I have written before about our cumulative experience with education in Spain, up to this point. We’ve utilized everything form Montessori and Democratic Schools, to private British Schools, and then finally to Spanish schools. In this article, I am going to share the top things we did that I think helped our children be successful in their FIRST year at Spanish Schools. If you have read my post before, you already know that they did not start in Spanish schools until two years after we had moved to Spain. My oldest was in the 4th grade and my youngest was in what is called primaria de infantil, which is the first year of infantil, or preschool in the United States.
I know that when you are moving your family to Spain, your number one concern, after money and housing, is where your kids will go to school, what the schools will be like, what help will the schools offer, and HOW YOU can help your child be successful in a new to you system in a new to you language. It is not for the faint of heart, but IT IS WORTH IT!
Firstly, we found a school that was within walking distance of our home. This helps with building community in your neighborhood and immediate local area. If you are walking to and from school everyday, you will begin to see some of the same faces and eventually these people will be recognizable to you in the grocery story, pharmacy, restaurants, etc. We are always running into people we know, because we live close enough to walk to school. Walking also gives you more control over your time. You don’t have to worry about traffic congestion, parking, bus schedules, late buses, etc. Walking Distance also allows you to get to the school faster, in case of emergencies or if you kids are sick and need to be picked up. School meetings are a lot easier when you live nearby as well.
We signed our kids up for sports groups that were in our local community and school. Essentially, we signed our oldest up for the school futbol team, which was competitive and practiced two days per week. This was another help with language acquisition, friendship building, and acclimating to the local community. We followed that up by signing them BOTH up for the neighborhood football group, which practiced “for fun” right in our barrio, literally viewable from our apartment window. This allowed them to be around the same group of kids.. meaning they were both around the same kids, knowing each other’s teams and friends and coaches. This helped them to be integrated, but to also have “each other”, and to form a collective group where everyone knew “his brother” and “his friend”.
We found a school that offered formal Spanish help. In Madrid, this is called “Aula de Enlace”. If you will google that term, you will find a website where Madrid has the schools listed which have this help. Not all schools have it. Some schools have their own helps, but this is a formal program supported by the city of Madrid, so in other words, it is regulated and with limited entry, but also helpful to have. There is a rule that you can only go into this class if you are in your first year of attending school in Madrid. Other regions will have their own programs. We have yet to find a Spanish school or to hear of a Spanish school that did not offer some sort of language help for foreign students.
I met with the teachers all the time to cover anything that was not clear or that was a concern of my children. This is important. Number one, you want to have a relationship and communication with your kid’s teachers. There are going to be a lot of adjustments- it is a new system, there are new expectations, it’s a new culture. You will constantly run into cultural shock, and school will be just another chip off the culture shock iceberg, which you will have to adjust to- but it happens much faster in Spanish schools that it does in private english or international schools. Having communication with the teachers and administration will help you to know what to expect, and it helps to clarify things that get lost in translation, because this happens a LOT. You will want to know what the homework expectations are (amount, frequency, extra time, can you opt out, etc.). Have a meeting at the beginning of the year, or close to the start of when your children begin school, even if it’s in the middle of the year.
Tangibly helping my children looked like me learning all the material that my oldest son was learning in school, in Spanish, and I taught it to him in english after school, and then we “re-learned” it in Spanish, focusing heavily on new Spanish words, phrases, etc. I was heavily involved in all of his work. This took up all of my free time while he was at school. I was not fluent in Spanish. I used google translator and a lot of youtube videos to learn the words, topics, directions, and new methods that were being used at the school (for example, in math). I taught myself anything I didn’t already know, and then taught it to him. We spent many hours during the week doing this, but it paid off when his test grades began to increase and HE was able to see that the input was giving a positive output.
At the time, he went to a school that had a split day, so he came home during the two hour lunch break and spent 30-45 mins of that time doing homework from the first part of the day. This was not always met with a smile, but it was necessary to also be able to keep up with the extracurriculars, which were three days a week and on Sundays. The school they first attended was from 9-5pm, so it was very long. On futbol days, he was at school until 7pm, so that did not leave a lot of time for eating dinner, bathing, and going to bed- much less to keep up with homework! The break time was crucial for us to keep up with everything. Eventually, by the middle of the third trimester, he was generally able to maintain his workload on his own at school, and brought home minimal homework.
I advocated for him to get more and more time in the Spanish Aula de Enlace class. Because he had started the school late, the help class was technically full, but anything can be pushed for- remember that when you move here- you must speak up- and we did. They put him in the class in an official capacity during math (didn’t really like that, but it was better than nothing) and during some of the english classes. When they noted that he was struggling because of his low level of Spanish, instead of letting them push us into thinking that was our fault (because why and how?? you can’t make someone learn a language over night!!), we pushed back telling them he NEEDED more Spanish hours at school. Slowly, they added more and more time for him to go to the class, and his teacher even began to take him aside during certain times to help him with different Spanish things.
He says the number one thing I did that helped him be successful in his first year of Spanish school was helping him with his homework, which I will tell you was much more than basic help. As I said before, I invested a significant amount of time into this task, but I wanted to share his input in this post :).
Things We Ended Up Changing After The First Year:
We found a school with a shorter class day, which required us to move to a new city. Going back to wanting to be able to walk to school, there were not enough schools within the city of Madrid, where we were living, that offered this type of class day. We chose a region which offered many different schools with a shorter day (9-2pm). This has been tremendous to our quality of life.
We found a school that had a project based on providing more help to the individual child, meeting specific needs. In particular, I was looking for a school that would give him more assistance in the subject of Lengua. His first Spanish school was heavily academic and fast paced. It was quite intense and we needed to take a step back from that so that he could focus more on the subject of Lengua, which is still an ongoing task, but much improved.
We searched for a school with no mandatory religious classes. This too required moving cities, since there is no rule in Madrid that concertados must offer alternatives to religious classes. In Aragon, where we now live, there is a rule that schools must offer an alternative to religion class.
Things My Kids Like About Spanish Schools
10 year old: “learning, playing, freedom to speak my opinion about things, math class, there’s mostly nice teachers, learning chess”
4 year old: “playing with my friends, being amigos, going to the patio at school”
Things My Kids Like About Spain
10 year old: nicer people than in the US I think, it’s not as dangerous as in the US (I wouldn’t be able to go to school there), the big parks
4 year old: I like my teacher giving us playdough, painting with my friends, Spanish? I like like it
What’s The Hardest Thing About Living in Spain or Moving Here?
10 year old: the cigarette smoke
4 year old: the smoke
In Conclusion
In conclusion, these are the things I recommend for foreigners who are moving to Spain with the intention of acclimating, learning the language, obtaining citizenship, benefiting from the affordable University system, ETC:
A Spanish Concertado, which is not religious or which offers alternatives to religious classes, a school which will offer assistance to language learning, and with a short class day. The reason I recommend concertados over public schools is that they have more funding, more accountability to the teachers, and more resources. From these preliminary recommendations, you simply add your other preferences to the list (additional languages, specific extracurriculars, the type of concertado, etc).
I hope this article has helped to direct your path and ease your transition and anxiety about moving to Spain and attending Spanish schools. If you’d like to support my writing, you can follow me on IG, youtube, or even buy me a coffee ;).
