A New Adventure in the North

Welcome back lovely readers! I’ve been away from writing for the summer because of all the crazy life changes I’ve been making. I’ve made the move to Northern Ontario and started my teaching career. So far it has gone very well. The locals are very welcoming, the apartment they gave me is comfortably livable, my kindergarten kids are so much fun, and my fellow teachers are amazingly supportive. 

The first leg of my journey started in Toronto where I hopped on a Bombadier Q400 to Thunder Bay. 

I also met my new roommate in Pearson while we waited for our plane. She’s a cool kid. She’s teaching the grade 8 class and has a whopping 9 students in her class. 

At Thunder Bay we were directed to our next, even smaller plane that took us to Sioux Lookout. 

There were an impressive 9 passengers on this plane, and we were able to choose our own seats. There was so much beautiful scenery on rout to Sioux Lookout. 

I stayed in Sioux Lookout for 3 days for orientation, where I was able to meet all of the teachers and principals from all four communities involved with our school agency. While there, I had some time to walk around and get some photography in. 

After some panic and headache, the grade 7 teacher and I were secured seats on a cargo plane to take us up to our new community. We called it our private jet. It was the nicest flight of the week! 

Once we got into the community, we had to go on a hunt for school keys. Last year’s teachers caused quite the stir in the community and the entire teaching staff left at the end of the school year, so we are being faced with much suspicion and mistrust this year. It’s a delicate process to get pretty much anything done. 

We got into the school on Sunday afternoon, and for the first time, saw our classrooms that had to be ready for students in a short one and a half days. This is the kindergarten room I walked in to. 

It’s a beautiful, large, well-stocked room with a lot of potential, and after some grunt work, this was my preliminary room set up. 

The problem with my setup, however, was that I ended up having about twice the amount of students I expected. Part of the drama caused by last year’s teachers was the destruction of most student files. Because of this, the 12-18 students I was told I would have actually ended up being 29 little kindergarten people running around. 

Since my first setup I have changed the room entirely, and continue to change something around every day. I will go into more detail about the setup, stations, and resources I’ve used when I figure out how everything needs to be set up. I think I’m getting closer. Second week of school starts tomorrow!