The new school year

Yes, that's right - school has started and the first full week of lessons is done and dusted. Everyone has been asking how its been, so I guess I should let you know.

Its actually a good thing I left writing something like this until the weekend, because I went through a bit of a low patch, but have talked to a couple of other teachers and am feeling much better (though not completely - that may not happen at all). The main problem is struggling with the way things are done here, especially in terms of what the focus of teaching seems to be - getting students through exams, achieving high grades to make the school look good and teaching to standardised levels. So many of the things I value in good teaching don't apply here because things are expected to be done certain ways and students have the system drilled into them so much that any deviation from it just confuses them. We're expected to produce, and stick fairly rigidly to, lesson plans, which doesn't allow for the dynamic nature of anything, especially my subject area. By my second lessons, I was not working from the lesson plans I initially submitted. Anyway, I don't want this whole blog to become about teaching, so I will be avoiding it as a topic here from now on. I'm not totally sure what I'll have to write about though, since work seems to be consuming my life at the moment…

The weather is back to being cool most of the time (although I think they'd classify it here as warm - hovering around the 20 mark) and the days are getting shorter fast. Soon we will be travelling to and from work in the dark. I guess no-one ever said we were moving here for the weather, but it is quite depressing at times - no real sun for days, living in long pants and always having a jacket handy. Add that to the level of pollution and the constant feeling of being surrounded by people and I'm really not getting how people can come to London from Australia and think it’s a better place to live.

Not the most positive of updates, sorry (although I'm sure some of you are a little glad that I'm not in love with the place - at least you know we won't be here forever). In future, I will try to post about more happy, interesting things.