New School, New Plans

So tomorrow is the first day of school of 2017, and I shall be teaching 8 and 9 year olds in a middle-to-high-income area in Shah Alam. I've met and talked to some of the teachers from the new school, and so far they seem like a cool bunch of people. The majority of the male teachers play some form of musical instrument, and they even have a school band made up of teachers, so that might be something to look forward to.

I'll be teaching in the afternoon session and the afternoon session teachers seem pretty cool so far. They've treated me well and one particular teacher even told me that I could be friends with just about anyone in the staff room and not fall into a clique. I hope I'll be that confident in conducting my social interactions in and around the school compound to be able to be friends with everyone.

It's a big school with big classes, averaging about 40 pupils in one classroom, so that'll be a bit of a challenge for me. The biggest class I've ever taught was 33 people, and I'm way more comfortable having around 22 pupils to teach at any one time, but I'll persevere and learn how to cope and make learning happen. It is my job, after all, to ensure that happens.

The school also has a different way of documenting their lesson plans. It's totally foreign to me, as I'm used to having the big book to write everything in by hand. In this school (and in the whole state of Selangor, apparently) lesson plans are typed out and put into files. I have no idea how that works, so tomorrow I shall have to pester the other teachers to see who would be willing to walk me through the whole process.

Because I'll be teaching in the afternoon, I'll have mornings to do or not do stuff relating to non-teaching endeavours. I have a rough plan in mind of how I want to go about it, but I'd rather see if it works out or not for a couple of weeks before saying anything here.

I hope I get to establish productive habits that develop into routines that I can depend on to help me be more productive in things I want to pursue. It'll take a lot of effort and willpower, not to mention focus, but I'll have to tackle these issues on productivity in a systematic and thoughtful manner to come out of the process with any form of success.

Here's to trying.