Wednesday, September 27, 2006

woo-HOO!

I got a job!

As of yesterday, I'm the new full-time ESL teacher at a public high school near Boston. I'm teaching two classes of ESL 1, one class of ESL 3, and two study skills classes, each of which meet daily. The students are all immigrants to the US, from a variety of different countries. (No Yugoslavs though - немам шансе да вежбам мој српски :( )

So far, my impressions are generally positive. (In fact, I'd like to go on record as saying so now, so that I can look back on this in case I change my mind later.) The students seem sweet, my colleagues have been very supportive, and I'm looking forward to really getting started.

American high schools are a strange institution. There's a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork; I'm responsible for filling out a variety of grades, record books, report cards, attendance forms, and such. I've never really had a teaching job where I had to grade my students, so this will change everything in a way.

Despite all that, though, the most difficult thing for me is waking up in the morning. You may know that I am a "night person" by temperament; well, high school teachers are required to arrive at school before 7:30 in the morning. (This must have something to do with the "old days," when Americans were all farmers.) As a result, I have to wake up well before six. I have a feeling that in the days to come, coffee will be my new best friend.

5 comments:

Radosnica said...

Congratulation! It's great :) I nećeš zaboraviti srpski, evo možeš i dalje sa nama da pričaš :)

Anonymous said...

Dear Daniel,

Congratulations, all the best, and don't let the kids drive you mad.
Keep us posted, I've really enjoyed your blog.

best Milica

Anonymous said...

good luck for the new job!
beppe

Anonymous said...

D--
You know the REAL reason that U.S. high schools start so early, don't you? It's not because science shows that adolescents work best between 10:00AM and 3:00PM--it's SPORTS PRACTICE and those all important GAMES.
--M.

Anonymous said...

Hi Daniel, somehow my RSS-Feedreader didn't show your latest posts so I see I've missed a lot. :)

Congrats to your new job - hope you'll like it. :) Maja