A year behind. A year ahead.

A year ago, I ended my year long temporary status and decided to accept a permanent contract. I still felt like I could learn more from this country and this school system. I saw room for growth. And I've hit a growth spurt. I was still trying to decide if I was doing a good job teaching these girls when my head of department moved up the ladder to a well deserved spot as head of the sixth form (the last two years of secondary school when kids take A level courses and apply for universities). I've been asked to take over as acting Head of Physics. What a Head of Physics does, exactly, I'm not really sure. But now I have a department to run. I'm still hoping that the exam scores of the first group of students I've fully taught turn out well. There's more to teaching than that, but you can't underestimate the importance of those scores here. If they go well, everyone will trust me a little more. I might even trust myself a little more. 

This past year, I've had plenty of students that I just don't think I reached, and a few that I definitely did. Teaching is all about effective communication, and these folks communicate far differently than I'm used to. Three years here, and I'm still adjusting to them, and they to me. In the USA, being overtly and persistently positive worked well at helping kids believe in themselves, though certainly not everyone liked that style.  Honestly, I think many of the students here just think I'm full of crap. In the USA, asking a few open ended questions when someone was having a bad day tended to earn their trust. Here, that's tended to make people uncomfortable and actually made it harder for them to trust me. 

The great challenge with communication is that what you try to say is not always what they hear. So I'll have to adapt my style. To a point, I am who I am, and I have to embrace that. But I can adapt, and I'll be a better teacher as a result. 

I have earned my colleague's trust, though, and that's a big bonus. Maybe teachers are better at hearing what I'm trying to say, even if I'm not speaking the Queen's. I've helped look after techies during the musical, helped calm nervous travelers in China and Switzerland, and helped keep up the spirits of hikers on rainy days. I've really enjoyed the hiking/camping trips they take here as a part of the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, and I'm going to do more of that in the future. I also helped guide some girls through an engineering scheme where they did some serious civil engineering design work. I'm getting involved here. 

So, looking forward to this next year, I'm going to have to figure out how to run a department here. I'm hoping to earn the trust of my tutor group as I help guide them through post-secondary school planning. I'm going to try to inspire girls to give engineering a try. I'm going try to help my girls earn those scores that they so desperately want, and hopefully get more to believe that they can indeed achieve them. My school trusts me to run this department for at least one year, and I need to prove to myself that the trust is well-earned. 

I have two more years left on my current work visa. So, after this next year, I'll have some more serious thinking to do.