First Impressions of School

Dear All,

I miss the rain! It hasn’t rained for two weeks and I am missing it everyday. AND, it isn’t suppose to rain for another week! Believe it or not it has been in the mid to upper 70’s for over a week! Now most of you Californians are probably saying, “What is your problem, that is great weather?” But please remember to add two things to my weather report; the humidity and the lack of air conditioning anywhere in London. This makes up for a very sticky and stinky trip home everyday. Oh people have deodorants and use them, but they don’t have the air conditioning to keep them constantly cool like we do in America. Think about it, we go from our air conditioned cars to our air conditioned workplaces everyday. I am afraid that even with my American super-deodorant, I still get pretty sweaty on the underground. Oh, I know I am better than most people I see, but I honestly don’t think it has anything to do with a lack of deodorants, it is a lack of strong air conditioning that makes people so sweaty and sometimes stinky. Oh, and please send me my American deodorant, I don‘t like the sprays they have here, I am picky. Secret Platinum Protection Unscented . . . That is the best deodorant and does very well in the London Underground! J

Okay, onto my school. So last week I went and visited my school, met some of the teachers I will be working with. It is a ten minute walk from the station but I do pass a coffee, breakfast place, and two ATM’s. I love the underground ride, I am almost finished with a book that is over 800 pages. I just put my iPod on, open my book, and read until it is time for me to get off. Anywho, so back to the school. Very nice, colourful school, it has a pond, grass, and neon painted playgrounds. It also has a smaller library than my old school, a computer lab, an Art Room, and a cooking room. The students also are given music lessons once a week, and French once a week. I don’t have a key to my classroom but I do have a security tag I hold up to a code panel next to each building door to unlock it and let me in. The staff is all very nice and laid back. They are mostly women in their late forties, married, with children of their own. There are three male teachers, all in relationships, all in their late thirties. Overall the atmosphere is fun and there was a comment made, “I hope you are as mad as us or else you won’t fit in here!” After that I knew I really liked this place . . . Whoever said I was sane in the first place!

So last Thursday and Friday I went to a TimePlan, the agency that hired me, orientation. I met a lot of teachers from America, Canada, and Australia. I tried talking to the Americans but as you all know, Americans don’t like Californians. I have said this before but it was hard to experience it yet again. Here we are, in a foreign country, having a great conversation, and they ask me where I am from. I say the Los Angeles area and they immediately start to scoot away from me. My new Canadian friends noticed it right away. One of them in particular said she noticed it twice with different groups of people. All I can say is, the New Yorkers, they weren’t afraid to talk to me. I love New York! So anyway, I really clicked with this one girl named Kyla from Ontario. She and I have the same interests, the same feelings about teaching, and the same ideas about life in general. She actually came and stayed with me and John last Friday and went out and partied with us. The next day |I took her around to Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Big Ben, St. James Palace, Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly Circus, and Green Park. She was so excited but amazed at how well I knew my way around London. I told her it is easy once you master the underground, plus John helped me a lot. She told me I was very lucky to have John. Trust me, I already know that, he is lovely. We are getting along famously, a few run ins about my need to clean and keep things tidy but I think overall we are doing very well.

Anywho, so I get to school on Monday and go through two more days of teacher training at the school, what they call Inset rather than Staff Development. We learned about the new Numeracy and Literacy Strategy, which is what they call their Content Standards. It was fun, I got to decorate my classroom a little, meet my TA, and start learning about how the school works and what is expected of me. It is SO very different. I may not be able to describe it all in this blog but I am sure I will bring up the differences throughout the rest of the year.

First off, the students are given little journals for each of their subjects. Then they are given work folders for each of their subjects. The LEA or Local Education Authority(school district) has written out all the lessons for us on every subject. I have to teach English, Math, History, Geography, Science, Religious Education, Physical Education, Information Technology, Art, and French. They are also going to be learning a musical instrument this year and I have the option to learn with them. I am going to be learning to play the Fife people! How cool is that? There is a parent who can come in and help me with the pronunciations but the actual French lessons are going to be taught non other than by Moi! Lord, thank you for making me take French in high school after all! I am really excited about teaching all of these subjects, and yes, you actually HAVE to teach them, you can’t just brush PE under the rug, you have to actually follow the lesson plans and units provided by the LEA. Oh, and for this half-term my students are learning how to swim on Fridays, it is a requirement in school. They are all in 3 ring binder rather than teacher books so you can pull the lesson out and deal with it then. I also have 2 hours of planning time every Friday, while the students are learning to swim, with my colleague Jackie, who has taught year 5 for a number of years. She is lovely and so helpful. I am just doing what she is doing so far. It is a little daunting, the lessons are kind of boring, but she says I have the ability to change and adapt as necessary to meet the needs of my students. I am introducing math games that they have never heard of and ideas for projects that were common in Los Angeles, the teachers so far are enjoying my imput. My TA is very motherly, has been a TA for 20 years but never desired to become a teacher. Her name is Lynn and oh how I love having her there.

Onto the students. How the school introduces the students is by having the teachers meet with the previous teacher and discuss each students beforehand. There are computer files I can look at, old work that has been passed on, but to get the real dirt they require us to actually sit and talk with the previous year teacher and take notes. It was interesting. I really got to know about the behaviour issues, family history, and peer relations of every child. I felt better prepared for each of these kids from day one, even though my room was not decorated, I had no idea really what I was teaching yet, or how I was going to make it from 9 am to 3:30 that day. Granted, the first three days are assessment days but still, I wanted to make a good impression with the school and the students. Not to mention that there was an underground strike and I had to take an alternative 2 HOUR route to work for the first two days of school with the students. That was very tiring and not fun. I was happy when they resolved it and I could get back to my normal one hour trip and short walk.

The students are very much like the movie To Sir With Love. Not that bad behaviour-wise but they definitely have the tough English accent, coarse language, and possibly will become those kids someday. But right now they are nine years old and so far so good. They have lovely personalities, each and everyone. They make me laugh and help me out when I don’t understand that a full stop in England is a period in America. They also informed me that a swimming costume in the UK is a swimsuit in America. We get along pretty well and they like my way of teaching, it is very different from the other teachers. The other teachers are very strict, no personality, and definitely no personal caring for the students, very professional, to the extreme I think. I sit there and listen to the students, encourage them, tell them I care about them and want them to enjoy school. They look at me like I am someone from another planet, but overall the response has been positive. That is when I realized that a lot of what I had learned from their former teachers was great, but at the same time, what their teachers found annoying or bothersome, was just the kids personalities. They were just being little boys and little girls. It bugs me but I am going to just continue to do my thing and connect with the students as best as I can. I went back over the notes I took today and I can see some of what the teachers said in each of the students, but again, that is just who these kids are.

Other than that, I am looking forward to next week when we really are suppose to start teaching the lessons, handing out homework, etc. I am starting to feel like a real Londoner now. When my belongings arrive on the 17th and my Gidget on October 14th I will really feel like my life is completely here now. Well, that is all for now, hope you are well, enjoying your dry hot weather. Think of me in this humidity, with no rain, walking everywhere. Oh how I miss Air Conditioning!