Hello friends! I'm now heading into my forth week living here in Santiago. Last post I shared how I ended up here just 10 days after being offer the job and only 3 weeks after learning that the school, Santiago Christian School, had an open position. I might add that coming on staff at the last minute does have certain advantages. First, everyone thinks your a saint (okay, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration) for coming and makes a big deal about how brave I am to do it. I guess they don't realize that staying is a dream come true for me :D Second, coming at the last minute means that my housing had to me arranged at the last minute. So I ended up with the nicest and biggest apartment--the school just remolded it (last week they installed granite countertops in the kitchen!).
What's it like? Well the SCS Family is amazing. From the minute I got here I felt welcomed into the wonderful staff community. Friendships began to develop almost immediately and the fellowship among the staff amazed me. I'm so blessed to work with people who enjoyed starting each day of in-service with worship. And a school where each week begins with Monday morning worship. Hey, maybe Mondays won't be so bad :) I've felt so welcomed and cared for these past 3 weeks--staff cook-outs, a snorkeling outing, returning staff members who take us running, shopping, out to eat (and refuse to let us pay), or to church.
What grade am I teaching? I'm not teaching any particular grade. I'm a full time substitute. That means I could be in any K-12 class on any given day. I'm the primary elementary substitute so I'll mostly be there but I will also sub for the secondary classes when needed. Sometimes I may have my subbing assignments in advance but other times I might not know until the day of...you never know when a teacher might wake up sick. This week Thursday I begin 8 days in a Kindergarten class while the teacher is in the States!! I've been with this class most of the time since school started last week and already love them to pieces.
So what do I do if there's no one to sub for? The last few weeks have been interesting. Since I don't have my own classroom I've had lots of free time during our in-service weeks. I bounced between classrooms, helping teachers set up, helped make bulletin boards for the library, and somehow volunteered myself as Data Entry Assistant. I´ve spent the past few weeks working on a new dismissal system for the school. I assigned each of the nearly 400 families in the school a number to be used as a dismissal code. Rather than having to call all four names of the children in one family (as we do now), all four siblings have the same code. 1 thing to say instead of 4. We're hoping once the new system is introduced in September dismissal will run much more smoothly.
Where will I live? SCS arranges housing for their staff. I've been blessed to be in a huge, beautiful apartment that's just been remodeled. The school's trying to sell to so eventually I'll have to move out, but that probably won't be for a while yet. Typically, (single) SCS staff would share with other staff. This semester instead of rooming with staff members I'm sharing the apartment with two loving student teachers. Having student taught in the DR myself just last fall, I'm pretty familiar with what that's like.
Don't b afraid to send me your question if I didn't answer it--it could a great topic for my next post :)
Now that it's taken me all week to get this written, I'm not longer heading into my forth week as I said at the beginning. I've nearly done with it. Hope you enjoyed my ramblings :)
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