Travel Tuesday

London, England, 2013

London, England, 2013

Travel Tuesday

My wife, Amanda, puts up a photo every Friday, and I think it is a great idea.  So, I'm going to steal it.  We are able to travel a lot, because of our profession and our desire to do so.  To that effect, we have a lot of pictures of some pretty neat places.   I hope ya'll enjoy.

Arequipa - Peru
We took this on our honeymoon last summer.

A look at the new classroom

The first day of school is tomorrow, and I already feel much farther ahead than I did at this time last year.  Amanda and I still hadn't arrived in Kuwait yet, and we wouldn't for another 6 hours or so.  The day before school started.  Eek.

My classroom is coming along nicely though, and I am really excited to get all of my plans started.  I've included a few pictures of the current set-up.  Let me know what you think! *The banquet chairs are not staying...our plastic chairs haven't arrived yet*

This is my "Crafting" centre.  The numbered and coloured folders tell the students which part they are on.  The folders contain the activities themselves. If they are just beginning the skill than they start with orange/one and move on from there.  The tree diagram on the shows the process.  Click here to see it up close.

Here is my missed work wall.  The days of the week are listed at the top, and the grades below.  If a student misses a day or more (up to a week) they will find all activities in the corresponding folder for the day(s) they missed.  It might seem like a lot of folders where 3 (for each grade) would do the trick, but I think this will be easy in the long run.  I won't have jumbled pages and the kids will know exactly where to go based on the day they missed.  After a week I will pull out all material, and the students will have to come directly to me for the information.  On the right you can see the words Powers, Galaxy, and Midgard. These are the names of the narratives we will be weaving in those grades.  Powers has a superhero theme, Galaxy has a space theme, and Midgard has a fantasy theme.

I have decided to implement a hand signal program in my classes.  It may seem a bit juvenile, but I taught these students last year and it was a constant struggle to keep them from blurting out whatever came to their mind.  I've seen the signals made with more gestures, but I feel that these four sum up the majority of the reasons a student needs to yell out.  I got the simple hand designs from IIT Bombay.

My desk and whiteboard.  I'm going to hang up some pictures in that corner in a week, so that it creates more of a "get to know Mr. Phillips" vibe.

These are located right beside the door in case students ever need a quick refresher.  I will talk about both of these programs in more detail later.

The view of the room as you enter.  It will be interesting to see how this has changed when June rolls around.

Honeymoon

I've been getting a lot more hits in the last week thanks to my guest blog post on the Class Dojo website, and I just wanted to send out a quick post about my lack of activity lately. I'm on my honeymoon!  My wife and I are currently enjoying what Cuzco, Peru, has to offer. We will be scaling Machu Picchu in a few days!  We will be back in another week and the posts will follow shortly after that. School is right around the corner you know.

Jeff

Travelling as a Teacher

My wife and I are fortunate enough to both be teachers, which allows us the ability to be quite mobile in our life.  Over the last few years we've been able to rack up quite a few stamps on our passports.  In fact, my is dangerously close to being full (I don't want to pay for a new one, because it expires in April).  One of the best parts of travelling is the stories we create and the depth in which we experience a variety of cultures.

I think that being able to travel affords a teacher the opportunity to broaden the scope of their teaching, as well as the connections they create with students in an increasingly multicultural classroom.  I'm often able to get my students to think about topics in the context of other students in different parts of the world, I can provide simple stories to get them interested in a lesson or topic, and I am able to inspire them to see the richness of the world around us.  We are vagabond teachers and I couldn't ask for much more right now.

Every place we go and every culture we visit we enriches our lives, and, as teachers, we are able to enrich the lives of our students.  Great teaching can come from teachers who don't travel, but I do think that travel adds authenticity to many subjects we teach.  Not to mention that travelling forces us to be a global citizen rather than a local one.  Just my two cents, but I couldn't imagine never seeing the places I've seen.  I met my wife in South Korea while we were teaching English, so I might be a bit biased.

Photos from the past year

We leave shortly, so I thought I'd post a few photos from the past year.

Marina Mall - Kuwait

View from our apartment - Kuwait

Painting a student did with our school's initials (way too much paint used) - Kuwait

Portugal

Portugal

Colombo - Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

View from where we stayed in Ella - Sri Lanka

Elephant safari gone wrong!  He is chasing us after getting too close.  The picture is blurry, because I was getting bashed in the head by branches as the jeep drove away. - Sri Lanka