"Satisfactory"

I have survived 5 full days in a local high school after 11 years out of the class room and 13 years since I taught full time!

I can not begin to tell you how frazzled my poor brain is!  In the UK I taught Religious Studies and a bit of Personal and Social Education (Sex Education, Contraception, Drugs 'n' stuff).  However, in Australia, as I have no doubt bored you before, RE is not taught as an academic subject until yr 11 as an elective.  Very few schools seem to offer it at all so getting any kind of employment may prove tricky.  I'm thinking that my best bet may be to approach the Catholic schools to see if they could use me.  I was given a fantastic supervisor who gave me all his Yr 11 Studies of Religion classes to teach and I thoroughly enjoyed being back in a class room.  The school I was in seems to have an unfortunately high proportion of children who are totally disinterested in any form of education and that most people, including most of the teachers, have written off.  Some of those kids were in the class but on the whole we managed to get down and dirty with the topics of Core Ethical Teachings in the New Testament and Religion Pre-1945 in Australia, which concerns a lot of Sectarianism but also Social Welfare and looking at organisations such as the Royal Flying Doctors Service.  Since there is so little SoR to be had, my supervisor made sure that I would also be able to teach History so had me swotting up about Whitlam and his dismissal - how fascinating!  I do love History and loved the excuse to get my head stuck into some books.  I was even up reading at 6am this morning- those of you who know me will appreciate the significance of this!  Not to show off(!), but the word "Excellent" was used a few times in my reports, particularly the class today that I taught off the top of my head as there had been a mistake in the timetable. Yippee!  Can I just say that 70 mins is a veeeeery long time to teach off the top of your head - I think I managed 55 mins then we had a debate about SRE and Ethics classes - ever topical, me!

Thanks to Husband being fairly flexible, the logistics of dropping off, picking up, Open Days, Zone Athletics and after school activities all went off without too much of a hitch.  Huge thanks to the lovely Cath for rescuing me on Wednesday morning when things looked like they might be thinking about going a bit pear-shaped...!

My only gripe about the week has been the weather.  How typical that after all the rubbish weather we've had, the week I'm stuck inside a building all week is the week the sun shines.  So as soon as I got home this afternoon I changed shoes (oh man are my poor feet in shreds after a week of grown-up shoes!!), grabbed a child or 3 and headed to the beach.  The air was fabulous, the sea beautiful and the coffee hit the spot.  We were a little too late to get the sun  and have come to the conclusion that since we are NOT a morning family, we really ought to be living on the West Coast of somewhere as sun rises are wasted on us.  It was a "Breathe out" moment though for sure.

All I have to do now is get through an interview with the Principal of another local school to confirm my suitability to educate the young minds of NSW kids and we'll be cooking with gas!  Wish me luck for Monday!

Hope your weekend is restful/exciting/fulfilling/relaxing!
Sx