Getting the swing of things...

Haven't written in a long time... I make no apologies. Do people even read my blog?

Anyways, since term 3 started, there was already major changes in my teaching career. Two of the science teachers (husband and wife) moved away so two glaring vacancies in the science department appeared suddenly. School had to madly look around for replacements and they managed to get a Biology teacher... for the other science position, the school ended up with two part-time teachers sharing the junior science classes.

So why am I telling you all this... well, I got a 'career upgrade' so to speak. I'm teaching Yr11 Physics now, I dropped my Yr8 Maths class and a lunch time yard duty to compensate for increase workload (one extra class a week).

And it is pure joy! Only frikkin' 6 students in this new class!!! And they are intelligent buggers too!!

It's been about over 3 weeks since I took over the class and been laboring to find time to mark their practical reports. Seems like my junior classes monopolizes my time in assessment work that I set for them.

So life is pretty good right now; the only shit I get now are from the junior classes with a few of the boys. But I get right into them - no more Mr. Nice-Guy, it's all 'Big V' from now on.

Talking about nicknames, 'Big V' is mine at school - and I love it... hahaha... apparently I'm part of their 'hood' ... I guess I did something right in developing some type of rapport with the kids.

I'm down in Melbourne for a conference for teachers about planning and creating creative and fun math lessons. Looking forward to it as I'm feeling a bit stagnant with my teaching style. I need some fresh ideas! Even I'm bored of myself in the classroom!

Been reading this blog called "monkeyfruit" and it's by a reporter in Brunei... she writes really interesting stuff . And that got me thinking, how come I can't write stuff as good as that????!!!! It's boring ole' me.

Oh, by the way, I'm typing this on my laptop with NO POWER CORD ATTACHED! Note the extra exuberance, because for once, my laptop is ACTUALLY PORTABLE! The original battery died sometime-in-the-unmemorable-past so I thought I should go get one after reading another advert for a Math PD (Professional Development). It said that we should have one fully charged battery in a laptop when we go attend the conference. Now this is in September (yay! another two days to fob work to other teachers!) so I thought, might as well enjoy my portability asap. So Ebay it was... and I took a chance at a 'from China' item. So far it is working 100%... wonder how long it will be before it dies.

Oh, and the Ebay spirit took over me and I ended up buying 2Gb of RAM to upgrade my laptop. I expect blazing speeds like 1 second start-ups and instant loading of programs. Hope it is as brilliant in reality as it is in my dreams... sigh...