How things change

I thought it was time to resurrect this blog from the ashes. In the time I've been away an awful lot has happened. In February 2013 I decided that I couldn't cope with all the politics and stress of teaching any longer and decided to walk away from a profession that I loved. Not only that, I decided to up sticks and move to a new country and start a new life with new challenges.

 I've spent the last year learning a completely new language, making new friends and generally learning how not to work quite so hard (although I studied hard instead ;-) ). I have spent many wonderful hours with my gorgeous nephew and sister and have really appreciated getting to be close by.

The hunt for a job was difficult as there are not many around except for summer jobs in restaurants for which I'm seemingly unqualified. Everyone kept convincing me to apply for teaching jobs but I had a hard time convincing myself. I'm not actually qualified yet to teach here, I have to do my language exam first to show I am fluent enough; it's booked for the end of October. However, I was lucky enough to find a job as a fritidspedagog (think teaching assistant/after school club leader and you're about there) and it was after a discussion about blogs today that I thought it might be time to set the fires burning again.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that education is completely different here which is both good and bad but one things for certain, the stress is nowhere near the UK and teachers work WITH instead of AGAINST each other. To be fair, I experienced a great deal of working with each other when I was at teacher related events, especially things like teach meets and camped. I just wish there had been more of that within the school building. The teachmeet concept is a relative unknown out here but I would love it to be bigger because I miss them, might have to plan one of my own!

My school has a fair amount of challenges but it has the most wonderful setting: we have a fairly extensive forest just crying out to be made the most of as well as very good ict provision (1:1 for those age 10+) and a new set of blogs which I'm in the process of building. The county  council also has a county wide deployment of google apps which is great as the children can then take their accounts with them when they move schools. I'm very excited to be where I am, even though it wasn't where I ever expected to be.

As Douglas Adams once wrote: I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.