My new home!

I am officially the new tenant of suite # 805 come August.

check it out here. Doesn't seem too shabby at all. In building gym and pool! Whoop Whoop!!!! The school pays for pretty much all my rent so I should be able to live there for about 60 bucks a month! Does someone want to tell me why I wanted to stick around White Rock for another year? Anyone? Anyone?

So I have officially secured accommodations in Bangkok. As far as I can tell the place is nice but it is the internet, and in Bangkok I'm sure everything looks nice on the outside. It has been recommended by the school however so it can't be that bad. I spoke with a teacher at my new school and she said several teachers live there and there is a bus specifically for taking teaching to school in the morning so I won't have to worry about wrestling a tuk-tuk.

I've been in contact with the head of English and next year is definitely going to be a big change. I know for sure that I will have a class of grade 11 IB students as well as a class of grade 9s. The other ones are up in the air.

scary thing #1 - at this school "secondary" starts at age 11....if I have to teach 11 year olds I will die. I can barely handle grade 9s

scary thing #2 - trying to navigate the British National curriculum complete with new set of marking standards and grading systems - boo!

not so scary but slightly daunting thing #1 - having to work my way through another new IB reading list. Luckily for me there are a few overlapping works from this year so I will get a bit of a breather. On the up side I get to teach some really cool stuff - Banana Yoshimoto and my favorite Margaret Atwood book, Oryx and Crake. On the down side, I have to teach the book I hate more than any book on the face the planet (which I also had to teach this year and was looking forward to escaping) One Day in the life if Ivan Denisovich. BOOOO! Oh well. the good outweigh the bad.

Good thing #1 - My IB class only has 8 students in it. Considering I work 15 hours a day right now because I have to mark 90 IB papers at a time, I might actually get to have a bit of a life next year. Although I will be trying to navigate an entire new curriculum with my other classes which might eat up the time I saved on marking.

Good thing #2 - all the other classes have less than 20 students! Hooray for the private system.

Ok there you go.

Weekly update complete.

Joy!

Cheers from an almost expat.

J