Friday, August 5, 2011

"Satisfactory"

I have survived 5 full days in a local high school after 11 years out of the class room and 13 years since I taught full time!

I can not begin to tell you how frazzled my poor brain is!  In the UK I taught Religious Studies and a bit of Personal and Social Education (Sex Education, Contraception, Drugs 'n' stuff).  However, in Australia, as I have no doubt bored you before, RE is not taught as an academic subject until yr 11 as an elective.  Very few schools seem to offer it at all so getting any kind of employment may prove tricky.  I'm thinking that my best bet may be to approach the Catholic schools to see if they could use me.  I was given a fantastic supervisor who gave me all his Yr 11 Studies of Religion classes to teach and I thoroughly enjoyed being back in a class room.  The school I was in seems to have an unfortunately high proportion of children who are totally disinterested in any form of education and that most people, including most of the teachers, have written off.  Some of those kids were in the class but on the whole we managed to get down and dirty with the topics of Core Ethical Teachings in the New Testament and Religion Pre-1945 in Australia, which concerns a lot of Sectarianism but also Social Welfare and looking at organisations such as the Royal Flying Doctors Service.  Since there is so little SoR to be had, my supervisor made sure that I would also be able to teach History so had me swotting up about Whitlam and his dismissal - how fascinating!  I do love History and loved the excuse to get my head stuck into some books.  I was even up reading at 6am this morning- those of you who know me will appreciate the significance of this!  Not to show off(!), but the word "Excellent" was used a few times in my reports, particularly the class today that I taught off the top of my head as there had been a mistake in the timetable. Yippee!  Can I just say that 70 mins is a veeeeery long time to teach off the top of your head - I think I managed 55 mins then we had a debate about SRE and Ethics classes - ever topical, me!

Thanks to Husband being fairly flexible, the logistics of dropping off, picking up, Open Days, Zone Athletics and after school activities all went off without too much of a hitch.  Huge thanks to the lovely Cath for rescuing me on Wednesday morning when things looked like they might be thinking about going a bit pear-shaped...!

My only gripe about the week has been the weather.  How typical that after all the rubbish weather we've had, the week I'm stuck inside a building all week is the week the sun shines.  So as soon as I got home this afternoon I changed shoes (oh man are my poor feet in shreds after a week of grown-up shoes!!), grabbed a child or 3 and headed to the beach.  The air was fabulous, the sea beautiful and the coffee hit the spot.  We were a little too late to get the sun  and have come to the conclusion that since we are NOT a morning family, we really ought to be living on the West Coast of somewhere as sun rises are wasted on us.  It was a "Breathe out" moment though for sure.



All I have to do now is get through an interview with the Principal of another local school to confirm my suitability to educate the young minds of NSW kids and we'll be cooking with gas!  Wish me luck for Monday!

Hope your weekend is restful/exciting/fulfilling/relaxing!
Sx

7 comments:

  1. The best of luck on Monday. I took 7 years out of a classroom but I promise teaching is like riding a bike - you might wobble a bit at first but you never really forget! I adore my job & honestly believe it is a privilege to teach.

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  2. Congratulations on getting back into the swing of things with teaching. It sounds like you had the best time, even if it was exhausting! Good luck for the interview. I'm sure you'll do great. xx

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  3. Well done with jumping back into the world of work. It is a culture shock isn't it! My kids go to Catholic schools and as far as I know the teachers need to be Catholics to be employed there. No idea if that is where you are in your life and I may be wrong with my info. Good luck on Monday!

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  4. Good Luck on Monday. It sounds like you're doing very well. I hope it all works out for you.

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  5. Thanks for the good wishes! I'm seeing tomorrow as an opportunity to impress another Principal that could potentially employ me. As for the Catholic Schools, I'm not Catholic, but did go to a Convent school, and the Anglican and Catholic Dioceses here seem to be pretty friendly... but I'm thinking you might be right. Nothing ventured, nothing gained though.

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  6. Oh well done on getting through your tough week Sandra, it did sound rough you poor thing. The weather always seems to do that when you're stuck at work... I thought the same thing this week!
    Best of luck with your interview, I'm sure you'll knock their socks off, you sound like a wonderful teacher to me :o) xo

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  7. Wow you are having an amazing time at the moment! I hope Monday went well!! I have been so slack at visiting my fave blogs lately so have just had a lovely time catching up on yours. Your sons speech made me say 'aaaaahh' out loud. How utterly adorable (especially about the stinky socks!). But my favourite, favourite thing is your converse shoe pic! It's fabulous!!!!! Have a lovely week hon.

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