Been a while!

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. Nothing terribly exciting has happened. We have settled into something of routine which is good. Tilda has been really good in general. She did have an ear infection which took a little while to get over and is getting loads of teeth at them moment. Who knew teeth were so unpredictable?

Mel has connected with some of the other non-working wives & partners which is great for them all. Mel set up a Facebook page and they are setting up playdates and outings with each other. Being to get to know other people has relieved some of the stress for us both. It's hard to head off to work knowing that Mel is kind of bored at home. I think it's been cathartic for Mel to be able to share her frustrations with people who are going through the same kind of stuff.

School is chugging along ok. I think I might said in earlier post that there were a lot of new staff starting this year (27!). There has been a fair bit of turmoil at the school over the last 12-18 months and there are a lot of things that aren't quite right yet. There are systems & processes that aren't properly in place. In some cases previous teachers didn't leave things when they left (e.g. schemes of work, resources) or if they were left, they were fairly half-arsed.

Probably the biggest issue is our Grade 12's (Year 13 in NZ). These guys weren't treated terribly well by some of the previous staff and so they were quite wary at the beginning of the year. More than a couple had quite the attitude going on. Unfortunately they, in some cases, are behind in their work. And by behind, I mean a term behind not just a week or two. Some will struggle to pass their IB diploma this year, which isn't fair on them. It was very instructive for me when we did a reflection activity after the first day of school. More than one student commented along the lines of "the new teachers seem to care about us", "the new teachers seem to know what they're doing" or "I'm glad they got new teachers and kept the good ones from last year". When I showed my Homeroom partner, we both felt quite sad for these kids.

There some positives though! The school roll is significantly lower than it should be. So our classes are small. The biggest class I have is my Grade 6 Humanities class with 18. I have 12 students in Grade 9 Global Perspectives and 9 in my Grade 11 Environmental Systems & Societies. My 3 senior Geography classes all have 4 or 5 students. On the whole, the students are all pretty nice kids. There a couple of special ones but they're pretty easy to deal with. We certainly don't have the behavioural issues that I saw from some kids at Fraser.

Some other positives? Because there are so many new staff, there's a good sense of camaraderie developing, which is cool. We have drinks on a Friday which is good. Very expensive though and I have to be careful not to get too carried away! This year is pretty much viewed as a transitional year so we have quite a bit of room to experiment with different things. I find that I'm able to use ICT a fair bit more and myself and the Grade 6 English teacher are planning to do some collaborative work next term which is kind of exciting. There's also lots of PD going on. I've done some IB training already and there are 6 of us flying to Malaysia in the October holidays to do some more. Tomorrow there are a group of us off to a Google Apps summit at the Singapore American Singapore.

For me one for the coolest things is the fact that I can watch 3-5 games of AFL footy every weekend. For free:) It's finals time now and my Magpies are playing the Hawks tonight. I'm pretty nervous because Hawthorn have looked good all year. Wait and see I guess:)

Anyhoo, that' it for a bit.

Ciao for now & GO PIES!!!