13 articles found
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The school year ended today at Thetford Academy, where I worked for two years, teaching math and English to English schoolchildren. It was an interesting, challenging time. While I’m happy to be back home, I also miss it very much. In particular, I miss my former Year 10 students, this year’s batch of Year 11s.
Both years that I was there, I had the privilege of attending the Year 11 Leavers Prom, where teachers…
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I’m wearing shorts right now.
Shorts. In March. OK, I wore shorts in March back in Canada—but towards the end of March, when the snow was actually melting. Today it’s so nice that I can go outside and sit in shorts and a T-shirt without so much as a jacket. Crazy.
A few weeks ago, I asked my dad to send me a photo of the snow back home so I could see what I…
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At the beginning of the month, I moved. I was quite happy with my current roommate and living arrangements at the time, but for reasons beyond my control, I needed a new place to stay. So on my first weekend off in the Easter break, I packed up the kipple of my life here in the UK and moved to a different place in Bury St Edmunds. Happily, the experience has been a positive one—I…
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I’ve spent the past eleven days back home in Thunder Bay, enjoying my break and catching up with friends and family. It has been good. I have reconnected with our cats, who began merrily disassembling the Christmas tree one ornament at a time approximately an hour after we put it up. I saw my 3.5-year-old nephew and gave him some gifts courtesy Scotland. I hung out with my mom, watching movies and drinking tea and…
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So, my students finally found me online.
Seriously, what took you so long?
Not to boast, but I’m easy to find online. There are few enough Ben Babcocks that my various accounts, not to mention my website, eventually show up sometime on a Google search. So I knew it was just a matter of time.
Knowledge of my online presence has spread quite quickly. I’m not that bothered. Long ago I made a decision to…
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October has flown by, mostly in a good way. There have been tough days, long days, days when I’ve curled up with a good book and tried to lose myself from the chaos of the world around me. There have been days when I’ve been despondent, when I’ve cried, when I’ve just been so tired of being here, in a far away place, muddling through a difficult job. But those days happen. And then they…
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I’ve had a good run. Aside from the last period of Friday last week, my last two weeks have been good. It’s still difficult and exhausting, but I’m still surviving!
I am still coming to terms with the significance of this new chapter in my life, and last Thursday hammered this home. We had an Open Evening, where children from Year 6 and their parents tour the school prior to deciding where to go for…
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I’ve had a long and interesting week, so let’s get started.
As some background, my school has two sites (North and South) as an artifact of combining two schools. North site is undergoing extensive renovation, with an entire new building being added, so South site is being phased out. I’m teaching entirely in one room on South site. Aside from having a Promethean board instead of a SMART board, I’m OK with this. Firstly, South…
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On Wednesday, I woke up at 4 am, considerably earlier than I am accustomed to doing. I had to catch the 5:30 train to Stowmarket, and from there I took the train to London Liverpool Station. After pausing to gawk at the size of it all, not to mention the number of people, I rode the tube to London Euston station. From there, it was a short walk to the building where Engage Education was…
Day three in England, and I officially have cookware!
I’m sitting here watching a season 3 episode of Buffy, streaming it from my laptop’s external hard drive to my tablet, which is connected to the TV via a micro-HDMI cable. It’s fun! There wasn’t anything attractive on TV this hour—which was not the case earlier this afternoon. At one point, three different channels were showing reruns of Buffy, Doctor Who, and Star…
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Hello from England!
My flight to Gatwick was uneventful—I kind of knew what to expect this time. Several teachers I had met from my iday experience were on an Air Transat flight the same night, but I flew Sunwing. I met up with another Canadian teacher, Josie, teaching at the same school as me. Unfortunately, this flight was not any better than the last when it came to getting sleep. I’m not supremely…
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It is hard to believe, but in less than two weeks I will be moving away from Canada to teach in England. What started as a possibility in January has swiftly become a solid reality. Over the last few weeks I’ve received my visa, received my Ontario College of Teachers certification, and booked my flights to Toronto and London. I also made a somewhat unwise trip to the library, where I acquired enough…
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It’s been an interesting few weeks. I have a lot I want to blog about—my new tablet, Mass Effect, books, leaving the art gallery, etc. Despite my free time, I keep finding ways not to do it. So far.
I’d love to talk about how much I’m enjoying my Asus Transformer Pad, but I don’t have time. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow morning I fly to Toronto, and from there in…