So, I have spent some time on things other than knitting (actually, the knitting progress has been pretty slow of late)! First there was the Colombian invasion, which is mercifully over now. They were good kids overall, but creating a program to amuse them for 2.5 hours most afternoons was a challenge--there was no defined curriculum, as a group they didn't have any general interest we could focus on, their English levels varied, and they felt like they were in Canada for a vacation, not to do school work, so motivating them to do anything that resembled "work" was hard. Luckily, one of my main goals was to help them with conversational English, and that's easy to make seem like fun rather than work! But trying to work on writing skills was another matter...
This week I interviewed for a summer school job with the public school board. I'm pretty sure I'll take the job if I get it, because I would still get a few weeks of vacation time, and the money would certainly come in handy. It would be teaching high school math--probably grade 9 or 10, so the workload wouldn't be horrid. On the other hand, trying to make math interesting and engaging to teenagers for 5 hours a day might be a bit challenging. It would certainly be an interesting experience. I'm not sure how great my chances at the position are--the interviews were very brief (scheduled for 15 minutes each, and they were running close to on-time, so they really did keep them short), and I was the last candidate of the day at 6:00 pm. The principal & VP had a pizza sitting there waiting to be eaten, and they clearly wanted to keep things very brief so they could eat! Plus, even if they do like me, they don't know yet what their enrollment will be, so if they make an offer at all it will be tentative until late in the school year.
I have been told that my school will need me on a full-time basis next year, so even if I don't end up earning extra money this summer, my paycheques should increase quite a bit come September. The plan right now is that the other main grade 7/8 teacher and I will work together to create a real "middle school" program. We will be free to design our own schedule & curriculum (within reason, of course!), create a common daily planning period so we can work together, create our own structure/rules for the kids, etc. If the school really goes through with it, I think it could be great. Everyone is very enthusiastic about it, but I also understand that these plans have been floated around before, and never followed up on. We'll see!
And finally, I'm using up the rest of my extra time now planning my garden. The garden centres are mostly stocked now, and the selection of most plants is very good. The long-range weather forecast looks like it might stay tolerably warm now (it's icky and rainy today, but it's not supposed to drop below freezing again!), so I may start putting plants in the ground in the near future. If I don't teach summer school, I expect to invest a lot of time this summer into creating a really great garden. We'll see!
This week I interviewed for a summer school job with the public school board. I'm pretty sure I'll take the job if I get it, because I would still get a few weeks of vacation time, and the money would certainly come in handy. It would be teaching high school math--probably grade 9 or 10, so the workload wouldn't be horrid. On the other hand, trying to make math interesting and engaging to teenagers for 5 hours a day might be a bit challenging. It would certainly be an interesting experience. I'm not sure how great my chances at the position are--the interviews were very brief (scheduled for 15 minutes each, and they were running close to on-time, so they really did keep them short), and I was the last candidate of the day at 6:00 pm. The principal & VP had a pizza sitting there waiting to be eaten, and they clearly wanted to keep things very brief so they could eat! Plus, even if they do like me, they don't know yet what their enrollment will be, so if they make an offer at all it will be tentative until late in the school year.
I have been told that my school will need me on a full-time basis next year, so even if I don't end up earning extra money this summer, my paycheques should increase quite a bit come September. The plan right now is that the other main grade 7/8 teacher and I will work together to create a real "middle school" program. We will be free to design our own schedule & curriculum (within reason, of course!), create a common daily planning period so we can work together, create our own structure/rules for the kids, etc. If the school really goes through with it, I think it could be great. Everyone is very enthusiastic about it, but I also understand that these plans have been floated around before, and never followed up on. We'll see!
And finally, I'm using up the rest of my extra time now planning my garden. The garden centres are mostly stocked now, and the selection of most plants is very good. The long-range weather forecast looks like it might stay tolerably warm now (it's icky and rainy today, but it's not supposed to drop below freezing again!), so I may start putting plants in the ground in the near future. If I don't teach summer school, I expect to invest a lot of time this summer into creating a really great garden. We'll see!
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