Teaching Starts Soon!

Well, did you know, it's the law in England that stores and everywhere can only be open for 6 hours! So this means for us we have a nice relaxing day of reading and drinking instant coffee. In the picture above you see Ben placing all the strange money on the bed while we try and figure out a way to understand the different pieces of money? How many gold ones will buy me my next pint??

We start at the school on Thursday. We have an orientation day with workshops and meetings and for lunch... jacket potatoes! This day we will find out what our schedules are as well. There are two other Canadian teachers from Ontario who are at our school also teaching English. We met them on Friday and they are both very friendly. Like Ben they have just finished teacher college and are excited and nervous about the new challenges that come with teaching in a different country. They are living in a house owned by a former "Hoo" teacher who I'm sure will be a great source of support for them.

At our TimePlan introduction day there was lots of great information about classroom management and the different things done in teaching over here. The most interesting part my fellow teacher friends and family members will find interesting is that there is very little formative assessment that is counted for grades. Basically only a final assignment at the end of a unit is counted towards an official mark. That means that our day to day lessons and activities need to be really engaging, because the only reason students will participate is because they want to. Luckily we are both "Amy Newman" trained and know that the only assigments worth doing are the ones that are purposeful. No filler of crosswords for these Canadian  teachers if we can help it.

Anyway, we are off to take some pictures of the town so I will post those later! We are hoping to meet our dear friends Helen, Phil and little Danae in London tomorrow if all works out so we will of course post pictures from that upon our return!