them useful
- The school calendar for this year. Apart from the holidays that you can see in
this document, there is no school on the 16th of May because of a local
festivity "La Octava de los Remedios "( It's is really popular in our
town). We also have two or three more
days off but the dates have to be decided by the local Educational Authorities
at the beginning of each school year..
- The
bilingual planning. By having a look at it you will be able to get a good
insight into our project (I’m sorry it is not in English. This document was
originally intended for the Principal and the Headteacher) especially the
subjects that take part in it.
-
A “Welcome Pack” document
(this one in English) with some useful tips, a description of our centre, an
explanation of your task as a language assistant…
Well, dear assistant. That’s
all by now, but there is so much more to tell! Stay tuned to our social media
to learn more about us. We are constantly preparing fun activities and projects.
Of course, please feel free to email us, If you would like to get in touch.
We are looking forward
to hearing from you!
Best wishes!
The bilingual programme
team.
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