The schools here have an unusual finals schedule where all the children (K-12) attend school for 1/2 days for two weeks, taking one final exam per day. I don’t know how much you remember about 2nd and 4th grade, but rigorous final exams usually aren’t part of the mix. Since these are pretty much down weeks for Will, as he’s not needing to study much (he’s not taking the Arabic language finals), I checked him out of school early on…
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind with all of the end-of-semester activities. Regular readers know that as the Fulbright spouse (that’s a thing, right?) on this adventure, I’ve been remotely teaching my college courses back in Mississippi. I’m so grateful that my college gave me this opportunity as there aren’t many institutions who would have allowed such flexibility! Teaching my courses remotely has been wonderful, but not without its own unique set of challenges. Now that the last…
When you arrive at a school for your first visit, usually someone will become your sponsor and walk you around. They will introduce you to the principal, all the English teachers and find classes for you to visit. Meeting with a principal is always interesting because there is the expected sit down and chat (How do you like it here? Oh, so your children are here! What school do they go to? Are you doing ok?) which eventually moves to…
Last week, I tallied up the school visits I have been able to accomplish. So far, it looks like I have had 18 visits to 5 different schools. I was able to teach a sample lesson at 1 school already and I have 1 more this week. I feel like an old pro at school visits. It was tough getting permission to visit schools at first. I mentioned before that since I am only the 2nd group of Fulbright DATs…
Teachers will understand this. There are a lot of feelings associated with teaching. For example: Then there are the first day of school Pinterest photos showing the utopia of teaching. What I miss though is the day to day because I really *like* teaching. I avoided this career. I come from a family of teachers. I mean EVERYONE is a teacher (mom, 3 aunts, grandmother, multiple cousins of all generations, you get the picture). My dad was planning on being a…