Changes

I feel like life is constantly changing these days. Unlike the first 25 years of my life, where everything was planned well in advance and nothing seemed to happen, the past year of my life has been such a rollercoaster.

It's hard to believe that, at the beginning of 2009, I was thinking that I should give up on this teaching in London thing and just go home. Then I got the week's supply at Cleves, then the PPA job, and now...

Well, I've been made Cleves' newest Year 5 teacher :).

The teacher who was teaching the class has to go back to Australia (her visa has expired and there was no way of renewing it), so the Deputy Head asked me to take over until the end of the year. We're on half term break right now for a week but, as soon as it's over, the class is mine!

In some ways, it'll be great - having my own class means they're accountable to me, and there'll be a lot more stability. It also means I won't have to deal with the naughtier classes in school (my class is one of the sweeter ones), and I get to plan my own lessons and deal with things on my own.

On the other hand, it means a lot more work - I'm responsible for lesson planning and marking, plus liaising with the Special Needs teachers/TAs, and attending all the meetings, etc.

Ah well :). I'm sure it'll all be fine. At the very least, it'll be good practice for September and, even better, the job comes with a pay raise! Yay! More money is always great.

Speaking of the new job, I had a call from the bursar the other week about preparations for applying for my visa. I'm kind of pinching myself these days. How did I go from nearly giving up only 5 months ago, to having everything go right??

I'm off to Canterbury and Leeds Castle tomorrow, so expect a big picture-laden update soon :).