seekingmygreaterperhaps

Oi! Tudo bem?

Gee, keeping up a blog is work when you are balancing starting a new job, figuring out a new country, and trying to make friends! We have completed the first month of school (4 full weeks), and it has been overwhelmingly pleasant. 🙂

There have been a lot of things to adjust to work-wise. My work hours are different (8am-4pm) but also include a FULL HOUR of lunch. Brazilian law dictates that workers get 1 hour for lunch, so I’m not expected to work, and don’t get interrupted at lunch. (Whaaaa) The sun sets at 6 pm every day, so only having 2 hours of daylight free every day is not my favorite. My body wants to stop being productive when the sun goes down, but that’s not exactly manageable with life tasks.

Professional life in the international setting is amazing. My caseload is ~110 students. I successfully met with every. single. student on my caseload in the first 4 weeks of school to get to know them a little bit better. At our smaller school, one teacher is responsible for the class they teach (for the most part). So if you are a student taking Biology, it doesn’t matter what period you are in, you will have the same teacher. This makes schedule changes almost non-existent because you don’t have students trying to get into a class with a different teacher. We “accepted” elective changes for the first two weeks (ugh), but I think I changed at most 15 schedules. After the deadline passed, it was super easy to hold the line because I am the only counselor responsible for 9th and 10th graders. So they couldn’t say their friend had their schedule changed because they have a different counselor. It’s me. I’m the counselor.

EAB does a fantastic job with controlled parent engagement. They hosted a back to school barbecue, an open house, and other community events for the school. It’s a different vibe because the school is a place for parents to meet other English speaking families. We have a “community space” that is open for the first hour of the day where parents could meet each other. They aren’t abusing this privilege either, which is nice. This morning I saw 3 moms with yoga mats chatting this morning, so I’m guessing they were meeting before going to a class somewhere. Our head of school had a great attitude this year before we opened. She said we get to make the rules of engagement post-pandemic, and I believe in her vision for how my school does this.

As a mental health professional, I am STOKED about the carved out time every week where I get to lead the charge for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in my school. Over the past couple years I have honed my curriculum development skills. My school has a FLEX period every day, and at least once a week we get to implement SEL. We also have a plan in place for targeted intervention for students who need help, or enrichment. The blessing of working at a smaller school is that these big initiatives are easier to implement. Not easy per se, but there is less red tape (for now). Our school’s mission includes being “bold in vision” so they like to go big. If you’ve worked with me, you know this suits my working personality very well.

Another perk- I have a huge office! I (still) don’t have a window, but I do have a separate room attached that I’ve transformed into a calming room. I’ve spent (quite a bit of) money to get it to be a comfortable space. My box of office toys and goodies that I mailed from the US hasn’t arrived yet. It might not arrive, which breaks my heart, but I’m praying it does.

There is still color to be added and room for improvement, but I am very happy with my office! I’ve gotten many compliments from students and staff alike that they want to “come stay.” That’s the vibe I’m going for.

While in the first month, new staff tend to still have the rose colored glasses on, I am very excited about my new gig. I’m also convinced that international education is THE WAY to go. If anyone reading this is one of my US education friends and wants to flee the profession… let’s chat. The grass isn’t always greener, but sometimes it is definitely better watered. 😉

Until next time friends and family!