The COVID-19 pandemic impacted societal structures worldwide. In the educational realm, the forced closure, and subsequent reopening of school settings disrupted the personal and professional lives of administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Two groups of Spanish stakeholders affected by the return to face-to-face instruction during the pandemic were the University of Extremadura’s student teachers and their mentors during the practicum, as student teaching is known in Spain. This study investigated 28 student teachers’ and 26 mentors’ responses to a questionnaire enquiring on the main challenges resulting from the pandemic, as well as student teachers’ contributions to the classroom during this difficult time. Cualitative software was used to analyze participants’ responses allowed us to identify four main themes: attitudes; classroom management issues; adaptations and restrictions; and academic–experiential modifications. Overall, the findings revealed student teachers’ and mentors’ positive opinions about their joint work experience and about student teachers’ logistical and technological support.

How to better prepare future bilingual teachers for foreign language learning classrooms and their challenges is a key consideration in education, a concern echoed across the world as such programmes, where curricular content is taught in a foreign language, grow in popularity. This article presents student profiles and satisfaction for the first year of an EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) teacher training model at the University of Extremadura in Spain. The goal of this programme is to offer instruction for education majors in a four-year, bilingual Bachelor’s in Primary Education (BA) programme where 50% of curricular subjects are taught in students’ native Spanish, and 50% in English. The data collected in this study revealed that first-year students in the bilingual programme have higher university admission scores than average, as well as high expectations for their linguistic progress in the programme. They are also quite motivated and indicate that the cooperative model of the programme positively impacted the experience of their first year and was a hallmark of their satisfaction overall. The positive results of the study offer insight not only onto analogous contexts in Spain but also to other countries where EMI or bilingual education is of interest.

Bilingual education is getting great achievements because of the performance of bilingual programs. In Spain, these programs have been developed at the university thanks to the efforts made during the previous decades of their implementation. The autonomous region of Extremadura has been working cooperatively with other institutions since then, and now it is time to look back to recapitulate what has been done and what needs to be done from now on. This chapter aims to gather the main milestones of this process in order to review its internal and external aspects, as well as to reconsider the ways of improving bilingual programs. Final remarks show that bilingual programs have brought benefits, but there are still some aspects that require attention, such as a homogeneous national regulation or minding the methodological qualification of bilingual teachers. These issues need to be addressed in future research for the welfare of bilingual education.

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