I love living in Spain and working as an English assistant. However one tough part of the job is that we don’t get paid for four months in the summer. Our contracts are for eight months out of the year. Those of us who plan to do the program for multiple years need a plan in the summer. One way to earn some extra money is by working at an English summer camp in Spain.
There are many English summer camps throughout Spain and other parts of Europe. Native speakers are gold to them. Parents enroll their kids in camps like these because they obviously want their kids to improve and practice their English. So if these camps can advertise that their teachers are native speakers, they will get more kids to sign up.
I knew I needed to do something to make money this summer. So in March or April, I googled “English summer camps in Spain” and found quite a few. I filled out a few applications and got an interview with one. Perfect, I thought! After the interview, I found out about a week later that the job was mine! I would be working for them the entire month of July.
Throughout the month of July, I posted about the experience from time to time on social media. My followers saw videos and pictures from sunny Palma de Mallorca. I naturally got some questions from fellow auxiliares. One of my friends asked me if I was going to write a post about it. While I hadn’t thought about it, I knew that it was a good idea. So here we go. Just a quick disclaimer: I worked at one English summer camp in Spain. My experience could vary from someone who worked for a different company or even someone who worked at the same company. Everyone is different.
The initial process
The company I worked for is called Forenex. They’re based in Madrid, but offer camps in different parts of Spain. I interviewed with them over skype since I live in Granada and was offered to work for two weeks in the Pyrenees Mountains and two weeks in Palma de Mallorca. In the Pyrenees, I was offered a blogger position. In Mallorca, I was offered a teaching position. Basically Forenex has a blog for each camp that the parents can read. If the camp has high enrolment, they offer this position to someone. Since I’m already a blogger, I jumped at the opportunity. The enrolment in Mallorca was lower, so I was offered a teaching position there. That was okay with me. I was just happy to be working for the entire month.
Each camp I’m sure works a little bit differently. Forenex pays from transportation to and from Madrid. Since I don’t live in Madrid, I had to cover transportation from Granada to Madrid. A Blablacar or bus runs around 20 euros one way, so that was fine with me. I did have to stay in Madrid the night before, but I collaborated with a local hostel making it free to me. Forenex also provides all meals and housing. You might have to share a room, though, depending on the site. In the Pyrenees, I shared a room with two female coworkers. However in Mallorca, we each had our own room. The residence in Mallorca has single rooms whereas the Pyrenees rooms can sleep up to six people! I’m just glad they didn’t put all six of us ladies in one room. That would have been too much.
In general, sharing a room was totally fine. The girls I shared with were really nice and easy to live with. We generally went to sleep at the same time and woke up at the same time. Sometimes three people and one bathroom was a challenge, but we made it work.
Your expenses during the month are very minimal. You might go exploring on your day off or go socialize with the staff after hours. In the Pyrenees, there was a restaurant right next to the residence that we sometimes went to. In Mallorca, we sometimes used our afternoons to go to the beach or explore the city of Palma. Drinking alcohol is of course prohibited at the residence since you’re working with children. Smoking is also of course not allowed. It’s not to say that you cannot have a drink off-site. You just have to use common sense and of course not come back super intoxicated.
You will be working six days a week with one day off. While that was never anyone’s favorite thing, it was just for one month.
Also views like this aren’t too bad.
How the camp is set up for the kids
The majority of the kids were from Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or Bilbao. However they could be from all over Spain or even Europe. For example, I had one girl from Tenerife in the Canary Islands. In Mallorca, there were a few kids from France and a girl from Austria. In the Pyrenees, we had a few kids from the United States.
The kids were generally ages 8-18 at both camps I worked at. They attended English classes in the mornings from around 9-9:30 a.m. to about 1:30-2 p.m. Then we all ate lunch (all your meals will be on the Spanish eating schedule). After lunch, the kids had different activities with their monitors. Monitors are typically Spaniards between the ages of say 19-26 or so. They’re basically like what we would call camp counselors in the US. They’re the ones responsible for the kids when we aren’t with them. Their job is definitely difficult and I was very thankful for all their hard work.
The afternoon activities were typically sports. Mallorca seemed to be more of a sports-oriented camp than the Pyrenees. There the kids could do tennis, golf or sailing. In the Pyrenees, football was an option. They also had all sorts of fun parties and dances in the evenings.
When the children arrive to camp, they take a placement test. This determines which class they will be placed into.
Your role
If you work for this camp, you’ll likely be hired as an English teacher if you’re a native speaker. The majority of our teachers were auxiliares like me. It’s perfect since we all need to make money in the summer, we all have experience teaching in Spain and were all native speakers.
The biggest difference between this camp and auxliares is that you are the only teacher in the classroom. It’s 100% your class! You are given the curriculum for the level you’re teaching and all the worksheets you’re required to give the students. Based on that, it’s on you to create supplemental activities to enforce the main points of the unit. You are also required to give one speaking exam each week, keep organized folders of the students’ work and write a report on each student in your class. This change in workload can be a lot for some people. Just be prepared going in that it will be a lot of work.
However I will say that speaking with friends of mine who worked at other English summer camps, there were some things I really liked about our positions as teachers. First, we were only responsible for children until lunch time. After lunch, we had a meeting with our director of studies and then had the entire afternoon to plan. This was wonderful. I really enjoyed the time I could spend in my classroom preparing for the week ahead.
The second thing I really liked were the supplies we had access to. Forenex encourages fun games that get children up and moving. It’s the summer, so we should make English fun! They also encourage activities that you can put up on the wall so the kids visualize everything they’re learning. They have an almost endless supply of colored paper, tape, glue, paint, etc. They even have a camp competition where each classroom is judged on how the class decorated the walls. I loved that hands-on aspect.
Overall, I used some afternoons to plan and others I found myself free. It will just all depend on you and your classroom’s needs.
My job(s)
As mentioned above, I started out as the blogger for the Pyrenees camp. I loved that I could use my background as a blogger to blog about the camp. However a week into camp, I filled in for a teacher who had to leave. While I was of course sad to not blog, I was happy to jump in and help the team out. Furthermore, the children I ended up working with were absolutely wonderful.
After the Pyrenees Camp ended, five of us plus our supervisor flew from Barcelona to Palma. Since that was for camp, Forenex also covered that expense. In Mallorca, I had a class of six students. Since we had less children there than in the Pyrenees, we simply had less levels. My children were ages 9-12 and the majority could speak English at a decent level. I spoke only English to them and successfully convinced them that I didn’t speak Spanish. That’s something I cannot say for my students in Granada. But that also could be that my Granada private lesson kids hear me speaking Spanish with their parents.
I will say that it was a tad of an adjustment to me. In addition to the work load, I was no longer in “no pasa nada” Spain. I mean yes, I was still physically in Spain. However in this role, your supervisor will be a native English-speaker. So in a lot of ways, it’s just like working in the United States again. They can be big sticklers for detail. I understand it. They have a reputation to uphold. However there were times where I had to remind myself that it wasn’t quite the same as the Spaniards I’ve worked with over the past two years.
My favorite things
There were definitely a lot of things I loved about camp. Here are a few:
- Interacting with the children. In both camps, I got to know my children. They all generally came with a good attitude and were eager to learn. However I think I got lucky. Some of the teachers at both camps had some challenging students. While my kids weren’t perfect, there were never any huge problems.
- The staff. The staff at the Pyrenees was very big. We all had a good time getting to know each other. The staff in Mallorca was smaller, but everyone had also worked in the Pyrenees. Everyone was nice and I really enjoyed getting to know everyone.
- I got to see some really cool places.
- Summer employment
- The food in the Pyrenees. It was good, especially for camp food.
I could list some least favorite things, but I want to keep this post positive. There’s really nothing I would put there that hasn’t already been said above.
Are you teaching English in Spain? What do you do in the summer? Would you ever consider working for an English summer camp?
