First Day of School

The first day of classes went really well.  I am mainly listening and giving my little, "I'm Miss Vincent from....." speech at the proper moment.  Today we started with form time (like US advisory class) and then we went off to an all school welcome assembly.  After that the school broke out into house meetings.  They divide the school into four groups across grade levels.  The house meeting was led by a year 13 girl with pretty much no teacher interference.  It was really cool to see the students teaching each other cheers, and to watch student leadership take on that role the first day of school.  After the house meetings we had two classes for the day.  I got to meet the Yr 12 class (equivalent to our Juniors) who are on a track toward University.  Then we met the Yr 10 class, who are also my group from form class.  We pretty much just went over the courses and talked a bit about the works we will read in each class.

It is really nice to start the year out with a class and get to be a part of the culture of the classroom from day one.  

After school my supervisor from Educators Abroad came up to chat with Emily and I about my time here.  I should be taking over classes fully by week 6, but I hope to start teaching here and there before then.  Between EA and the TPA (Teacher Performance Assessment, if you don't know what it is consider yourself lucky) I will have a lot on my plate in addition to teaching.  I know that later on time will start passing very quickly and there will be things I wish I had time to do, but right now while I have the time I don't have a clue about what those things might be.  That being said I really like Emily and Bunnie and I think they will challenge me and help me become a better teacher.  

I also got to meet Nikki, another American placed with EA in Lower Hutt, after school today.  We chatted for a while at her school and it was so nice to be able to talk with someone my own age for a bit.  It's also nice to know I'm not the only one facing challenges with language and making sense of a whole new education system.  Talking with her I also realized some of the things that are different that I hadn't really thought about yet.  There are lots of misconceptions about the US education system here, and vice-versa.  One of my favorite professors at Western mentioned to me before I left that it was a shame I had chosen New Zealand because they have a very teacher-centered approach to education.  What's funny is my supervisor said almost the same thing about the American system today.  I think it has much more to do with the school climate and teachers on a classroom level.  So far Emily's class is exactly the kind of place I want to be.

So that is how my first day was.  In the evenings I am finding myself completely exhausted from the amount of new information I am trying to fit in.