Officially a Teacher!

Hey Everybody!

I just wanted to share the exciting news that I got my first day of teaching! It was a year 2 class at Coogee Public School ... 25 kids all to myself! It was a pretty crazy day. I got called at 7.45am, asked to be there for 8.30am! Luckily I was already up and showered waiting for a call from the day care agency, as their protocol is for me to call in each day that I am available to work, and if there is a position available for me they call me back. I picked up the phone expecting it to be them - but it was the school instead! Leah and I scrambled around for 10 minutes and got me all ready to go, ironed pants, made lunch, put my bag together. When the principal called I found out the teacher whose class I was teaching left behind no schedule for the day, so I had to come up with one, and to make it more difficult, the students hadn't started working in any of the textbooks or writing books, so I couldn't even depend on any of those to help me run the day! Overall I would say it went fairly smooth ... we did get some work done related to what they had been working on (after I spoke to the other teachers at the school to figure it out) and also managed to have some fun along the way. It was a pretty quick day and hopefully it will lead to more!

On another note, Leah is back to work this week. She starts her first day of placement on Thursday at Miranda Public School, which is about 35 minutes on the train from us. She was informed that this will not be the one-on-one stuff she is accustomed to, but large group or possibly even whole class activities - sounds a bit more like a teacher to me! We're both very excited for her to get started and start the second half of her master's degree!

Hope all is well back home, and you're all ready for the Olympics starting this weekend! Our fingers are crossed that we'll at least be able to catch a few events ... Australia doesn't have very many winter athletes so we'll have to wait and see!

Jeff & Leah

xoxo