School officially started on September 2. The students came to their homeroom classes (I am not a homeroom teacher) and received a little bit of information. Then we went to a large opening session with the elementary school. After this, we took the high school students to the gym and each teacher introduced themselves. At this point, the students split back into their homeroom classes and stayed for about an hour. Then they went home about 10am. That was the end of the first day. We had a staff meeting at 11 to discuss the "field trip," which is code for emergency training, and then spent some more time planning.
Friday, the students arrived at 8:10 and went to their homeroom classes again. Then we split up into two groups: Theoretical and Practical. The theoretical groups had a class session of what to do in emergency situations. I was paired with a Slovak teacher, and she did the whole presentation in Slovak, so I have no idea what she was reading. But I'm pretty sure it had to do with first aid, what to do in a natural disaster, and what to do in case your friend gets alcohol poisoning. Then they switched groups and the Practical group had a few activities outside, but I wasn't there, so I am not sure what went on. Then we had fire drill at 11 and the students went home. We stayed and did some more planning and preparing for lessons.
Ashley and I went to see the movie "SALT" with Angelina Jolie Friday night. It was in English, with Czech subtitles. (Czech and Slovak are very closely related, and in general, they can always understand what each other are saying, so some movies are in Czech, some are in Slovak.) I really enjoyed it and it was nice to get out and just relax. The ticket prices are comparable to the US, but the popcorn and drinks are much cheaper.
Monday will be another strange schedule…Melissa and I will have 2 classes with the sophomores called NAT Chat - New American Teachers Chat. This means that they didn't have anything else for these students to do, so they get to hang out with us for a little while.
Tuesday, we will start actual classes. I will only have my first two classes since the SuperSeniors will still be doing some other training and seminar activities. But it will be nice to finally be in the classroom after all this planning time. I'm starting to feel like I'm ready to begin teaching. The first Block (quarter) will be more difficult than the rest since I will have all new classes. But after Block A, two of them will repeat, so it will be a little better.
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