Share your world - Double whammy - June 5 and 12 questions.

What’s your strongest sense?

I'm not sure I have one, but probably go with smell. I'm very sensitive to perfumes, even picking up with kids uniforms are washed or ironed with strongly perfumed products.

Which of Snow White’s 7 dwarfs describes you best? (Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey)

Depends on the day - sometimes I'm definitely Grumpy, but most of the time I try to be Happy.

If you could be one age for the rest of your life, what age would that be?

I'm enjoyed my late 40s and early 50s, so maybe 50 is a great age to be, settled in a great job, and at peace that I am where God wants me to be.

List of Jobs You Think You Might Enjoy: Even if you aren’t thinking about a career change, it can be fun to think of other jobs you might enjoy.  [Remember:  This is SYW where even your dreams can become reality.]

I might enjoy being a principal or deputy principal. I'm hoping I'll enjoy being an elementary coordinator (primary Grades 2-5) which I guess is a bit like a "deputy". I think I'd also enjoy being a full-time librarian, especially working a school library.

What do you do when you’re not working? If you are retired, what do you that is not part of your regular daytime routine?

Study, Facebook, play Scrabble, read books, occasionally watch a movie and do some cross-stitch, make some cards, and go for walks.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

Pay off the rest of the mortgage, invest some in my superannuation for the future, and establish some scholarships for the children of our Khmer staff at our school. They know the value of a good education, but find the fees are a struggle.

What makes you laugh the most?

A funny movie or a good book. Sometimes my students - especially when I muck around with them.

What is your biggest pet peeve with modern technology?

The pace of change. What I bought 3 years ago is out of date, and at times incredibly slow. I do have a second peeve with technology and that is the way that it impacts on face-to-face relationship time. I so often see people together at a restaurant/coffee shop and they aren't even communicating because they're playing with their devices. The same goes for parents who give kids devices all the time rather than spending time doing non-technology things with their kids.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I'm grateful that the end of the school year went well, and I'm looking forward to heading to Australia for some cool weather and time with family and friends.

Share Your World - Friday 26th May 2017

Life's been totally crazy with the end of the school year, plus Professional Development activities, so I'm somewhat late posting this, but better late than never.

What one thing have you not done that you really want to do? 

Some day I'd like to ride the Indian Pacific Railway from Sydney to Perth, and also the Ghan from Adelaide to Darwin.

How often do you get a haircut?

Once a year, when I'm in Australia.

In regards to puzzle what’s your choice: jigsaw, crossword, word search or numeric puzzles?

I enjoy them all. Crosswords are great to challenge the brain, jigsaws are great for holidays, I give my students word searches most weeks to help them learn their spelling words, and I do enjoy the occasional Sudoku.

How many cities have you lived? You can share the number of physical residences and/or the number of cities.

Six cities (Melbourne, Townsville, Brisbane, Roma, Toowoomba and Phnom Penh), two states of Australia (Victoria and Queensland), two countries (Australia and Cambodia), and eleven physical residences (2 in Melbourne, 2 in Townsville (if I count boarding school for a year), 2 in Brisbane (not counting house-sitting), 3 in Roma (nurses' quarters, friend's place, plus my own place), 2 in Toowoomba, and 4 in Phnom Penh.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I'm grateful the opportunity to learn heaps more about the International Primary Curriculum, and I'm looking forward to heading to Australia in the coming week. This time next week I'll be on my way!!!!

School's out

Another school year is over. School officially finished on Friday afternoon at 2.30pm. We had a good day, and the children went home with a bag of goodies, including a new book to read and a memory page, plus a bouncy ball and a sticky stretchy creature, a few lollies, and whatever they chose to buy with their "tickets". We also enjoyed ice-cream and movies. The day before they helped me start packing up my classroom by pulling most of the posters off the walls, and I sent home all their workbooks and notebooks. Alas, I still had work to do! First I have to finish the documentation to handover to their grade 5 teachers. I also had to finish designing our new Elementary Library, and prepare detailed documentation of the new furniture we will need so it can be made while we are away for the summer break. The other massive job was to pack up my classroom, sort out what I would leave for the new teacher and what would go with me to my new office, pack everything that had to be moved, and organise for the move to happen.

I just realised that some of you reading this might be wondering why I am moving out of my classroom and into an office. After ten and a half years of teaching, I'll be exploring a new role next year as Elementary Coordinator (Primary - Grades 2 to 5). I'll be working closely with the other Elementary Coordinator who will be responsible for our Early Years programs (Nursery to Grade 1). Together we will be trying to replace the Elementary Principal who has just left. Some of my key responsibilities will be reviewing curriculum and supporting staff as they implement the curriculum. I'll also be work on our WASC self-study for our next Accreditation visit, which is due in 2019.

Back to today. I finally finished packing everything at about 5pm yesterday, having run out of boxes on several occasions! This morning, four young men were waiting for me to arrive to carry out the move. First they moved a number of items out of the office, then they moved all my stuff into the office. While they were working on that, I went and did an interview with a prospective new student. When I finished that, I returned to my old classroom to discover it was almost completely moved (only a couple of things left which they possibly didn't know needed to be moved). I went downstairs (my new office is on the third floor). I was very satisfied with their work. Here's what my office looked like at 11.30am today!

I plugged away throughout the day, and managed to sort the boxes the contain my classroom library from the rest and put them to one side to deal with in July, when I come back from Australia. I then managed to unpack most of the rest of the boxes. I hit a glitch when I couldn't find the shelf supports to go inside my cupboard, which I knew I'd put in a safe place. They were found eventually, and so I've got one cupboard sorted! The big bookshelf needs some work, but I did manage to sort a lot of stuff as I unpacked it, so that's not too bad. In fact, there are quite a lot of things that still need homes, but the photo below shows just what I did achieve. Tomorrow I'm planning to do a few other jobs, then Friday I'll tackle the office again and see if I can get it to a point where I can be productive with a few other jobs that need to be finished.