Placement overview
Name: Jacob
Vocational area: Sports Coaching
Duration: 3 weeks
Location: St Lucia
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“I have learned so much about myself and also developed my technical skills from this experience and hope to do an apprenticeship in the UK next.”
The motivation
I thought it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity doing what I love in another country and being able to use the content I’ve learnt at college and adapt my coaching style to different backgrounds.
I wanted to have an impact on the children’s career in sports and to improve my confidence and leadership during coaching, which it did!!!
This has now helped me become a more all-round confidence person.
The placement
I delivered early stage pre-school sports sessions with involved specific themes e.g. the jungle, space and underwater.. These sessions were super fun.
Children in pre-schools in St Lucia do not have sport on their syllabus, so it was nice to go in and teach them basic sports actions; jumping, running around and, more importantly, falling over and getting straight back up again!
Once a week, we took the pre-school children to the sea and I was 1 of 3 people who actually went in the sea with the children on a 1to1 basis and getting the children used to water and showing them its nothing to be scared of , we were just showing the children kicking their legs to try and swim and having fun stories involving stuff found in the sea which they all loved. I really enjoyed this as I love teaching skills that I have learnt over my experience swimming and passing it on to the next generation the rest of the time we were doing football academy sessions doing everything from passing to shooting to goalkeeping we all jumped in and did different things sit was very fun doing stuff we wouldn’t normally do and showing kids how to do it properly as majority of them are learning how to do the correct technique as we all as a group have been playing football for majority 10 years each and know how to do techniques correctly
The location
Working in a Spanish company allowed me to develop my communication skills as I had to interact with Spanish speaking people on a daily basis.
I was a bit nervous at the start but realised that everyone responded well when I used my body language, and learned some key Spanish phrases. I also loved communicating with locals when my group would explore the area in the evenings.
The best thing about the destination for me was to experience the rich Andalusian culture and local Roman Catholic belief, and view the many related heritage sites.
The impact
I have learned so much about myself and also developed my technical skills from this experience and hope to do an apprenticeship in the UK next. My advice for future participants would be for them to just be themselves and to treat others how they would like to be treated.
My Erasmus+ placement was the first time I had worked in my field and I was able to apply the knowledge that I gained from the course in the company that I worked at.
Outcomes
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Improved language skills
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Exposure to cultural experience
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Confidence building
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Improved people skills
Collaboration and partnership is at the heart of what we do.
If you would like to find out more about the way we work, get in touch.