A Day in the Life

Monday to Friday, sadly, I'm not riding my bike nor making 8 hr drives for 2 hours of snowboarding. As is the case for most of us, we have to provide sustenance for us and ours. The good news is that I have no "ours" to feed, only me, but as my last grocery bill can attest ($254.00), "me" is more than enough. Hopefully that feeds me for more than a week. To sustain and feed the costly habit of putting food on my plate and therefore in my mouth, I (we) need to work.

I realized that I have yet to mention this so called work that I came to NZ for thus far in the life of this blog. So here it is. If you: (a) aren't a teacher, (b) don't like teachers, (c) hated high school, or (d) aren't interested in other cultures and the differences between us, you may want to stop reading now.

Monday to Friday

Typically, my day starts with a wake up of around 6:45am. I have this view from my room. Not a bady way to start the day.

I eat breakfast and hop on my bike to begin the arduous uphill commute to work. I am not a morning person. Food in my stomach and a bike ride make me tolerable, if not almost happy in the morning.


My classroom.


The windows in my classroom. A few of you at HNH and CCH will appreciate that!


More views from my desk.

The teacher carpark from the top of the campus. The school sits on a hill and the view is spectacular. I was proctoring an exam in the Math department the other day...I could see the sea from there!

Massive amounts of soccer, rugby and random pitches on campus. It's absolutely massive.

Covered walkway to teacher carpark.

All of the buildings house different departments. My building, pictured here, is Building E.

Cricket/Soccer/Rugby pitch.

Netball courts. Check out the YouTube video here to see how ridiculous this sport is. They took the fun out of basketball and made it into a professional league. I don't get it.

Building E.

More random campus shots.

In the background is the library. Yes, they still call them libraries here and ther are actually books in there.

See?

Field hockey pitch. Yup, that's astroturf.

Front part of the campus.

Main Entrance.

Other subject buildings.

More campus.

Hidden behind the Jurassic Park jungle is another subject building.

More buildings.

The back half where there are "extra" pitches for various sports.

Teacher workout room.

Those extra pitches I mentioned.

My classroom has cathedral ceilings.

This is the main staff room. Every day the entire staff gathers here for, quite literally, tea. We all sit with our teas and snacks (from 11:10-11:35) while daily announcements from admin and teachers are read out. Tea!

Our auditorium. Every year level has a meeting once a week where the DP's (Deputy Principals), Year Level Deans and sometimes the Principal address them. Since there are 3000 students at this high school, these "small" assemblies total 600 students.

The Stage. They recently put on A Comdey of Errors, which seemed elevated and more "real" if you will due to their accents (sorry Svizz, MJ, Radigan et al!!)

The Reading Room. These rooms are used by English and have a rotating schedule. Once a week, each class I teach goes to the reading room to read silently for the entire period (45 minutes). We have 7 forty-five minute periods a day here and teach anywhere from 4 to 6 out of those 7. Their classes run all year long, therefore semesters do not exist. We have 4 terms and at the end of each term, we are off on holidays for 2 weeks. Except for the end of the year in December...we're on summer holidays for 6 weeks.

Attendance...online! Each teacher is given a laptop upon being hired.

So that's my weekday days in a nutshell, and also a pretty good look at the campus. Thankfully the ride home is almost entirely downhill. Speaking of which, I'm going to hop on my bike now and head off into the brilliant Auckland sunshine, downhill to Browns Bay...home.

Cheers!