so little to do and so much time... wait strike that reverse it!

Hello everybody! So how is my teaching going? It is going GREAT thanks for asking!

The School I teach in is the American International School which means it is accredited as an American school with American curriculum and standards so the students who attend it get the same education (ideally) that they would in the states which is good if they go there for college and its great for jobs etc. All the classes are taught in English (except they do have Arabic classes that they take as well) but most of the teachers are American. There is some sort of association or company or something that holds job fairs for teachers who want to teach at an abroad position like this, then they hold job fairs in large cities. (Like New York for American schools abroad) or Paris (for French schools abroad)... etc. The teachers are an interesting crowd though, they are a lot like elementary school teachers back home but they usually sign 2 year contracts or so and then move on to another teaching area. Which seems crazy to me because so many teachers that I knew back home would teach in the same town in the same school for their entire careers! The teachers here also take huge trips all the time. Like Portugal for Christmas, or Thailand for Spring Break.

I don't have a lot of direction as far as my classroom. The first few days I just looked through the books etc. and watched the classes, during this time I found some pages with the curriculum for each grade typed on them. But I don't know what the previous teacher did with them, and I can't possibly go through all the curriculum in one semester with how little I see each class. I see first through fifth grade once a week each class. The classes are supposed to be 45 minutes long but most of the teachers bring their classes late so my time with them ends up being between 30 and 40 minutes. Which isn't long at all. The younger children PreK (who are 3 and don't speak english very well) and KG I see them 2ce a week for 20 min each time which is a good amount of time.

Every semester there is a music concert for the elementary school which I am in charge of this semester (of course) as the music teacher! I have never been in charge of something like this before! It is pretty scary! I have decided on a musical of the three little pigs for KG-2nd grade, and started teaching a few of the songs to the classes already. It was hard to decide for 3rd and 4th and 5th grade because I wasn't all that interested in any of the music that I found there in the room and it isn't like I can just go to a music store, and find something I like and ask the school to purchase it. The school has a lot of resources, books, cds, instruments, etc. but the problem is that there is a set of books without cds and a set of cds without books, so I found that i really like the suggested performances from both the books and the cds, but either I don't have the music or I don't have the words. does that make sense? I think I am going to go with the cds and type up all the words to the songs and just have the children sing along with the singers on the cd for a while. Which means that 3rd grade is doing a musical of The Golden Goose (which I'll also have the write the story for) and 4th grade is doing one about inventing (another one I'll have to write a story for) and 5th grade is doing The Music Man! (which I actually found the right book to go with it!)

It seems like I have so much to teach though and so little time! Most of the kids are 1/2 Egyptian and 1/2 American or all Egyptian! they are pretty cute but children in general sometimes have trouble with talking and (I don't like to stereotype) but honestly I have never met a group of people in my life before that liked to talk so much as Egyptians even the adults! I can't say that the kids are more talkative than the adults I have seen here. But wish me luck I have a lot coming up. Maybe I will ask to borrow someone's video camera in the branch for our performances and have Joe tape them, that way when i come home you can see how well I did (or didn't haha!!)