Teaching on the weekdays, beaches on the weekend; not a bad lifestyle eh?At this point of my stay in Australia, my living routine (at least during the week) has become in some manner like the Groundhog Day movie; and I don’t mean that in a negative or monotonous way or anything. It’s amazing how quickly one can adjust to a new place and a new style of life; this place has definitely become my home away from home. I feel like I have been working at Kelvin Grove for years and am extremely comfortable with the culture, environment, and way of life around here. Saying that, I am still learning new things every day and trying to experience new places every weekend.
As I said before, Eden and I have established a living schedule of sorts. Every morning we wake up before work at 6:00 and get ready for school. Eden is usually up checking Facebook, etc. while I lay there until 6:15-6:30 wondering why the hell she always gets up so early. Eventually, I get up, turn on my music, shower and prep, putting on my slacks and a long sleeve shirt for the workday. Honestly, even with summer weather here and no air conditioning in my school building (Australian’s don’t seem to hold the same regards to AC as Americans) it’s not all that bad. By 7:05, Eden is usually staring at me ready to go (worrying that we are going to miss the public transit bus) while I take my time to roll out the door. By 7:10, mouthwash is in, I’m listening to my iTouch, and we are out the door to catch the 7:22 ride on the 390 bus (it must be noted that we have NEVER missed the bus although my nonchalant approach to leaving in the morning seems to frustrate Eden haha). On our walk to the Brookside Shopping Center bus stop, we always pass the same old lady on the bridge crossing the river—which is when I always think of Groundhog Day. I judge whether or not we are late or not by the point at which we meet her on our walk. Lol she’s just like clockwork. By 7:45-8:00 we arrive at Kelvin Grove State College and do prep work until school begins at 9:00 (gotta love the 9:00 start eh).
At 9:00, I usher my class inside the school from their position outside and the school day begins. The following is a schedule of the typical Year 7 school day (Just a side-note here, students don’t have that conditioned response to go crazy when the bell rings at the end of a period as in the U.S. which is great but was definitely an eye-opener at first):
9:00-10:19 1st Period
10:20-10:45 Morning Tea (Staff all interact in the staffroom where they have their own individual desks aside from the one they have in their classroom and have their “morning tea” here while students essentially have brunch outside)
10:45-11:55 2nd Period
11:55-1:05 3rd Period
1:05-1:50 Lunch
1:50-3:00 4th Period; Dismissal
3:00-4:15 Preparation, staff meetings, coordinating teacher meetings
Whether or not I have any prep periods is dependent upon the day of the week. For example, I have no prep time Tuesday/Wednesday while having one prep period Monday/Friday and two on Thursday. Prep times are built into the schedule during my students’ specialty classes in which they attend one day a week (physical education, computer tech, music, art, and Italian). Monday through Friday I usually teach 6-8 classes a day of literacy in numeracy alongside regular curriculum mathematics (they say “maths” here with an (s) on the end instead of “math” which is a bit strange); Wednesday I construct science labs; and Thursday and Fridays I teach an English unit and run science lessons and reflections.
Regarding my schedule, because middle school teachers here aren’t specialty teachers where they only teach one subject a day, I am able to gain valuable experience (especially for international teaching) by delving into math and science at various points throughout the week while also maintaining my requirements for teaching English. It couldn’t have worked out any better in my mind.
Departure time on the typical day is around 3:30-4:00. I catch the 390 bus from Kelvin Grove back to Everton Park—arriving home approximately 4:30-5:00 every day. On days that are extremely hot, we usually go for a swim, eat dinner, and watch a few episodes of the TV show “Lost” which we have become addicted to. We are halfway through Season 3 at the moment. I must admit that I have also been watching The Bachelor with Eden; I have found my future wife on their (Emily, a southern blonde bell) and she is still in the running…so the bachelor-dude may have also found his wife…Anyway, asides from that, we really don’t watch any television at all. Those two shows we watch on our laptops so the TV in the house hasn’t even been turned on once. ESPN.com is still my homepage on my laptop (as they don’t have ESPN Australia on TV or anything cool like that) so I catch up with my American sports that way—following Green Bay during their Superbowl run was difficult as I was teaching during the Superbowl as it was Monday here in Australia. I’ve kept up with everything else in the sporting world involving UNI and the Chicago Cubs as many of you might imagine. My students got a good laugh out of the fact that the Cubs hadn’t been to the World Series since WWII and were nicknamed “the lovable losers.” Randomly around here you see someone wearing a NY Yankees hat and one of my students actually wore his Albert Pujols jersey to school on their “free dress” day as they are required to abide by strict school uniform policies every other day.
Overall, school for these two weeks went exceedingly well. My coordinating teacher has actually been gone for a good portion of my time here so essentially I’ve been given the freedom to run the show by the middle school head of department. By law they are required to hire a teacher for the days and the entire week which she has been gone for, but essentially I am the leader—which makes me only that much more eager to run my own classroom without anyone hovering over me (as it has been for the past 4 years).
All in all, every school day has been great so far; they say to find a job you enjoy waking up to every day and so far this teaching experience has been far from stressful or a burden to wake up to. I know it will only get better when I am able to incorporate coaching sports into my life alongside my teaching.
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