Roles of a Teacher

Okay I have been terrible at keeping up my blog.  Time is just going way too fast and before I know it, it will be end of term and Christmas holidays will begin.

To think two weeks ago, I was exploring the terrain of the beautiful country of Norway.  Three of my teacher friends and I road-tripped/ferried up to Norway from Germany on our half-term break.  We had a lot of fun just driving, eating and exploring through Norway.

Some highlights include:
-  our day drive up to Norway, where we had breakfast in Copenhagen, Denmark, lunch in Gothenburg, Sweden, and dinner in Drammen, Norway.  If I had a bucket list, that one would be crossed off.

- our cheap yet fantastic accommodations
including a 3-bedroom, two-story holiday apartment with a sauna
- seeing the Watoto Children's Choir Concert and catching up with a friend from Uganda.
- driving through a 25 km tunnel to an isolated mountainous village
- taking in the winter and autumn seasons in one day

We also booked a 20 hour cruise from Oslo, Norway to Kiel, Germany.  We initially thought

we had booked a plain old boring ferry so we were quite excited when we discovered we booked a cruise.  That excitement soon ended as we all got extremely sea sick.  Did you hear about those travel warnings due to severe weather that were sent out in England around October 25th?  Well, we hit that storm full on in open ocean.  I'll spare the details but was quite glad to be off that ship the following morning.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the time off that I had.  Now I am back into full swing school mode.  I have realized more and more everyday of the many roles I take on, roles that my teaching degree never taught me.  So I began to compile a list of the many tasks I do as a teacher that are more or less directly related to teaching.

Roles:

Mother - It's a given really, especially with 7 year olds.

First Aid Attendant - Most injuries that happen on the playground will instantly be healed with an icepack or a band-aid.

Mediator - Someone has to sort out the playground conflicts.

Interrogator/Detective - Ok this sounds a lot more awful than what I'm getting at here.  Someone needs to get to the bottom of incidents that occur, and hear both sides of the story to sort out truth from fib.

Play-write/Director/Producer - Lately, I have been writing a play for my class to do in the winter concert and soon we will begin rehearsals.

Website-designer - So pumped that my class blog will soon be launched!

Photographer - See some of my photos of the children's artwork they did making patterns using objects found in nature.

Actor - Sometimes I have to pretend I'm really upset about something when I secretly think the student's idea was ingeniously hilarious.

Tour Guide - Actually, this one is not my strong point.  My class just began swimming lessons this week at the Olympic Stadium pool, which is a quick bus ride away from the school.  We got to the pool and I didn't know how to get into the building.  I told my students that they would be the teacher today and they were in charge of leading the way.  They thought this was the best thing ever.  Pretty sure the bus driver thought I was a fruitcake.

Interior Designer - There is an never-ending battle of finding places to put up students' work on limited wall space.

Public Speaker - Next week I will be leading my first whole school assembly.  Yikes!

Activist - It's really cool how schools can have a huge impact on raising awareness and promoting proactivity to children on charitable and ethical issues.

Exterminator - Today a student came in screaming my name because she had a giant wasp attached to her shirt and was too afraid to brush it off.

There are many many more roles that teachers have that I haven't even touched on.  Believe me, I am dead when I come home from work everyday but it has been soooooooo worth it.

Peace & love