April Currently

This is my first time linking up with Farley for her "Currently" linky party.

Listening: It's been raining since yesterday. I like the sound of the rain, but only when I'm indoors. There's just something nice and comforting about being inside when it's all gloomy and wet outside.

Loving: I am not a summer person. I hate humidity. It makes me feel so uncomfortable, so this cooler weather we have had for the past two days has been wonderful. It's going to get hot again next week, but luckily for me, I will not be here...

Thinking: I leave for Japan in 4 days! Oh my gosh! I am very excited because I have wanted to go to Japan since I studied it in year 7! I also get to go to Disneysea which is another thing I have been wanting to do since forever! (well not forever, but you get my point. I have always wanted to go to Disneyland/sea).

Wanting: I need to get some ink (don't we all?). However I don't want to walk in the rain. I'm hoping the rain will stop for a few hours so I can get some ink without getting soaked.

Needing: My bag is packed, I just need to print out the accommodation vouchers and flight itineraries and to do that, I need ink.

EGGS-plain: I started this blog to share what I have been doing and blog about interesting ideas. So I figured; tales = stories and Miss D = me, so Tales From Miss D. It's kind of a dopey name and I get embarrassed telling people what my blog is called, but at the same time I like it.

I will be away for 3 weeks, so I won't be updating this blog again until the start of May. I'm going to try and be a good blogger and post more frequently :)

Have a happy and safe Easter!

New Layout & My First Feature!

I've only been back in Australia for a few days but it's definitely been busy! I'm not one to suffer from JetLag so I've had plenty of time to unpack, get in contact with friends and work, come up with lesson ideas, find some resources and go out. I've also had time to make a new layout for this blog. I've only had this for a few months, but I wanted something a bit brighter :)

I'm also happy as one of my TPT products has been featured on a blog called Teachers Love Freebies!

Click here to check it out. I love this blog as it features a variety of different TPT authors with some great products that are all FREE! Stop by and check it out, you might find something you like :)

I'm hoping to have some time this week to try out a new app and share it on here. If it works like it's supposed to, it will be very useful for organising your book collection. If you're like me, you have hundreds of books and sometimes it can be hard to remember exactly what you have. 

Hope you all have a great week ahead :)

Coming Home

In just a few days I will be back home in Sydney, after spending 13 months overseas. It's a sad but exciting time for me. Sad that I will be giving up this traveller lifestyle but excited to return home and see my family, friends and home comforts again. Returning home also means that I will be going back to work and returning to teaching as a casual (sub/supply).

I'm looking forward to returning to teaching, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat nervous about it. 13 months is a long time to be away and all sorts of silly thoughts are going through my head;

What if no one calls me for work? 

What if I have no idea what to teach that day? What if I have forgotten everything?

What if the lessons I plan are boring and the students run wild?

What if the teacher doesn't like the lessons I've done and then confronts me about it?

Of course this is all nonsense. I've had 5 years of experience, I know what I'm doing. I've kept up to date with things, gotten some great ideas off pinterest/blogs and have been making resources to use. I've also got a whole granny flat full of resources, I could probably open up my own store! So I can stop worrying about the not knowing what to do thing! I've got that covered :) 

I don't think the no one calling me thing is valid either. I was called in to work on the first day of school in January, unfortunately I had to turn that down as I was in Manchester. So chances are that if I got called for the very first day of school, I'll get called once I'm back in the country. I have a few schools that I used to work at on a frequent basis before having my own class, so I have backups if my main school has nothing for me. 

I'll have a weekend to spare once I return. I plan on using my weekend to recover from any jetlag, get my hair cut (I'm starting to resemble Rapunzel now) and gather a few resources to use for the first few days of work. I also need to organise something for my 26th Birthday as that's happening the week after.

Lots of things to look forward to, but for now I'm going to enjoy my last days as a traveller with my adventures in Bulgaria and The Netherlands!

I'm also giving the Twitter thing a go, you can find me with the username @talesfrommissd :)

Travelling and my teacher moment!

I travel a lot. I've seen and experienced many different cultures over the past year. It has truly been one of the best years of my life (and yes, I know how cliche that sounds).

I've worked at a school where 98% of the students have come from NESB (non-English speaking backgrounds) and have taught students who have come to my classroom with no English. I've always wondered if what I was doing was effective, as I've never been in that position. I grew up in an English speaking household and have lived in the same country my entire life (well, up until May 2013).

Going on a trip around Europe and travelling independently (as in not with a tour group) put me in the position of a new arrival student. I was in a foreign country, not knowing the language and I couldn't understand what the signs were saying. The countries that really emphasised this were the ones with Cyrillic; Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Macedonia. Not only was there a language barrier, but the way things were done was also different. Buying a bus ticket was done at a kiosk and then had to be validated on the bus. Back home, it was bought from the driver and that was it. Big grocery stores didn't really exist, only small ones with limited choice. The money values were very different. It was confusing seeing a box of biscuits for 128 when I was so used to seeing them for 3.

I found myself using strategies to get by. Sometimes I was lucky and there was an English translation, other times there was just the Cyrillic. 

To try and make sense of the signs I would look for pictures or diagrams next to the words. It was a lot easier interpreting things when there was a picture. Another strategy was whenever I saw an important word translated in English, I would memorise it in Cyrillic so that when I saw it later I would know what it meant.

Communicating was interesting, sometimes I was lucky enough to get someone who knew English, other times I had to use a lot of hand gestures and awkwardly try and pronounce the word in their language. Usually I would mispronounce it, but they were able to make out what I was trying to say.

Basically I became the student trying to understand and communicate in a foreign language. At times it was very confusing and frustrating, but it was also exciting. Being put in the position of a student was an enriching experience for me, I feel it helped me better understand what it is like for them coming into a classroom where they do not understand the language.

It also helped reassure me that what I do to help accommodate them is helpful. I found myself relying on pictures, translations and words that I knew to help make sense of it all. 

So if anyone tries to tell me that I wasted a year travelling around Europe, I can tell them that about my own learning adventure :)