Wow. Overwhelmed. Anxious. And Excited. Today was my first day at work! After everything it finally hit me that I am teaching here. And I am more excited than ever now after hearing out nice it is here for us teachers. I never teach more than 26 periods a week. I have a teaching assistant. I get paid all 12 months of the year. And the kids are amazing. It is much more cushiony than any job in the states. I especially loved getting to know everyone and actually witness the overwhelming generosity of the teaching community here. If I was nervous about making friends before I am not worried about it anymore. I got very lucky to be at the school I am at with such a great principal and community that even though it is in the middle of nowhere everyone stays. There are only 15 new teachers and that is with adding an entire new grade. 15 new teachers out of a staff of over 170! That says good things about the school if everyone wants to stay.
We arrived and had a short orientations with all the returning teachers and then a tour of the school. Which is HUGE! It is actually three school campuses because each school is designed to eventually hold a male 6-12 campus, a female 6-12 campus and a mixed elementary campus. The campuses each have to have their own pools, gyms, ect. because ideally the boys and girls in the upper levels are not supposed to ever see each other. This year it is a little different because it is only 6-7 who would be separated and there are not enough students to take up each campus, and the elementary school doesn't have enough room for the grades 4 and 5. So the "male" campus is where I am at and it holds all genders grades 4-7.
The classroom setup is completely different this year than in the states because of the difficulties with having boys and girls in one building but not allowing them to see each other. So I will go to each homeroom class and teach language arts; essentially I am a roaming teacher. Then my classroom (my homeroom) has 28 girls which is actually the entire female 7th grade class will stay in my room throughout the day and their other teachers will come to them to teach them the other subjects. So the male teachers can enter the female part of the building and I can enter the male part to teach our subjects but that is it. This means that my room is my room and not my room. It will be hard to adjust to this idea of roaming around to other homerooms to teach but next year when 8th grade is added it will be set up like a normal middle school where the kids come to your classroom not the other way around.
After what seemed like a very short orientation I stayed after school and played a few hours of volleyball with new and returning teachers. One of the teachers, Vinny, then offered to drive some of us back to our hotel and even stopped at the grocery store so we can have food for the next few days. We commented that we wished we knew what our apartments would look like so he took us to his fiances apartment and she showed us what they will look like which got us very excited. He then took us all back to the hotel and bought us each a drink at the bar and sat and answered all of our million questions (and yes there are a million more after orientation than before) patiently. It got me more excited than I was before to meet the students after he started talking about them so passionately. I heard several times that the 7th grade girls that I get every day are the best class in the entire school. No one has ever had a negative thing to say about them which makes me very excited to meet all of them.
All in all my experience here is getting better and better as the days go on. I am tired of living in hotels out of suitcases, but the beautiful view here can't be beat. We see camels every day and just miles and miles of untouched sand dunes out where the hotel is. Back in town you don't get to the that natural beauty of the desert.
P.S please excuse the grammatical errors in these posts. I know I am now an English teacher and should be perfect but I am writing these very late at night and after long days so please find room to forgive me :) And I promise once I have a few consecutive hours to post photos of the hotel I am at, the previous hotel experience, and the school I will!
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