Real World Learning with Irene

In this episode of Nurturing Educators, we sit down with Irene, an experienced English teacher in Spain, to discuss the transformative impact of bilingual education and language immersion. Reflecting on five months of working together, we dive into how the bilingual programme operates on the ground and the invaluable role that international language assistants play in opening students' eyes to a world of diverse accents and cultures.

We explore why traditional textbooks simply cannot replicate the magic of real-world travel, student exchanges, and Erasmus projects. Irene shares inspiring stories of how breaking down classroom walls forces students to communicate out of necessity, turning English into a magnificent tool for global connection and even shaping their future university paths.

Finally, we shift the lens to teacher sustainability and mental health. Irene opens up about navigating the exhausting demands of long school terms and the heavy administrative workload, sharing the essential boundaries and lifestyle strategies—from yoga to mountain trekking—that keep her grounded and energised outside the classroom.

Hosted by Debbie Ross
Find us on Instagram & Facebook: @nurturingeducators

For more information, guest recommendations, and sponsorship opportunities 
or to chat, please email: nurturingeducators@gmail.com or visit  www.nurturingeducators.co.nz

Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

Debbie Welcome to Nurturing Educators, the podcast that shares inspiring and insightful conversations with passionate teachers dedicated to education and well-being. I'm your host, Debbie Ross, and each episode we will explore the personal story, challenges and successes of educators from all walks of life. You'll hear practical tips and strategies to help you thrive both in the classroom and beyond. Hello, everyone. Today we have the privilege of having Irene with us on the show.

Debbie Irene is a colleague who I have worked with these past five months in a school here in Spain. And we have the opportunity today to talk about her experiences teaching and also doing exchanges and trips with students. So welcome, Irene.

Irene Hello. Debbie has been a real privilege to have you with me for a short time. For a short time.

Debbie Hasn't been long enough.

Irene Yeah. Especially with this heatwave we are suffering this week in Spain. Teaching in these conditions. Yeah, these conditions is terrible.

Debbie 32 degrees, and plus it's not good. So would you just like to tell us a little bit about yourself?

Irene Okay. I am an English teacher. I've been teaching for a lot of years, more than 20. When I studied at the university, it was quite easy for me to decide what I was going to study because I always loved languages. Always.

Debbie Had you done any exchanges when you were at school?

Irene Not really. Unfortunately, they weren't so popular. What I did was work in England as an au pair.

Debbie Oh, amazing. How long did you do that for?

Irene I did it for three summers. But I must say that I've learnt much, much more later because it was simply working, looking after little kids. I don't know; perhaps there are people who have had better experiences, but I didn't.

Debbie So you learnt your English at the university here?

Irene So I learnt English at the university in Oviedo, which is near Leon. I should thank my teacher, my English teacher at school. I think the teachers are real role models. She was great, awesome. She was always helping me, giving me books to.

Irene To read. So English was my favourite. So I decided to do English at the university. The university at that time was a lot of English grammar, a lot of English literature, American literature, and a lot of phonetics. But I also participated in a university theatre.

Debbie Oh, wow. Cool.

Irene So, well, I realised that you could use English to communicate, which was great. When I finished university, I chose the easiest way out, which was to do the oppositions, what we do in Spain. My university was quite good, so it was really easy for me to pass the exams.

Debbie How long did it take you to get a job in Leon? Did you have to work in a few other schools?

Irene Yeah. Once you get your post, your permanent post for the state. Because I work for the state, you have to go through a long journey of being transferred to the places where the government needs you. But it was lucky. I was 60km from Leon, so I could commute every day.

Irene But it took me like 10 years to get to Leon.

Debbie I can't get my head around how different it is compared to the New Zealand way of doing things.

Irene Yeah, it's different. Right, because you are hired by your own school.

Debbie Right.

Irene But anyway, if I look back, I think that changing schools is good.

Debbie Yes, definitely. I think it's important.

Irene At those times, I didn't think it was a great idea because I was used to it, to my students, to the way schools work. But to me it has been really good. There was something that changed completely the way I teach today, and it was participating in a school in Leon, in the bilingual programme, like schools run by the British Council. So the United Kingdom sent teachers to Spain and we worked with them. So working with teachers from Britain and especially working with American assistants gave me a completely different way of working.

Irene Because in Spain we are too obsessed when teaching languages with grammar.

Debbie Grammar, yes, the old way of doing things. I think it's worldwide. Things have slowly been developed.

Irene Terrible, terrible. So working with Americans, they teach completely differently. Everything was practical; everything was like role-playing, caring and sharing with students. It really changed my way of teaching. And it was like 10 years ago.

Irene Now we're doing like different bilingual programmes. A bit different because we are not working with those teachers anymore. And at those times we had a lot of learning courses in London, even in Ireland, and I learned a lot there.

Debbie So how does the bilingual side of things work at your school? The program here?

Irene You mean now? Right. Basically, the students who choose it, because they can choose it, their parents really choose it for them. Normally they have three hours of English, but here in my school they have five hours of English, three in the morning.

Debbie That's why I noticed such a good level of English for your students when I came here. Sorry, continue. In the morning they have.

Irene In the morning they have three English lessons. In the afternoon they have two hours of what we call a workshop. Well, you know, because you've been working with me for listening and oral activities. It changes completely the way they learn English.

Debbie Yeah.

Irene And apart from that, they do, depending on the year, maths, music and technology in English.

Debbie: That's quite technical.

Irene language that they learn. Yeah, but. Well, it's awesome. Yeah, it's good. If you look at the students and if you listen to them.

Debbie Oh, that goes.

Irene But when they arrive in Primero de la Eso, they are lost. But then if you see them after. Well, I would say after a year the whole thing changes.

Debbie It's amazing. You guys are doing great work. And how have you always had language assistants?

Irene When we started these bilingual programmes, an assistant was compulsory in the first years when there was more money, a more interest on was like a state thing in old Spain. Now the communities work on it, and I have to say that we have less hours of an assistant. In fact, you've been sharing two schools, and I am completely against it.

Debbie Yeah, you need the more hours just for one school.

Irene I used to have in the first years, two assistants and one student.

Debbie What are some of the benefits? Like they listen to different accents. What else?

Irene I will tell you, I've had assistants from America, England, Ireland, New Zealand this year, Australia once, Philippines, India.

Debbie Wow.

Irene Amazing all over. And what is really incredible is the way students react to those different accents because they don't realize it's a different English. They just adjust to it, which is the magic of it. You are doing a great job.

Debbie They take time, but they do work things out eventually. Lots of new words and things, spelling and pronunciation for them. So let's have a chat about the importance of exchanges and trips because I know we've had lots of conversations about this. Why do you think textbooks can't really replicate the experience of students going on an exchange or a trip?

Irene Definitely they can't. That's impossible. I mean a textbook, even if it is quite good. Because they have good books here. Yeah, yeah.

Debbie They have improved. Improved a lot. But next book, everything is fixed, organized. Imagine they don't know a word. They will ask you or me, or they will look it up in the dictionary.

Irene But when they are in an exchange and they are in a new school, I then they don't know their way. They have to ask for directions to strangers in the school. They have to ask other teachers. It's a completely different thing. I've been doing exchanges from the very first year.

Irene So I was the odd one out in my school because they have never done that. I'm talking about 30 years ago, so. And it was very difficult at those times to contact people abroad. Sure.

Debbie Without Wi fi and all the rest.

Irene Because now it's very easy. You look through Instagram profiles or. Well, and you can find always teachers in the world to the exchanges. And now I have a great variety of friends and I can do that.

Debbie Where do you tend to take your students?

Irene So I took those students to England it was near London and I used to have a friend, Spanish teacher in Nottingham, in England. And I was doing it for like four years, but then the Brexit came, so it was horrible for exchanges. For instance, this teacher moved to Spain, so I couldn't do it anymore. So I thought I need to do something so that my students travel to other countries and practice their English. So I started Erasmus projects.

Irene Erasmus projects are amazing. You don't do that only with English speaking countries. I've done it with Italy, Greece, Sweden, Finland, France, Portugal, well, many others. And basically we chose a topic to work with other schools and we did little exchanges of few students. But in that country, let's say the meeting was in Greece, then the Swedish, the Italians, the Spanish and the French, we all joined there.

Irene So English was a sort of Esperanto. English was our way to communicate, our magnificent weapon to do things. And I realized that English was not. I mean, it's super important because all the project was in English and all the communication was in English. But then we added the fact of staying in another country.

Irene I will give you the example of a student she finished two years ago, and in the graduation party we do at the end of the year, she took the microphone and said, thanks for this big opportunity that your Erasmus projects have given me. She's now studying in the Netherlands, and every time she knew about the country we were going to visit, she took some months to learn some basics of that language. So she knew some Greek, some Swedish, some Italian.

Debbie Good on her.

Irene So if I take that example, this is really what I wanted to give them, and at least I know I got it for one student, and I'm.

Debbie: Sure, many, many more. And what about some of the other students that you take, for example, to Ireland? What do you think they get out of doing even just a short week or two?

Irene Now we are changing a little because it's getting more and more difficult to get the funding for the Erasmus projects because they have reduced the number of schools and they have reduced the money. I consider that students must spend at least one week in England or Ireland. So I take students for one week, my bilingual students. This year we are going to Ireland because in the last four years we've been to England. And what do they get?

Irene, a lot. First of all, before going, everything I tell them about families, about the way of living there, they take. They are eager to know about it. And when we come back and we comment on it, they are always telling stories about families, about the school, about, oh, they drive on the wrong side of the road. Oh, they eat at terrible times or the weather changes.

Irene Yes. Irene, you were right. Four seasons in a day. Yeah.

Debbie Isn't it amazing that all the stuff that we teach them on paper becomes real life to them and then they actually go, 'Oh, wow'? All this stuff we're learning has got a purpose. I think that's the most important thing. It's making it real life for them.

Irene They tend to think that we teachers tell them fake stories, but then they realise, 'Oh yeah, yeah, you were right, you were right. And the students I take in the first year, they repeat every year. That's why I change destinations.

Debbie Okay, so you managed to have a quite a good retention rate throughout the years as they go along.

Irene Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This year we are taking 30 students.

Debbie Ah, wow, that's amazing.

Irene Two teachers, 30 students.

Irene And they stay in a home, stay.

Irene They do three hours of English in the morning in, in school and then they live with families. We also do some visits, cultural visits to Dublin or Kilkeny. So yeah, it's great. And crossing my fingers so that the weather is nice and they always behave so well. That's another thing.

Irene In exchanges they always behave much, much better.

Debbie I think it's so good to re establish everything that they've learned in class. And actually they have all these light bulb moments of what they've been learning and then they see it in real life. It really does help ingrain so much stuff. To finish off, we talk a little bit about well-being in this podcast. So I just wanted to ask you, what do you do to look after your well-being?

Irene Oh, that's a big one.

Debbie That's a big one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Irene I've done it in the last two years. I wish I had done it every year. The school hours are too long.

Irene I'm getting old, probably older. And I have realised that I need some time off. So I asked for two weeks. I wasn't paid for it, but I had a substitute, a very young teacher, so good for her. And I went to Greece.

Irene Needed it because the terms in Spain are so long.

Debbie Three terms and how many weeks approximately? About 13 or 14 weeks or more.

Irene From the first week of April to the last week of June. Really badly organised. We have a very long summer, but then we don't cut the terms in a very organised way. So yeah, it's hard, it's hard. It's tiring.

Irene Teaching is getting tiring and tiring.

Debbie They keep adding all the paperwork and more marking and just extra stuff that you don't need. So it's good to be able to do what you did and know that you have hit your limit and you need a break. And just being able to do that.

Irene, legally we can ask for two months every two years. It has to be at a certain time of the year in which we don't interrupt the exams. The exams. Yeah, exams, of course. And yes, we can do that.

Irene We are not paid. We are substituted by another teacher. So. Good.

Debbie And what kinds of things do you do outside of school to help?

Irene I do nothing to do with school. I do Pilates.

Debbie Oh, nice.

Irene I do yoga. I do trekking and swimming, I guess.

Debbie You said you're part of a tramping group, didn't you? Yeah, yeah.

Irene, which is good.

Debbie Yeah. And Leon's got such amazing mountains and places.

Irene You can tell a mountain now, now.

Debbie That I've seen it myself, it is great. But isn't it great for your mental health as well, just to be able to get out into the mountains and it's beautiful. It's hard exercise, but fresh air and good company is basic. So important.

Irene It is. It is.

Debbie Oh, well. Irene, I really appreciate the time that you've put into this conversation with us today and I hope that our teachers have been able to get something out of it and found it interesting. I've really enjoyed my time at your school and sad to leave, but it's been an amazing experience and something that I will always treasure. So thank you.

Irene I am very grateful to you for being with us and I hope you come back.

Debbie Yes, I will definitely come back for a visit. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Leave a review and share it with your fellow educators. Let's keep these important conversations going. 

Debbie For more information, follow us at at Nurturing Educators on Facebook and Instagram. Until next time, take care.

Note: This transcript was automatically AI-generated, so minor errors or inaccuracies may occur.