Four months in Singapore

Yesterday marked four months since we arrived in Singapore. Mel and I were talking this morning that it seems like ages ago that we got here. But it at the same time it feels like the time has whizzed by.

I think the biggest change has been in Matilda. She is nearly 18 months old now and is definitely not a baby anymore. She seems to be learning new words everyday and is starting to make short sentences regularly. The other day she said "I don't like it" when she was offered some food and she regularly says "I need this" when she wants something.

Walking has become important too. When we head down to a local cafe for brunch Matilda insists on walking as much as possible. It's roughly a kilometre to the cafe and she walks about halfway without too many problems. She took a tumble this morning though and scraped her knees and fingers. While we were eating she kept holding up her hand with a pained look on her face. Poor poppet:(

We seem to have more public holidays here which is nice. They try cater for all the main ethnic groups so we had a day off last month for the end of the Hajj for the Muslims. This Tuesday is a holiday for Deepvali which is a Hindu festival. We get Christmas and New Year as well. Actually we get two New Year holidays because there's 2 days off in February for Chinese New Year.  There are some others as well but I can't remember the details.

Mel and I went into town last night for dinner and to see the Deepvali lights in Little India. The bus was absolutely full! To the point where we were not stopping. I reckon we missed a third of the stops. We had dinner at a really nice Indian restaurant and then wandered around a bit. There were loads of people around and the lights looked pretty cool. The bus trip home wasn't as busy:)

School is ok. We have an inspection for our EduTrust certification. The school needs this to be allowed to take international students. Without this we would have to shut up shop. As you can imagine this is causing quite a bit of stress. Although they aren't actually interested in our teaching practice they want to interview some of the teaching staff, as well as the admin guys. Everyone was worried on Friday as that was when we would find out if we would be the "lucky ones". Thankfully I missed out but Mel is gutted because they asked to interview some of the part time staff. She's only been there a month! They also want to see another of the part timers. She only started on Monday and has had a fairly stressful start to her job!

I can't think of anything to say right now so I'll be off.

Later
TONE

In Kuala Lumpur

Middle weekend of the first term holidays. I am in KL to do some training for IB Geography. Even though it's during the holidays, I'm excited because hopefully I'll be able to cross some I's and dot some T's.

A few of us flew up to Malaysia yesterday morning. Very early morning! Got picked up at 5:20am so I was up at 4:30. Mel's sister and family are staying with us and Matilda is super excited to see her cousins Zoe & Emma. So she didn't want to go to sleep. Wouldn't be too much of a problem normally but she is sleeping in our room. I probably got to sleep around 1am!

Part of our programme involved going to visit our sister school in Putrjaya which is 30 or so km south of KL. As per usual with Air Asia, our flight left Singapore 45 mins late which threw our timing out. We didn't get as much time as we would've liked watching lessons at Purajaya. What I did see was great though. I think I have a clearer idea of where we we'll be in 2-3 years time. And that is exciting!

We got a taxi up to KL after we finished at Putrjaya. We planned to leave at 3pm and asked to have a couple of taxi there at that time. One turned up and took a couple of us to the airport. The next one didn't want to take the rest of us to KL. Too far? Not sure! Eventually we got a couple of taxis to turn up. It was interesting to see the country side. It was kind of weird seeing lots of open space instead of lots of high rise buildings.

We got to the hotel in KL around 4:30pm. As we were checking in one of the guys realised he had lost his passport! Such a pain, but he was able to get a replacement from the British Consulate which has eased his stress somewhat.

The hotel is really nice and I have a good a view of Petronas Towers from my room which is cool. In case you don't know,  these buildings used to be the tallest in the world before Taipei 101 and the new one in Dubai.

I started this post in KL but the training was very intense and I never got around to finishing. So I'm doing it now back in Singapore. As I said the IB training was intense. So much information to digest! It was really good though. There were a few other teachers in our group that are in a similar position to me - new to the IB system and actually teaching the course. It was great to swap experiences and ideas.

I was concerned about being behind in terms of how much we had covered. I'm not quite as far behind as I thought, which is good. But I am behind and we will have to catch up somehow. I do feel more confident about things now and I think I will be able to make some of the lost ground.

One of the best things about being an expat is meeting like minded people. The people in our group were really interesting. Mostly from the UK with a couple of Kiwis and Canadians thrown in, they're teaching in places like Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Australia and even NZ. One of the Kiwi guys works at St Peter's College in Cambridge and had joined the NZGS just as I was leaving so it was good to catch up with him and hear how things were going back in Hamilton.

This post is taking a long time! First week of term is finished now. Mercifully, it's a short week because today is a public holiday for Hari Raya Haji which celebrates the end of the Hajj. Today is going to be a lazy day I think. I was hoping for a sleep in but Tilda decided she should wake up at 5:30 this morning. To be fair, she has a little cold so I can't really blame her. 

The first week was pretty good though tiring. Quite a bit of stuff to get through before the Christmas holidays. It's an 8 week term which is great but it creates a fair amount of pressure. I guess we'll get there though. We're not planning to go back to Australia or NZ this Christmas. Moving here and getting set up was an expensive exercise. We're not destitute or anything but catching up will take time. Mel was excited yesterday because she got her first pay since starting work:)

I can't think of anything else to say right now so I'll be off.

Ciao
Tone

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!!!

Two weeks in.

We have a long weekend this weekend. I think it's to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Gotta love multi-cutural inclusiveness:) The extra day off came at a good time for me. The teaching staff have been at school since the 1st of August. The kids started on the 13th. I had some training over the weekend before that, which was great but tiring - 8:30 - 4:30 for 3 days. So yesterday was the second day off for me in 2 weeks.

The training was for the International Baccalaureate Diploma course for a subject called Environmental Systems & Society. It's a really interesting subject and kind of fits the degree I did. I learned a lot! But I'm sure there was some stuff that went in one ear and out the other:) It was great to meet some other teachers from the international school circuit and talk about how stuff works in the various schools.

Monday was the first day for the kids at school. I'm the Grade 12 Homeroom teacher and I was excited to meet the kids. It was interesting. Quite a few of the 23 in Grade 12 were what I would call "too cool for school". There were 2 groups that had a bit of attitude - some Korean boys and another group of girls.

Each homeroom teacher has a support teacher. Holly and I did a couple of "get to know you" activities and watched quite carefully. We were content to let them go so we could see how interacted with each other, as well as how they responded to both of us. Suffice to say, we weren't that impressed with what we saw. In my mind I was seeing a reasonably tough year with these guys.

We had another homeroom session ion the afternoon. I had been to watch the Grade 12's in a couple of their other sessions and had spoken to some of the other teachers, as well as senior management. Although it was generally positive, there were a few negatives so I decided I was going to give them a bit of a rark up. No shouting or ranting, just a nice calm but firm talking to. Mostly I spoke about being respectful to each other, their teachers and themselves and turning up on time. You know, "the usual school stuff". And they sat still and listened quietly. Some nodded their heads, while others dropped theirs and looked embarrassed. They left very quietly at the end.

Later I spoke to the IB co-ordinator and some of the other Grade 12 teachers. Over the course of the day they had learned that they were quite a way behind where they should be and they all had a massive workload in front of them if they were to catch up and get their diplomas. Basically, they were shitting themselves!

The next day I did a reflection activity with them to see what they had to say about their first day. There were a lot of positive comments, which was great but it made Holly and I feel quite bad for these guys. They said stuff like "the teachers spoke to us like we were people", "the new teachers seemed like they cared about us" and "I'm glad we have new teachers and they've kept the good ones from last year". These kids had obviously not had much support from most of their teachers last year. I asked a couple of kids about it and the comments were along the lines of "the teacher came in, wrote some page numbers on the board, said "there's your work" and then sat at their desks playing on their computers.

Anyway, things have moved along and we're getting a picture of what the students covered (or not!) last year. In the Senior school they do the IB Diploma in Grade 11 & 12 and the IGSCE in Grade 9 & 10. As they're both 2 year courses finding out what was done last year is obviously really important. Our roll is quite small which is not ideal for the school in the long term, but it's good for us as our classes are really small which means we won't so caught up with loads of marking:)

Our apartment is taking shape and now feels much more like a home. We got a second hand lounge suite and a book shelf thingy, which look great but poor Mel had a mission getting them home. The guy she organised to help turned up and said "7th floor? No you said 2nd floor" which is bollocks because she has the text to prove it. The woman we bought it off wasn't sympathetic either. Long story short, Mel got another (more helpful!) guy to help and she had to help carry part it of down 7 floors because it wouldn't fit in the lift. Poor bugger was knackered by the time I got home and has several sizeable bruises on her arms and legs. I felt stink about not being able to help carry the stuff. But I was able to help put it together and move it around.

I've run out stuff to say for the moment so I'll be off and will try to post more this week sometime.

Ciao for now!

TONE