Changes . . .

If you have been reading the blog, you know I've been working at a boys' year 9 - 12 college, first term working full-time teaching grades 9 - 11, then this second term teaching half-time, only year 10 maths.  My contract is term-to-term because first term I was replacing a teacher who was out recuperating from surgery, and now, second term, I am replacing part of a teaching load of a different injured colleague who may or may not be able to come back to work but it's re-evaluated each term.  Needless to say, it's a tenuous situation which compelled me to look for work for second term (before the school again offered me the part-time term 2 position), and again for third term.

Last week I interviewed (twice) for a full-time teaching position at a different independent college, one that is coed, serves pre-K to year 12, that would last through terms 3 and 4.  Two days ago I found out I got the job.



The new position is allowing me to teach two classes that will be new to me in Australia - year 8 maths and Mathematical Methods, which is an upper level year 11 class that includes calculus. (Yay! I'm going to teach calculus!)    I'm also going to be supervising a group of students who will be working with Lego Mindstorms as a class during the school day.   This allows me to add "technology teacher" to my CV.

At the new school, my largest class has 24 students, but the rest of them have no more than 12 students each.   No after-school, before-school, or Saturday sport responsibilities (keeping athletes all over the city much safer), and I can leave work at 3 PM three days a week.  Ruth and Isaac get dismissed at 3:45, so I'll be able to pick up on time on days we don't have meetings after school.  There are no other big schools anywhere near my new school, so traffic will be pretty light.  I drove Isaac and Ruth to their school this morning, then immediately tried the drive to my new school to see how long it would take.  Even after being stopped at a train crossing, getting stuck behind a tram for a kilometre, and stopping at three pedestrian crossings, I still got to the new school in 17 minutes in rush hour.   One day a week I have to be at the new school early, like 7:45 AM, for pastoral care activities.  On those days my commute will be a whopping seven minutes from home, and Joel will take the kids to school.  This will do a lot to alleviate stress.  My commute is only 3 km between the kids' school and my current school, but it can take 25 minutes to navigate because there is so much traffic.

It was a hard choice to leave my current school, which did eventually offer me my same 0.5 FTE position again for term 3.  This first school gave me my first shot at employment in my new home when no one else would even give me an interview, and for this I will always be grateful.  The job I have now is a very easy gig - one prep, a maximum of two classes to teach a day, and a day off every two weeks. But it's also paid at a 0.5 level, and I have an abundance of sort of useless free time a lot of days when I teach first and last periods only.   I've been filling the time with long walks or actually folding the laundry the second it comes out of the dryer, and volunteering at our kids' school.  But I've still been feeling at loose ends, and frankly, I don't care that much if my laundry gets folded immediately.   My current school is beautiful - the buildings are historic and lovely, my colleagues are kind and helpful, and the boys are fairly nice.  I like my students, and I feel a bit like I'm abandoning them mid-year.  But the term-to-term contracts that are given out to cover parental leave, long-service leaves, and medical leaves force this to happen all the time in Australia, unlike in America where most teachers work through a year-long contract and quit at the end of the year.  And of course, America doesn't have any kind of meaningful family leave, or a consistent program of giving sabbaticals, so these situations aren't as common. 

So, hooray, a new job that will be certain to last the rest of the school year (From mid-July to the first week in December).  And double hooray, I won't have to look for another job until, say, October, when positions start being posted for the 2016 school year.  I'm hoping to come out on the other end with more marketable skills and more professional contacts in the country.