Finding my feet

Well between getting on the correct bus to both get to  school and back home, as well as finding my way back to school after lunch,  I think I'm getting in to the swing of things a bit. I was also introduced to an actual grocery store near school so I now have *gasp* two options that offer foods I can easily identify. Between that and knowing that I'm near my apartment without having to stand right in front of it is making me feel a lot better.

My classroom before set-up)

I have been spending the last two days of work setting up my classroom, with yesterday being the major part of moving furniture around. I think though that I have the classroom designed in a way that will allow the children to have plenty of space to work at both the floor and tables, without simply having all the shelves shoved up against the walls. That to make just leads to a mass of children in a large area moving around and distracting each other. I will have to see how it works though because I know that it is going to be crowded. I have 25 children in my classroom and I know for a fact that in the US there would not be enough space to get this room licensed for that number. Welcome to crowded Hong Kong.

Unfortunately the other adult in my classroom does not start work until Monday so I am limited in how much setting up I can do. She is also Montessori trained and has just finished her training is well. I'm not sure how this will work in the classroom though. In a Montessori environment there is usually one trained teacher, and one assistant. The assistant can be Montessori trained but usually is not. Only the teacher actually presents the materials to the children, and the assistant can then assist them if they struggle when taking it out again later. A Montessori classroom ideally does not have two different adults giving presentations because we want the adult to be a limited resource, encouraging the children to ask each other for help or to solve the problem on their own. When I was hired for this job I was told that this environment would be slightly different because of the emphasis on learning Mandarin as well. Obviously I do not know Mandarin well enough to teach it to someone else so those lessons were to be done by the Mandarin speaking teachers.

So before I get too involved in setting up the classroom I need to find out how the classrooms duties will be divided up so my co-teacher and I can both access the materials we need. Guess I'll just have to work on my patience until then.

Waiting, waiting, waiting (on the escalator)