School has been hectic the last few weeks. We are still trying to settle into a routine balancing work and home life. I feel like all I do is grade papers and talk and eat...
All the kids I am teaching are great people, on a personal level. I have definitely had my fair share of frustrating days with them, but they never cease to humor me. About 80% of them are lacking in the mathematics department, meaning they don't know how to multiply as juniors and seniors. Fractions, let's not go there... Plotting points on a graph, that's been another fiasco in all my classes. It's rough starting into a lesson thinking, "Oh yeah, this is Pre-Algebra or Algebra I, they should have this stuff down pat, we'll breeze right on through..." Nope!! But besides not knowing basic math, they're great people. I'll have some funny stories about them soon.
Josh is just getting into the meat of his position as a counselor. The second week of school they made a drastic change to the entire bell schedule. They shortened all the classes and took all the prep periods from the teachers to help with the over crowding. All that means they've sent the last couple of weeks dealing with student schedules, making sure seniors were enrolled in all the classes they needed to graduate and that no one was taking a class they have either already taken or aren't qualified to take. He seems to really be enjoying what he's doing.
We both work with some pretty interesting people. People from all over the world and from all walks of life; young and old, new teachers and veterans to the field we all collaborate together to frame out what we feel is the best education for our students. There are many teachers who are new to the island, so we are surrounded by people in very similar situations to our own. My school has several of their own graduates returning to teach this year which it's been neat to gain their prospective of the island and the student's learning ability.
The school year is flying by, we're already into our 4th week of school, progress report grades are due next week, which means we are 1/8 of the way through the school year. YEAH!
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Monday, September 27, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
First Day
Today was our first official day at school. It brought a mixture of emotions, at least for me. I was excited, nervous, and anxious all at the same time. The teachers I am working with are great. They all seem to be very inclusive and willing to help out the newbies.
My room is still in a state of disarray. At some point during the summer the maintenance guys scraped most of the bubbled up paint off the walls in anticipation of the walls be repainted during the summer break. Well, school starts in 5 days and the walls still are not painted... I have been told that they'll be painted before school starts, I even got to pick out the paint color I wanted, but I'm not holding my breath for the task to be finished on time. With all that said, I can't fully set up my room until the walls are painted so I'm doing what I can as I can. The desks are in place, at least the ones I have, I'm short seven desks for my biggest class. Our class sizes range between 31 and 35 students.
In more exciting news, Josh has a teal blue office, it's pretty grand. I guess that's the island style, lots of offices and houses even are painted in tropical pastel colors. Josh's school is the largest on the island with about 1200 students and mine, SSHS, is overcrowded with about 900 students. He has about 265 students under his counseling wing. All of the other counselors are females which means it's gonna be just like working at the office again. Except now he has his OWN office that's actually about the size of the office we shared back home.
There have been many changes to the school system since we arrived which have had us on our toes the last couple of days. Josh's principal went to the states for vacation and is now on permanent sick leave and that's all we know. But in order to fill her position, two days before teachers report, the commissioner decided it was in best of the students for the principal of my school to take over at MHS (Josh's school). So, one of the vice principals from my school will now be our principal. It has left everyone in a whirlwind to figure out what's going on and to define what void they need to fill.
Needless to say, it's going to be an interesting year, for both of us. We have loved almost every minute that we've been out here. Church, Sunday, was a bit difficult, at least for me. That was the point that I've felt the most home sick. But we have done so many cool things since we've been here. Staying busy has helped keep our minds off the fact that we're so far from home. We will, hopefully, move into our apartment tomorrow so pictures will come soon, I promise!
My room is still in a state of disarray. At some point during the summer the maintenance guys scraped most of the bubbled up paint off the walls in anticipation of the walls be repainted during the summer break. Well, school starts in 5 days and the walls still are not painted... I have been told that they'll be painted before school starts, I even got to pick out the paint color I wanted, but I'm not holding my breath for the task to be finished on time. With all that said, I can't fully set up my room until the walls are painted so I'm doing what I can as I can. The desks are in place, at least the ones I have, I'm short seven desks for my biggest class. Our class sizes range between 31 and 35 students.
In more exciting news, Josh has a teal blue office, it's pretty grand. I guess that's the island style, lots of offices and houses even are painted in tropical pastel colors. Josh's school is the largest on the island with about 1200 students and mine, SSHS, is overcrowded with about 900 students. He has about 265 students under his counseling wing. All of the other counselors are females which means it's gonna be just like working at the office again. Except now he has his OWN office that's actually about the size of the office we shared back home.
There have been many changes to the school system since we arrived which have had us on our toes the last couple of days. Josh's principal went to the states for vacation and is now on permanent sick leave and that's all we know. But in order to fill her position, two days before teachers report, the commissioner decided it was in best of the students for the principal of my school to take over at MHS (Josh's school). So, one of the vice principals from my school will now be our principal. It has left everyone in a whirlwind to figure out what's going on and to define what void they need to fill.
Needless to say, it's going to be an interesting year, for both of us. We have loved almost every minute that we've been out here. Church, Sunday, was a bit difficult, at least for me. That was the point that I've felt the most home sick. But we have done so many cool things since we've been here. Staying busy has helped keep our minds off the fact that we're so far from home. We will, hopefully, move into our apartment tomorrow so pictures will come soon, I promise!
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