It's probably not a shocker but, there are not many people in the world who know that when they grow up they want to teach middle school. We all remember those middle school puberty years, right? I'm guessing that you just reacted with disgust, fear, exhaustion, or anxiety.
Tomorrow is my first official day as a middle school teacher. I'm feeling a mild form of the first day of school jitters. Hopefully I can sleep tonight without nightmares.
Why am I teaching middle school, you might be wondering. Here's the short story. It's been a hard year for our school. We've lost teachers and students for various reasons. Our middle school math teacher has some family issues she needs to take care of, and thus left our school and the country. One of the difficulties of an international school is that we can't hire just anyone. In order to hire a non-Korean they have to obtain a working visa and we'd have to find them a place to live. It might be easier to hire a Korean, but there's not a huge applicant pool for English-speaking middle school math teachers. The administration has decided to cover this vacancy in-house. As the only other math-dedicated teacher in the school, I was the first one that came up. I agreed to take on an extra responsibility, as I gave up one of my current expendable ones, to fill the gap.
I will be teaching 7th grade math immediately after lunch. It is a great group of eight students who are higher than average in their math skills. My biggest fear in teaching this class is that I will grow to love them and want to teach middle school in the future.
Please pray that I have extra energy to get to know these students and be the best teacher I can be in the short three and a half months I have left at PICS.
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