I got my first two questions. Job well done!

Well, reality tells me that I did come here primarily to teach, and of course there is lots of information to share about that, as well! And, it's only fitting then that my first two questions came from one of my wonderful professors of education at Long Island University and from a dear friend who has years and years of teaching experience. So, Nancy and Ed, thanks to your curiosity, everyone else gets to read along, as well!!!

My school. First things first. I teach for the American International School in Abu Dhabi. Here is the school's website:

http://www.aisa.sch.ae/aisa/Index1.aspx

AISA (which is the acronym for the school) is part of a larger school district throughout the Middle East called the ESOL schools. On the top right of the AISA homepage you will find a link for the ESOL schools, and that will give you a full list of where else they have schools.

So, teaching internationally is part of a completely different world than teaching in the USA, and beyond that, teaching in the Middle East adds yet another dimension of how things work. Picture setting up a home that is supposed to be like one in the US but yet it's in a different continent of the world. This is virtually what international schools are, a home away from home. In order to run, these schools need to secure as many resources from back at home as possible, and if they don't have those resources, the school will run, someway, somehow, just the same!

I am teaching 7th grade English and Social Studies this year at AISA. Accepting a grade 7 teaching position was also a big change for me because I was always afraid of that age group for obvious reasons, but I knew that in order to get overseas to teach, I had to accept some compromise. So, after a summer of gearing up to teach 7th graders in an established school, I find myself with the first major surprise of this new adventure:

I, along with all of my other middle school colleaugues, WOULD BE STARTING A MIDDLE SCHOOL FROM SCRATCH!!! You see, for years AISA worked as an elementary school and a secondary school (grades 7-12), and the grade 7 and 8 students were running around like poor little fish out of water. They were COMPLETELY disoriented. They went from an elementary setting where they never changed rooms to suddenly changing 9 classrooms per day. They were lost, unorganized, and quite frankly, desperate for guidance! Noticing all of this, the AISA administrators organized for a middle school to be set up, and they did it quite well. They worked with the most current research on middle schools, which says that things work best with block scheduling for students to study their core subjects of English/Social Studies and Math/Science (I’ll get more into the breakdown of that later). So, as if the pressure of moving my life somewhere else weren’t enough, it was now my time to shine and to help start a whole new school with my very limited teaching experience yet EXCELLENT training thanks to LIU.

I freaked out for a few days because I didn’t expect all of the pressure, but I’ve passed all of that now. It is a great experience so far, and my colleagues really, really get me by because of all of their experience.

Well, this blog is wonderful but also quite time consuming. There is so much that I’d like to share, but I guess it needs to be done a bit at a time! I’m off to work to do some lesson planning, and I’ll continue this post later. There lots and lots more to share about the school, my students, and a typical day in my life.

Thanks for reading!!!