Teaching: Year Two

Well folks, the time has come. Tomorrow marks the first day of what I hope is a magnificent school year. Perhaps I should be holding my breath, crossing my fingers, and waiting until the end of the week before I say anything, but seeing as I’m a daring adventurer, I’ll take my chances.

I will not be teaching for the whole school year, or even half of it. The fourth grade teacher at my school had a baby less than a month ago, her fifth child I believe. When I was intending on leaving for Ukraine in October it was decided that it was an excellent plan that I would be a ‘permanent sub’ for a month to teach the 4th grade so that this teacher could get some maternity leave. So for the month of September I will be teaching school, and then I will need to find another temporary job until I leave for China in January. And depending on the schedule of that other job, I will also be acting as the on call substitute teacher at NECA.

So tomorrow is the first day of school, and I will be the fearless leader of fifteen fourth grade students. I am pleased to say that as of right now I have none of the terror or nervousness that I had last year as I waited with bated breath for the year to begin. I can’t say without bias that I’m a good teacher, but I’m a hell of a lot more confident than I was previously, and I have all sorts of ideas for better ways to run a classroom and engage my students. I’m almost sad that I’m only teaching for a month, but then I remind myself that I’ll be moving to China on a 12 month teaching contract in a matter of months.

This is the start of a brief second chapter of my private school teaching life. I’m pretty excited. I think I’ll be better at it than before, and it helps that there’s very little pressure since I’m not the regular classroom teacher. (That’s not to say that I don’t need all the good luck I can get!) I’m sure I’ll have great anecdotes and more inspiration to write as well, but for now we’ll take it one day at a time and see how this adventure plays out.