Time for another Post...

Greetings. It has been almost two weeks since I last posted, the time has just passed quickly without my getting around to blogging. Teaching has been on the whole fairly positive lately. I've been doing more teaching in Yr 2 and 3 classes which is really my preferred age group. As of last Thursday, I've started tutoring students at Richard Alibon Primary school two days a week. I met with the homeroom teacher on Thursday, then met each of the students briefly that afternoon just to introduce myself and get to know them a bit. Friday, I worked with three students. The two main areas of focus for most of the Math students (I also have some in English as well, whom I haven't worked with yet) seem to be decoding word problems (identifying exactly what information the question is asking, and what operations are required to solve it) and converting between decimals, fractions, and percentages. I'm hoping to be able to work with at least 4-5 students those days so that I'm not taking a major pay cut over supply work (I talked to the principal and he said he has two more students for me which would bring me up to a total of 8), but already on the first day, I found it a much more rewarding job than supplying. The kids were eager, and they worked really hard, and they each learned something...even something like, reread each sentence carefully to be sure you understand the information you've been given.

Aside from teaching, I'm beginning to plan seriously for visits from friends for each of my upcoming school holidays in April, June, and August. In April, I'll be showing my friend Karen around London. After she goes home, I'm going to visit the Taize Community in France for four days, a ten-year old dream of mine now that I can finally fulfill. For anyone not familiar with Taize, it's an ecumenical monastic community that works and worships together, and has welcomed Christian pilgrims from around the world (particularly young people) for many years. In June, Emily is coming to visit, and then in August, my other friend Karen and I will be backpacking across Europe together. I'm doing lots of research right now about how best to see as much as we can on a budget as possible. Paris, Bruges, Amsterdam, parts of Switzerland and Germany (where we have IVEP friends), Salzburg and Vienna, Rome and Venice are on the wish list right now.

Last weekend, I saw Chicago with some friends from teacher's college. We managed to see the show and get dinner at a Thai restaurant nearby for 27.50. It's wonderful to be in London and be able to take advantage of such deals...I know I am fortunate.

Yesterday I led a musical gathering for my church friends at the London Mennonite Centre. I got out the blue hymnal and Sing the Journey books, and picked some of my favourites--mostly short and simple, but beautiful pieces to teach in parts to the gathered assembly (about 10) by rote. We had fun, and several people expressed interest in doing it again.

Well, it's time to get outside and take advantage of the glorious weather. The crocuses, daffodils and pansies are all in their prime...spring has officially arrived!

London Transport Museum

Hi again. This past week has been gorgeous: cold, but sunshine and clear blue skies every day--a very welcome reprieve from weeks on end of grey, overcast skies from my point of view. Teaching went pretty well last week too. Monday I arrived at my designated school to find the boilers were off, so they sent all the kids home. They still had to pay me for showing up, so I changed a large bulletin board and then went home around noon. Tuesday I didn't get called in, so I went to a bookstore in Ilford (a community just north of Barking) where I bought myself a number of budget Europe travel guides for a big trip I'm hoping to make with a friend from back home this summer. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I was in yr 3 classes each day, and amazingly, some pretty well-behaved kids. I really like that age group. They're old enough to be a bit more independent, have a bit more self-control than the really young kids, yet not old enough to be self-conscious or hormonal yet. They're a really creative bunch, and most of them still idolize their teachers.

On Friday night, Kim and I went to see the opening of Alice in Wonderland. It has been a long time since I read the books, but I mostly enjoyed it. Since I had never seen Avatar, it was my first 3-D movie. They combined Alice and the Looking Glass with Carroll's poem, The Jabberwocky, including the "vorpal sword." I had sung a song based on the poem in choir at Nipissing last spring, so I had the song going through my head a few times.

Saturday I went to the London Transport Museum. It's very well done, a very interactive exhibit in which you can board old buses, trams, trains, etc and see what they were like.

various vintage models of London buses

Lots of history, from the British-style rickshaws that used to be used to the mini ominbuses which replaced horse-drawn carriages as a mode of transport, to the high-speed rail options available to Londoners today


Yesterday, I went to St. Paul's Cathedral for their choral Eucharist before going to the Menno church in London for 3 pm. I had a nice visit over drinks and chips (with mayonnaise, the Belgian/Dutch way...) with some friends at a local pub after church. A good weekend...

Tutoring Opportunity

Hello again:

I've been back in the classroom this week, back on day-to-day supply. Some good days, some not-so-hot days, but my free time is my own again. I went to a training workshop at TimePlan on Thursday night for a new initiative the government has just unrolled. They're funding a new program aimed at helping underachievers (in the areas of math and english) reach their potential. If schools allocate students for the program, they will be given funding for 10 one-hour sessions 1:1 with a tutor. It's targeting primarily Yr. 6 (and some Yr 5) students, who have to write their SATs (like Gr 6 EQAO) in May. I'm quite excited by the prospect of working intensively with individual students over a period of time. As a teacher, one never has as much time to spend with individual students as one would like, so this will feel like a relative luxury to spend an hour dedicated to one student. It will provide rich opportunities for me to both hone my own teaching strategies as well as to see very measurable progress from week to week. I'll give up some supply teaching in order to do the tutoring instead. TimePlan is looking for people to tutor, but willing to work around whatever I want--I'm envisioning doing 2-3 days of supply and 2-3 days of tutoring a week at this point. I can adjust as it goes on, depending how I find the tutoring.

I've been watching the Olympics every chance I get lately--I finally figured out which channel to check for Olympic coverage--and cheering all the Canadian gold that's been won lately! Canadian women athletes rock!...and I'm hoping the men's hockey team is victorious over the Yanks tonight.

It's been a good weekend. I went to a TimePlan social on Friday night, where I was able to visit with some people I haven't seen recently, as well as meet a few new faces. Yesterday, I walked around Camden Market, which is a great place for eclectic gifts and souvenirs. I'll go back there just before I return to Canada for a few reminders of London. A friend and I went to see Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love" at the English National Opera House last night. The Opera House itself was a beautiful old Victorian building, highly guilded and ornamented, from a time when the sun never set on the British Empire. This morning I went to church in Barking, and I'm going to a prayer meeting with some folks from the church late this afternoon.

The Rest of my Bruges Trip

So I left you last on Wednesday morning, having enjoyed a good first day in Bruges on Tuesday. After breakfast on Wednesday (kindly provided by my hostel, simple but adequate), I made my way to the tourist information centre where I bought a 48-hour Bruges city card for easy access to all the city museums plus other important cultural/historical sites, and a boat ride around Bruges canals. I decided I was going to make a stab at as many museums as I could that day. I went to the Memlingmuseum first, a former hospital for pilgrims/travellers/the sick that had in its early days commissioned local artists such as Hans Memling to create art pieces to grace the walls of the hospital. The museum was set up as the original hospital, combining art and medical care (such as it was at the time).

Thursday morning I headed out to the Friet Museum first thing. Who knew that French fries were actually invented by the Belgians? Or that they are delicious eaten with mayonnaise? The museum was very interesting, provided samples of the original tubers that were originally eaten by people in the Andes before being transported to Europe. It was a museum of the history of the potato as much as of the French fry, though there was a snack bar selling fries at the end. The fried snack was invented in the 17th century, and likely confused by the Americans during WW1 who only knew that the commanders who gave them the snack spoke French. Then it was on to the Chocolate Museum...I know, healthy morning for me...I actually thought the Friet Museum was slightly better done, though it was less busy than the Chocolate one. After that, I checked out a number of churches, and ended up at the Beguinage--a beautifully serene place where the Beguine sisters once lived. They were a religious order who sought to serve God without taking all the vows (retreating from the world) that other orders did. The community in which they lived has been preserved as a quiet, restful place. Later that afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a woman in one of the shops in town. She is looking forward to getting out of Bruges (Belgium) and going to Dubai. She had the sense that many young Europeans are looking to leave their homelands and was interested when I said that I'm teaching overseas for a year or two, but intend to return to Canada to settle eventually. I don't know how much truth there is to what she was saying.

entrance to the BeginageI went on the boat tour next, which was a highlight for me. The tour guide was funny and informative, and it was neat to see Bruges from the canals (I had already been on a bus tour the day before). Some of the bridges were quite small, one a few people had to duck to get under it, and there was another one that our guide didn't even try to venture under. Another highlight that afternoon was the Groenigemuseum, which housed many paintings by 16th-century Flemish masters: Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, and ? Pourbos, among others.

Friday I got an email from Eurostar saying no trains were getting through to Brussels yet. So I made plans to travel back the way I came, from Bruges through Kortrijk to Lille--from which I could catch my Eurostar back to London. Again, the trip went very well, for which I was grateful, especially having heard a few horror stories about people who had spent 11 hours and countless trains trying to travel from Amsterdam to Bruges or other such trips. I got a first-class seat on Eurostar since their 2nd-class seats were filled, and I got home at 3:30 pm rather than 9:30, for the original price of 44 quid.

This was my first holiday really on my own, and it went pretty well for the most part. French was not widely used in Bruges as it's a more northern city in Belgium, thus Flemish is the mother language. However, English was almost universally understood and spoken. I enjoyed walking around Bruges and was able to communicate well most of the time. Bruges does shut down early (by 6 pm most places were closed) so a couple of nights I sat in the bar at my hostel with my book/prayer journal/puzzle books. There was no lounge, but at least they didn't make me buy a drink to sit there...: ) I also talked a bit with the Belgian woman and her two daughters who were my roommates the first two nights, and more with the American backpackers (a brother and sister) who were my roommates the last night there.

The greatest highlights on this trip: chocolate; the boat trip; the Groenigemuseum; the Memlingmuseum; discovering new interesting places at the end of another street or alley.

Arriving in Bruges

I thought I should give a brief update for the family and friends (particularly my mother) who were wondering what came of my trip since the trains to Brussels were cancelled. I decided on Monday night that I would go in for my 7:30 am train to Brussels anyway; I thought there was the remote chance that it might go ahead after all, and assuming it didn't, ask Eurostar what they could do for me. I thought it might well be an option to go to Calais or Lille (both Eurostar destinations) instead, and I could always take a highway coach if worse came to worse. So I arrived at St. Pancras station at 6:50 yesterday morning and found signs everywhere immediately informing me of no travel to Brussels for the day. I made my way to an information desk where I was told that yes, they would take me to Lille instead, I just needed to go to the ticket counter to get my ticket changed. I left the ticket counter about 7:10, and got to my train just in time for its 7:27 departure. It was a pleasant, uneventful trip to Lille and we arrived shortly after 10 am local time (one hour ahead of London time). I walked from one train station to another one very closeby that would operated trains in the direction of Bruges. Having barely had time for breakfast that morning, I stopped for an apple-filled pastry. Then I bought a ticket to Bruges via Cortrai (the cashier, whose English was as poor as my French very kindly wrote out locations and times for me so I'd know where and when I'd be transitioning). I made the transition at Cortrai (spelled Kortrijk at the station, the Flemish version) without difficulty and found the train to Bruges. I arrived in Bruges (alternately spelled Brugge and Brugges) around 12:20, and took the number 6 bus to my accomodations at St. Christopher's Bauhaus, a local youth hostel I had booked online. Then I spent the afternoon wandering around Bruges. It is indeed a beautiful city, and I'm kicking myself that when I was repacking my things, my camera didn't make it back into my luggage. I guess I'll just have to buy lots of postcards instead. I will provide more detail about Bruges later this week, but very much enjoyed myself. I went to a concert in the evening at the concert hall, a very intimate gathering (maybe 100 people there?) lining the outside of relatively small room. In the middle of the room was a pianist/dancer duo. The pianist improvised freely using a variety of classical and jazz idioms, some prepared piano (that is, pens or a variety of other objects that have been placed inside the piano to change the sound it makes) while the dancer moved in harmony with the music, sometimes using fast, spastic movements and sometimes long, slow, graceful ones to paint the music being played. At times he looked like a marionette being moved. I had walked the city enough during the day to be quite confident to find my way back home that night...the streets felt quite safe. So after a good night's rest, I'm out and about to do as much as I can in this city today and tomorrow. Brussels on Friday...

Ciao.

Taking Stock...

Much has happened since I last updated this blog. I had a hard week two weeks ago, at the end of which I had a discussion with my mentor teacher which resulted in her agreeing to seek more support for me from senior levels of administration at the school. I had a visit with the VP at Gascoigne last Wednesday (nine days ago) and she asked me how I was feeling. I replied honestly that I was still struggling somewhat with the behaviour management side of things, but that I was continuing to work on it, and happy with the support I'd had from the other yr 1 teachers, and generally happy at Gascoigne. She then expressed the same concern--though never fleshed out in any more detail than what I had said--and told me that since I was employed through an agency (and Gascoigne has many agency staff) I would not be funded for any extra support, as I would be if I was permanently employed on a contract as a Newly Qualified Teacher by Gascoigne. (NQTs are eligible for one day off every week to observe other teachers and/or attend workshops, as well as regular observations and feedback and team teaching with a more experienced teacher.) She essentially gave me to understand that I was on probation for the next week or two.

After the initial shock of her message--and the sting of perceived failure--wore off, I realized that I was really feeling pretty stressed out by this job, and perhaps the best thing in the world for me would be to get out of this long-term job and go back to day-to-day supply. So it was without a great deal of surprise or sadness that I received the news from TimePlan (my agency) on Friday last week that Gascoigne wanted me to finish my tenure with them this Friday.

I have spent this week packing up my things, trying to get everything in order for the new teacher who's taking over (who turns out to be another young teacher from TimePlan) as much as possible, and doing the best job I can with these kids for my last week with them. Yesterday and today, Shola (the replacement teacher) was teaching for much of it, and I have been sent into the reception and nursery classes on day-to-day supply. So it was kind of a weird way to end--I only saw my kids for ten minutes to say goodbye today.

While I don't feel much attachment to most of my students, I feel regret for the turmoil they're going through again. Shola is now the fourth teacher they've had this year. sShe and I had a meeting with one child's parents yesterday who are concerned about the impact on their son, who was noted as having social difficulties already in reception, of this ongoing disruption which has cut him off from the friends he was making early in the year before this "overflow" class was formed, also wondering what will happen to him next year.

So it's over. I have said goodbye to my yr 1 class, and can now enjoy my break without thinking at all about planning (or marking) for the Monday after the break. I am definitely looking forward to stepping back from all the paperwork, all the planning, all the pressure and all-consuming nature of having my own class.

On the other hand, it has been a huge learning experience for me. I have learned much about planning, about the National Curriculum, about assessment, and about management. Gascoigne is a large school (1000+ students) so I have had the opportunity to get to know and work with a bunch of other teachers, and it has been nice to have a team of 4 other yr 1 teachers to bounce ideas with. I got to know some teachers and teaching assistants whom I'll be sorry to leave behind. Several have asked me to stay in touch.

Where God closes one door, I believe he opens another. I look forward to the next stage of the journey with anticipation. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to having some relaxation time this next week, as I take the train through the chunnel to visit the medieval city of Bruges in Belgium.

Quiet Weekend

It's been a while since my last post. Last week, I felt worn out dealing with children who wouldn't listen and ended up yelling far more than was wise or necessary. I paid the price by not having any voice all weekend, and it's just been slowly returning this week. The upside of all this is that I couldn't teach and therefore have had a much more leisurely week thus far--it's felt like a four-day weekend. I watched three movies on the weekend and put together a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. I've also done a lot more walking the last few days because I had the time to do so, as well as getting an acupuncture done today. Today I did go into school in the morning for a workshop on Big Writing (the new initiative recently adopted by Gasgcoigne to help lower-ability students--particularly boys--improve their writing) in the morning which was really good. The speaker was really engaging and gave us some good ideas (including how to teach children to count to ten in Japanese in three minutes or less). He talked about giving the kids nuggets of information to think about and gave us some ideas of the kinds of activities we can use to help them build meaning out of the information they're given. I expect to be back at school tomorrow, and hope to put into practice a few of the ideas he gave us today. I've talked to my mentor teacher and am hoping to get a bit more support--particularly for my guided reading program--soon. And I'm counting down the days until the half-term holiday and Belgium!