Math with a Story

 I think that a few of my high school friends will be pleased to find out that for the past week and a half I’ve been a Physics teacher. Covering one on a Leave of Absence, anyway. So I’ve been teaching Physics. And not just y9 or y10 astronomy or light diffracting through prisms. Senior level, university-preparation Physics. So after 2 years of scoffing at my friends in Phy classes, calling it “math with a story”, I am now properly repentant. If I’d taken physics, I’d be more useful to the students now studying for their exams on their own without my assistance. ‘Course, I wouldn’t have had space for history if I’d taken all 3 sciences. So I’m not repentant. Just wishing I’d had more time, I guess.

This is the mid-ish point of the second very full week of work we’ve had. Somehow or other, there has always been a day off, interruption, or sick day somewhere in the first few weeks of our European teaching adventure, but this is a full 5 day week for both of us. Being a normal person with a full time job and keeping house is a lot. It eats up the time and energy and collapsing into bed at the end of the day seems to always feel well-earned. I don’t mention all this for a pity party because we don’t deserve one; everyone has a busy life. If your life isn’t busy enough, then you need a new hobby or two. And I can appreciate that every adult, family-life person we know has full-time work, either in an office or at home or on a construction site or something. Such is the nature of being all-grown-up. I don’t even mean it as an excuse for the longer-than-hoped-for gaps between updates and posts.

We’re coming up on the final stretch towards Christmas holidays here; they get a full week off before the big weekend. It’ll be nice to relax, go to some Christmas markets and festivals in town, etc. but it would have been nice to get paid, too. The students are antsy and so are the teachers. The school year here is broken up into 3 terms: autumn, spring and summer – and this is the last week of autumn term. So exams, tests, and final summative tasks are in full swing, as well as a horde of seasonally-inspired extra-curriculars that make it a very interesting time indeed to be strangers in the school.

We’re getting pretty pumped, too. We haven’t decorated yet or even done much shopping, but we’re enjoying seeing the lights up everywhere. Commercialism reigns here nearly as strongly as back home. Which I understand, I think. Church has been great, though, for helping us get our heads in good space for Christmas. No one does seasons of the church calendar like Anglicans. We’ve been going through a good advent study, well-chosen prayers and the like. Alyssa and I even joined the choir for the upcoming carol service this Sunday. I was the only guy at the first rehearsal, and complained a bit this weekend at a couple targeted individuals, and now there are three of us. Which is nice. I had really missed singing in church. It was a big part of my childhood that I had somewhat put on hold for a couple years, minus a brief stint at the Greenwood choir. I'm jealously hoping a little snow will fall in the next couple of days; just enough to dust the ground, to make the whole place seem a mite more festive.

At this moment, I am sitting in an empty classroom waiting for my second batch of 6th-formers to show up so I can not-help them study for tomorrow's exam. I haven't actually met any of this group of students; each time they are scheduled to be in my classroom, they all skip. They know it'll be a waste of their time and they don't come in. Which, to my mind is dumb since they need to keep up good attendance scores, but at age 17 I refuse to be anyone's mother. I've warned, followed-up and notified other teachers every time, like I will today. They are quite late now, and I'm confident that this has become an extra-long lunch break for me, since I have lunch next. I don't like wasting my employers' money out of principle, but a teacher does need to be here in case any of them show up to mark them late instead of absent. I've never enjoyed being paid to sit on my bum and waste time. But I am happy enough to take advantage of the peace and solitude of an empty room and a working computer.

Tonight's laundry night, tomorrow's home group, and so I've tentatively planned to try some photo-uploading on thursday, since I need to go to the pub to do it. Of course, maybe I can just bring the camera to work and do it during the day? I'll have to think about that one.

As always, we are grateful for your thoughts and prayers. Drop us a line/email or something to let us know what's up in Canada; we're just as hungry for news from home as I'm sure some of you are for news from away. Even if it's dull, that's cool. We're becoming English now; dullness is carving out a special place in our hearts.