Primary school teacher. Traveller. Educator. Vagabond. Professional. Wanderer. Australian. Based in London.
Ramblings of a travelling educator...
My van. My home. My bed. My closet. My kitchen. My lounge room. For a month and a half, Baz (creatively named) was my home. Well ours, my 2 friends and I. Europe in summer. Three aussie girls. I mean what could go wrong.
*Note: these photos were taken at the end of the trip. Tape on front light? Persplex as a window? Tales to follow
Me: Oh child, you look tired today. Are you in slow motion?
Child: Miss, Mum didn’t give me my Ready Brek this morning. I’m not ready for anything!
“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”
Sad to say this, but I watched ‘The Real Housewives of NYC’. A group of women, apparently well travelled, went together on a vacation to Morocco. Within 5 minutes some of the more interesting characters were able to offend a country. Their landscape safe? No. Their clothes? No. Their house? No. Their food? Of course not. Sure it’s not the same of NYC.. what place in the world is? Furthermore, why would you want to travel to somewhere that is exactly the same as what you know. What challenge is there? What new experiences will there be? May as well stay at home curled up in a ball on the couch, covered in bubble wrap watching ‘Home and Away’ on TV cause that’s what you know.
Live a little. Reach out for the unfamiliar. Otherwise you may find yourself as a 50yr old woman, standing by the van that is holding your luggage in Morocco, scared because the hired staff may steal your possessions.
I like a challenge, but was happy I chose a country that speaks the same language as I to teach in to begin with. Surely English speaking countries have a rather similar education system. How wrong and naive I was.
How hard the teachers of London, indeed the teachers of England, work. Planning, assessing, observing, moderating, meetings, courses, scale points, key stages, EAL, SEN. All much more scrutinised by their teams, senior management, governors, councils and indeed the government.
Teaching English children in Central London, of course you are. Wrong. How do I pronounce these names on the register? How do I spell these names? What is key EAL, SEN? Argh.. *cue hair pulling.
Role = register
Pants = trousers (learnt the hard way when I had thirty 5yr old children half naked when I asked them to ‘take your pants off’ when getting changed for PE).
School bell = there isn’t one! (Hope you have a clock handy)
Beanie = hat
Canteen = not even possible! School dinners are the replacement.
Just because you’re a teacher, doesn’t mean you can walk into a setting and understand what is happening and what needs to be achieved. Sure you can teach, sure you can make children progress throughout the day, but in this day in age teaching sadly is moving further and further away from these simple tasks. Crazy right?
