What a month
So I am sitting here, five weeks into teaching, six weeks as a Calgarian, thinking about how things have changed since I got the crazy idea to move here.
Last time I posted I was just getting settled in and things were looking good at my school. I had a great two weeks as a grade three teacher. I had a difficult but rewarding group of students. I was finally getting them settled into my routines when low and behold the evil word “surplus” came out at a staff meeting. Basically this means that there were not enough students to keep all the staff that were hired into that school. Knowing that I was low on the ladder and probably the easiest move to make, I volunteered to be the one who got surplussed. Thankfully I had a great administration and recuitment team that found me a place before I was even done in my old class. Within a matter of two days, parent teacher interview days, I became a grade 1/2 teacher in a science alternative school.
It was a rough change emotionally as I was set to be a grade three teacher and had settled in to my role. However thanks to all the support I had at both schools it has been a successful change over. My new school has been quite a different experience. We are lucky enough to be able to do a lot of thinking outside of the box. No cookie cutters here. We also are lucky in that we can direct a lot of our learning to the community around us creating the opportunity to leave the classroom almost daily, while its nice out.
I quickly became a pro in parent teacher conferences having had more then 40 in two weeks. I am also slowly learning about the inquiry model of education. Basically everything is shaped around asking questions about anything and everything. It is amazing what kids will come up with on there own. I mean we are even discussing fractal patterns and chaos theory in grade 1/2!
As for my personal life, I have been meeting a few people, seeing the city. I have managed to get out fishing a couple times and have some plans to hit the mountains soon. For those of you back home reading this…or at least the one person… I will be back for the long weekend, friday night to monday afternoon I think. Let the crown and fires begin.
