Monday, December 11, 2006

Singing the Doxology...

... is what I'm doing now that my student teacher, moronic Mr. X, has left.

I know, I know, it's sacrilegious, but it's how I feel.

He just blew to hell in two weeks what took me the first 12 weeks of school to set up.

Argh.

Thank goodness break is in four days.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Well, it's done

I can't really say how it went, the interview I mean.

Lots of research done by yours truly on the educational system in all four UK countries, went over again my essay as to why I wanted to be a Fulbright exchange teacher and they asked about... discipline. Yep. Kept throwing possible situations at me, such as "well, you could end up in the inner city, how would you handle a violent student?" and "What if you have students who are taught by their parents to be militant?"

Weird questions, but I did my best. What I was really thinking was, "huh. Would I really be matched with someone teaching in a school so radically different from mine?"

Then I was asked about my finances; if I had savings and if I realized that the UK was twice as expensive as the USA. Geez. I happen to live in a VERY expensive part of California, which happens to be an expensive state anyway. Were they saying that if a bag of rice cost two dollars here, it would cost four dollars there?

And then, they asked me what I would do in a school situation where there were no books and no technology available. Again I thought, "Huh?" I know schools like this exist, both here and there, but wow... do the teachers that apply to the Fulbright program teach in schools like that?

Perhaps I was naive, but I don't think that's it. The panel interview is run by former Fulbright teachers; at times it seems as if they were talking more about themselves, rather than interested in my answers to their questions.

I did my best, and although I'm sure I'll mull over this for a while, there's nothing I can do now except wait.

February feels a long way off right now.