Day 1

Today was our first day in the "Agrupamento de escolas de Santa Maria Maior" in Viana do Castelo,  Portugal. Me and my colleague Montse started our trip to Oporto yesterday. There in Oporto we met Diana and Ivan, our mates from Catalonia who will do the job shadowing with us. We took the car and moved to Viana do Castelo. 

This grouping of school has 3 different buildings, one is for Secondary school, and two more for Primary school. This morning we went walking to the Secondary School where Cláudia Santos who is an English teacher and librarian welcomed us. Once we met the Headmaster of the "Agrupamento", we were given a tour of the building by Claudia and were able to see the library, the gymnasium and the different classrooms. It is a huge building where 1000 students study and 100 teachers work. 

Then we went to the School Library where Claudia did a presentation about how the library works and what her job consists of. She only has to teach one hour per week and the rest of her job is based on the library. 

The "agrupamento" takes part of the national network of school libraries which is led by the Ministry of Education. If they develop projects they receive money from the ministry. So in order to improve the quality of the library they need to participate and apply to those projects. 

Claudia explained that all public school teachers have to have a master's degree and specific training to be able to be school library coordinators. She is also in charge of training the rest of the teachers and helps them in their classes when they need to use the school library. In addition, the school library has a close relationship with all the school libraries in the municipality of Viana as well as with the public libraries.

She showed us his school library website. There we find a lot of pre-selected digital resources that are available to the students. 

After the library presentation, we went for a coffee in the teachers' lounge and met the Spanish teacher. I was surprised that the school has assistants who are in charge of cleaning, picking up and serving coffee among other tasks. We do not have this figure in our country. 

At about half past ten we went to teach the 11th grade students (15 years old) a little about our traditions and culture as well as what we do and where our schools are located. 

Between Montse, Ivan, Diana and myself we led a Spanish class for an hour and a half. We used a presentation and after telling them who we are, what we do here, where our schools are, etc., we did an activity based on a song in our language, Catalan. 

It was a song of a group called Txarango, the students had to translate a verse of the song into Portuguese and then into Spanish. It was a great experience to be able to have contact and share a session with them. 

Afterwards we went to the school's television recording room. It turns out that the school has a kind of professional training based on audiovisuals. And, between the audiovisual teacher and Claudia they lead a project called breaking news. Every month they produce a news broadcast about events that happen in the school grouping. The TV channel is called TV Maior. 

Once we saw how they record and edit the news, they interviewed us to be able to appear on the news. 

I was surprised by the amount of money that has been invested in this space. They have a chroma screen, Mac computers for video editing, sound board, recording lights, professional camera and they even have a promter to avoid having to memorize the script, a real blast! 

Afterwards we went to lunch and then we attended one of the book clubs that Claudia leads with high school seniors. There they have been able to explain everything they have been doing this year and have shared with us opinions about the books they have read throughout this course as well as information about different authors. Then Montse and I shared with them a story called Sunakay that talks about the sea and its pollution. 

I have felt very well received throughout this first day. I think we are going to have a very good experience this week.