This fall, I will be teaching two courses at Champlain Lennoxville. Unfortunately, this means spending 13 weeks living away from home – but the good news is I’ll be racking up experience at the CEGEP level, and that gets me that much closer to a permanent position closer to home.
The time away won’t be so bad, either – my super-fantabulous mum-in-law has offered to come stay with my boys for the duration (she was planning a two-month visit around then, anyway, and this is really just an extension). I’ll be home for weekends, and one of the teachers in the department has a room to rent, so I won’t be stuck with a year-long lease or paying for weeks that I’m not in residence.
I’ll be teaching an intensive Prep. for College English class that incorporates the Intro to Lit course requirements into a “mise-a-niveau” course, aimed at bringing students up to an acceptable level of reading and writing. For many of these students, English is a second (or third) language, so the course will feature lots of grammar (yay…) and writing.
The second course is a basic Intro to Lit course, in which I’ll actually be able to teach real literature!!! Muahaha.
All told, I’ll be teaching 11 hours a week, which is one hour short of a full load. Happy happy joy joy 🙂
Yesterday was the graduation ceremony at ACCESS, where I’ve been teaching a computer class since February. Four of my students are graduating this term – from left, they are Sandee, Mary-Lynn, Krystal and Ashley.
Sandee was class valedictorian and Ashley won the Birks Gold Medal for best academic achievement. I’m so proud!! Sandee’s valedictory address was beautiful, and I’m sure her classmates have no regrets in choosing her to represent them.
These four, and my other students, are such bright, creative people. Right now they’re working on PowerPoint presentations (despite yesterday’s ceremony, classes continue to the end of this week). I’m really impressed with their ideas – everything from Family Trees and Greek Mythology to the Best of Saturday Night Live and Customized Mountain Bikes (not together, grand total of four presentations…)
I’ve learned a lot from my students – for instance, last night I learned that if you eat peanut butter and then vomit, it still sticks to the roof of your mouth. Thankfully, I did not learn this the hard way, but rather heard about it.
More a propos, I learned that I really do want to continue teaching, and if my students can be believed, I may actually be good at it. I will miss them all tremendously. Sniff, sniff.
Postcard from the Cotswolds (belated)
1. Robert rides Cobweb, a lovely old man who was very patient with our boys.
2. The sheep – it wouldn’t be the Cotswolds without them. You’ll note that it’s lambing time.
3. Colin on Cobweb.
4. Nicole and Adam’s herd come galloping in for some hay.
5. Robert looming large in the model village at Bourton-on-the-Water.
6. Colin rides Ben, who is magnificent, despite a rather bad hair cut.
7. Colin rides Adam. Thank goodness he’s wearing a helmet.
Imagine if I drove an SUV
Many people have been asking about the relative cost of living in the UK. The best example I can find of how good we have it here in Canada is this:
It costs me about 45$ to fill my tank at a gas station in Montreal.
In the UK, outside London, the same amount of gas would cost me about 103$.
Granted, one’s UK salary would be higher – but not proportionally. The daily pay for a school teacher outside London is about 90 pounds, or just over 200$. In the Montreal area, that teacher would make about 120$ a day. So gas is 2.3X more expensive, but the salary is only 1.7X higher.
I hate math.
Postcard from London
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
At the St. Patrick’s Day parade yesterday
Pass the catch-up
Last week was March Break, so I didn’t teach my Monday and Wednesday class. I did, however, still have my private students, on Wednesday morning and Saturday afternoon. Both these students are doing very well, and I’m enjoying the exercise of coming up with new concepts and ways to make the learning interesting.
Thursday evening, Mum came in and Dr. T and I got to go out! It’s never easy for us to get out, since most babysitters cost money, and our free one, my mother, already comes in most Wednesday nights so Dr. T. can attend his Scrabble club while I’m teaching. Since there was no teaching this week, Mum very nicely agreed to switch nights, and off we went to see the second installment of The Lord of The Rings. Very, very good, especially in the IMAX theatre. Contrary to my usual preferences, we sat toward the back of the theatre, which was a good decision. All those panoramic sweeps would have been a little too vertiginous were we any closer to the front.
Saturday evening I went out with a couple of friends. I’ve known both these guys for millenia, but we rarely get to see each other, for various reasons, so it’s always great to have the chance to get together, get drunk, and get caught up. One of them is going through kind of a rough patch – almost ten years ago, his Dad suffered a stroke that left him partially paralysed and kept him in and out of the hospital. His Mum, despite the strain that she must have been under, kept herself in great shape, and managed to be optimistic and cheerful.
About a month ago, she went off to B.C. for a skiing holiday – not bad for a woman in her 70s! Unfortunately, while there, she suffered an aneurism and died pretty much instantly. The shock of losing his wife was overwhelming, and my friend’s Dad passed away three days later. Thankfully my friend and his sister are choosing to focus on whatever postive elements they can – no doubt their Dad would have been miserable without his wife, and now they’re together again. As well, because the deaths were so close together, the family was able to arrange a double memorial service, which I was graciously invited to, and which was a beautiful event that celebrated not only two people as individuals, but also a couple who were devoted to each other and their family.
Now, of course, my friend is up to his eyeballs in settling the two estates. Hooray for tax season.
Last night was the (ir)regular meeting of the Million Book Club. We got together at Dina’s to discuss Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, which we all seemed to enjoy, and which prompted more that the usual amount of in-depth literary analysis. We even discussed the concept of the anti-hero.
Thankfully, we quickly recovered, and just to balance the intellectual scales, spent a good deal of time talking about the latest version of Survivor. Irene made me a happy woman by confessing that she, too, has managed to completely avoid each and every Survivor to date. I’m not alone in my cultural abyss!
I got a present for no reason last night, which is usually a wonderful thing. In this particular case, however, mine was a muted celebration, since the gift in question was a dead mouse (no, it was not pining for the fjords) from Heidi.
This is not the first time Heidi has generously shared her hunting trophies with me; thankfully, she only catches a mouse every 2 years, on average. This time, though, was extra special, because the mouse was stuck to the floor. I had to scrub mouse fur off my bedroom floor.
And it’s not even my birthday.
Red Letter Day
Today began a little too early, with a phone call from the school in Boucherville. I got to be the gym teacher! It’s always nice to work in sweats. I had a good day, a lot of good kids, and three of them told me I was beautiful.
Does it count as MILF status if the kids are too young to know what the F means?
I got home, made myself a nice cuppa, and went through my e-mail, which included a message from Elizabeth about a job posting she got. I read the post, decided it was something I was interested in, and sent in my CV around 3 p.m.
At 3:45, the phone rang – it was the woman doing the hiring, who wanted to meet me. Half an hour later I was in her office (please note, this means not only did I make it back across the bridge to Brossard in under 30 minutes, I also had time to change from Gym Teacher to Interviewee). She had one other candidate to talk to after I left.
She called me at 5:30 to say the job was mine.
So, starting Monday, I’ll be teaching an adult education course on the basics of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, two nights a week. Essentially, this is the same deal I almost got from the college in Ottawa, except that this one seems more likely to happen, and it’s not in freakin’ Ottawa.
Also in today’s email: an interview with a Web-based learning company to teach English, and another one with a corporate learning company to do the same. And I still had time to call and arrange a meeting with the school at which Colin will be registered. Next week, he’ll officially be part of the system.
To sweeten the already-scrumptious day, during the interview she gave me another job tip – apparently there’s an outlying French CEGEP that’s desperate for ESL teachers – and gave me names at Concordia and McGill in reference to a Certificate program in Adult Ed – in other words, I could do an abbreviated certificate, rather than the complete B.Ed., which would still make me more attractive to CEGEPs. Of course, according to my students, more attractive is not possible…
And now the hubby is on a Haagen-Daaz expedition. What more could a girl ask?
16 Days in Heaven
From the CNN web site: The space shuttle Columbia, with seven astronauts aboard, broke up as it descended over central Texas today before a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A Bush administration spokesman said the shuttle’s altitude — over 200,000 feet — made it “highly unlikely” that the shuttle fell victim to a terrorist act.
I find it almost as sad that CNN feels it necessary to address the terrorist connection in the second line of the lead paragraph. I remember the Challenger – in many ways, I feel that the Challenger disaster was a defining moment for my generation – and I don’t recall there being much talk of terrorist activities in connection with the disaster. In fact, I recently came across a terrifying essay on how the Challenger disaster was allowed to happen because no one wants to be the bearer of bad news; several levels of authority either hid, ignored, or spun test results that suggested the O-rings were unreliable in certain conditions, namely, the conditions of the Challenger launch.
Watching CNN this morning brought back many emotions from 1986. I guess the difference this time is that we know it can happen; in ’86, the shuttle was new and symbolic of technological advance and humanity’s progress, at least as seen through the eyes of a 16-year-old. I found it hard to be as affected this morning, especially with the “terrorist act” thing. Okay, I can see why current events would perhaps lead one to speculate, and the presence of Col. Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, was cause enough for concern for NASA to provide extra security for the shuttle prior to launch.
Pehaps such speculation and concern is justifiable; but on one level I can’t help but feel that just the mention of it in this context is all part of the Wag the Dog scenario Bush et al are inhabiting.
Hubby made a very interesting, poignant point: the Challenger astronauts never had a chance; the Columbia crew got to have 16 days in heaven. Let’s hope that’s where they have returned, and may their souls forever soar.