I have now finished my first week teaching 3rd grade at the Awsaj Academy. How was it? It was exiting, exhausting, at times intensely frustrating and in the end just plain fun. As for the exhausting, no teacher took a lunch this week as there needed to be some serious schedule tweeks this first week. This year the Awsaj Academy doubled the number of its elementary school students from one hundred to two hundreds in preparation for the opening of a new school this fall. The only problem is that the new building is not finished and so we have been forced by circumstance to both continue to share a building with Qatar Academy and share classrooms with partner teachers of the same grade. The Awsaj administration left it up to the teachers as to how they wanted to structure the learning environment during this transition time. Some teachers chose to divided their classrooms into two half and conduct two separate classes in the same room. Others chose to co-teach and for me this is where the fun begins.
I chose to co-teach with my partner teacher Mary who is simply amazing!!! As Eiman, the HR Director for Awsaj remarked, "you are really really blessed by God to have been paired with Mary...she's a goooood woman!" What makes Mary so great? First of all, she's a jazz singer and she has all of the personality (and looks) to go with it. I will have to take a picture of Mary for you for now it's enough for me to tell you that she imports her shoes from Europe. She has quite the striking personality yet more importantly she has a soft heart for our students. She's a darn good teacher who is full of ideas and she is eager to get better at the craft. I am very systematic, ordered, data driven in my approach to teaching. She is very creative, personal, and full of life. We complement each other so well that both of us will be sad the day we have to part ways into our own separate classrooms.
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