School Year Abroad - Spain

Spain

The program in Spain is SYA's oldest. The original incarnation was "Schoolboys Abroad" and consisted of twelve students accompanied by three teachers, who, in 1964, traveled by ship to study in Barcelona, Spain.

Though founded in Barcelona, the program was moved to Zaragoza in 1999. The move took place in order to facilitate the ease with which students learned and heard Castilian Spanish spoke around them. As the program grew in Barcelona, it became clear that the proliferation of Catalan, as well as the number of tourists, detracted from the immersion of the students. The move to Zaragoza, the fifth largest city in Spain, provided students with a city environment with less tourist attraction, making it necessary for Castilian Spanish to be spoken throughout the city.

SYA Spain students attend classes on the sprawling, recently renovated, 425-square-meter second floor of a Neoclassical building in Zaragoza's city center on Paseo de Pamplona. The space is illuminated throughout the day by natural light and comprises a reception area, six classrooms, a place for school assemblies, and offices for the faculty and the SYA Spain Resident Director, along with a library, a college-counseling office and a comfortable student lounge.

Because it is located in the commercial center, SYA Spain students have access to myriad cafés where they can enjoy a café con lecche, shop for anything from a toothbrush to the latest fashions, and visit the local colegio, where SYA Spain students eat lunch daily. Steps away from the Plaza Aragón, students take the bus to visit friends after school, to dance classes or to sports practice.

At SYA Spain, students take six courses. Seniors may, on recommendation of their home school, elect not to continue in mathematics if they have met their home school requirement. All but the English and math courses are taught in Spanish. All courses except for Advanced Algebra with Functions and Precalculus and Advanced Topics in Mathematics are taught at the honors or AP level.

Students take placement tests in math and Spanish during orientation in September. Based on the test results and on their previous records, they are placed in appropriate groups for Spanish language and math. There is a two-week drop/add period at the start of school to finalize placements and course preferences. Courses meet for a minimum of four 50-minute periods per week. SYA does not distinguish between eleventh- and twelfth-grade students in the organization of classes.

Experiential and Independent Travel School Year Abroad Spain students enjoy one-day excursions in Aragón and Navarra; longer trips take students to Barcelona, Asturias, Valencia and Andalucía. During school vacation days and weekends, students may remain with their host families or travel independently if they have made detailed plans and secured the proper permission. Zaragoza is on the high-speed AVE train line and many buses leave the city daily for destinations throughout Spain. In a weekend, students may travel to Salamanca to visit the famous university, to Bilboa to wander through the Guggenheim or head to Madrid to for a theater production.

School-to-School Exchanges SYA students here are able to participate in various school-to-school exchanges all over the country, providing excellent opportunities to become friends with Spanish students their own age. These range from exchanges lasting one to five days to evening seminars organized once a week.

Through "One Day Here, One Day There", an SYA student spends a day at a high school in Zaragoza, hosted by a counterpart their age; that same Spanish student attends classes at SYA the next day.

The program “Five days in . . .” Burgos, Madrid, Toledo or Sevilla enables an SYA student to go to one of these cities to attend classes and live with a local host family for five full days. Our student joins the host student for three days of classes in the Spanish high school and the weekend with his or her family.