I haven’t written a blog post for a while. Not really sure why. I haven’t really been any more busy than usual; life mainly consists of teaching, baking and just generally pottering around the Basque Country. However, today the weather is positively horrific and I’m stuck inside. I’m looking out of the window and it would appear that we have been engulfed in a cloud of torrential rain and angry wind.
Thus it’s a perfect time to write something. I should be doing two university assignments, preparing for next week’s school trip to an activities centre and replying to my hundreds of emails but that’s far less interesting.
I thought I would compare my school in Basque Country to my own secondary school in England as it’s something that’s been occurring to me a lot lately. I look back fondly on my days at Teign School in Kingsteignton, although I was mostly preoccupied by how straight my hair was, not pissing anybody off and taking embarrassing mirror selfies with my Sony Ericsson W810i #throwbacksaturday. FYI this was 10 years ago:
Not a lot has changed really. At Larramendi Ikastola in Mungia I am not a fully-fledged teacher yet neither am I student (though I most certainly look like one and often get mistaken for a 17 year old). So one of my favourite past times is to compare the only two secondary schools that I’ve ever really spent time in. And while these do not speak for all schools of their respective nations they do shed light on a few cultural differences.
I think the main difference is that Teign was one huge secondary school. As is pretty much the norm in England, one goes to primary until aged 11 and then progresses onto secondary. Larramendi is roughly the same size as Teign but primary, secondary and even a nursery all combined. There are quite a few schools like this in the area. I’m not really sure what purpose this serves although I’ve come to the conclusion that it must help with the jump between schools. I remember being extremely excited but generally quite terrified to leave Rydon Primary and head to Teign. You go from being the top of the school back down to the bottom. The big fish to the small fish surrounded by sharks who could flush your head down the loo at any uncalled-for moment. Although the timetables differ slightly and there is a primary area and secondary area, students regularly mix at Larramendi which seems to work pretty well.
At Teign, one moves from class to class. To get from Music in D block to RE in the 6th form building would take a good 5 minutes whilst navigating through the streams of students, not getting wet (it’s England, it’s always raining) and sticking to the one way system (yeah nobody did this). The struggle is real:
Contrastingly, at Larramendi, the teachers go to the class. Apart from the exceptions such as Chemistry in the science lab or PE (obviously), pretty much every lesson is taught to the students in what can only be classed as their form room. Again, this seems to work. Lessons are started on time, students can’t go missing, and all their stuff is in one place. Instead it’s the teachers who run around like headless chickens. Luckily, as previously stated, the school is smaller so the teachers all seem to have this under control.
There is no opportunity to buy food at break here at Larramendi. No vending machines. No tuck shops. Not even a charity bake sale (I’m still working on this one). ‘The Hatch’ at Teign School was somewhere I spent a lot of time. Despite taking an apple with me to school every day for 7 years I would regularly indulge in cookies or brownies at break time. I was a relatively healthy teenager with a weakness for baked goods. I would still tell my 13 year old self to do this. Living with a teenager has opened my eyes to the amount of pressure that teenage girls are under to look and feel perfect. I’ll save that for another blog post.
Cooked lunch at Larramendi Ikastola is provided for all students and staff (for free yaaay). There is a 3 week menu rotation but generally consists of veg, lentils, soup, pasta and meat. It’s pretty decent I’m not going to lie. It means no child brings a packed lunch with them, although most of them seem to have sandwiches of some kind for snacking on. It also means that there are strict time restraints in order to get everyone fed. I particularly enjoy holding students back after class at lunch (the ones who’ve pissed me off) and watch them panic as they realise they’re going to miss their slot. Mean right? Of course, I don’t let them starve, I just make them think I’m going to.
At Teign lunch was mayhem. I generally stuck to the cold food queue and bought baguettes or sandwiches. We had to pay daily for our food but the most common way to do this was through your smart card (bet you’d forgotten about that one). This made us feel like real grown-ups and taught us about the dangers of spending all your money on your credit at the beginning of the week when your mum has only just given you £5 to top it up.
Finally, there’s no such thing as parents evening at Larramendi. The parents have to arrange a meeting with their child’s tutor for whenever is convenient for both parties. I do not understand the logic behind this. The result is that teachers are constantly in meetings, there are parents wandering the corridors most days and parents have to give up work or siesta time to come in and hear that their child is doing well and there was no point in them coming in. At least at parents evening we got to have a good nosy at all of our classmates parents/siblings and my parents could hear from more than one teacher how much of a quiet, pleasant and hard-working nerd I was.
There are plenty more differences and, as usual, I could write forever. But I’ll stop there and let you get on with your day. I’m off to procrastinate some more and make banoffee pie.
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