How to Make a Good Transition into a New School and a New Country-according to Janet

The count down to the last day of work at our current school is on. (75 days as of this blog posting) We are excited to close this chapter in our lives and to move on to greener pastures.  I have been thinking a lot about the transition to our new school.  This year alone, I have observed several new staff members begin at our current school.  Their success at the school depended on how they transitioned into the school and the city.

Here are some good transitional behaviors-in my opinion:
1. Get to know the local staff-they have been here the longest
2. Learn and say everyone's name correctly-practice it until you get it right
3. Ask questions- what is already working well-no need to reinvent the wheel
4. Look at the big picture-myopic viewpoints are problematic
5. Ask what makes a good leader/teacher/person according to the local staff-Here in Hanoi, a smile makes you an effective leader regardless of what you actually do.  Even if you don't understand it, you need to respect the local customs.
6. Get out into the city you now live in.  Explore!
7. Respect the experience and insights of staff members who have been in the city longer than you, but also take their advice with several grains of salt.
8. Be honest about your work history and your reasons for teaching overseas
9. Know that you do not speak for your entire country, you only speak for yourself but people will judge your country by what you say and do
10. Shake off any negative things  you may have gone through at your last school-new country, new school, new outlook

Alright, now all I need to do is get through the next 75 working days and then I can use my own advice.
~Deep breaths~

Scratch

    Computer programming-something we all benefit from, but don't understand.  I'm slowly learning Python and have my eyes set on Google Scripts in the future.  Now how do I introduce this kids so that they have a better understanding of the computers that are all around them? Scratch.
    This is old news to most people who are on the tech side of a school, but I wanted to share my approach this year in teaching Scratch.  I have only had the opportunity to teach Scratch as an after-school activity.  I will be introducing it to my 5th grade class during our teacher-run ICT time.  This will be interesting as 1/3rd of the class is in my after-school activity and will be far ahead of everyone else.  I've given myself a differentiation challenge.
    Lesson 1: I introduced the program.  A few kids had seen it the year before but had no real grasp of anything beyond simple animation that relied solely on costume changes.  So, we played games and kids explored the interface.
    Lessons 2-4: I introduced a few of the basic commands at the start of each lesson and then let the kids experiment. They were running into a lot of problems and not knowing where to look for solutions.  On top of this, everyone was working on their own project.
    Lesson 5: I changed direction and we worked as a group.  First, I wrote this tag game. I left a few simple bugs in it, ones that dealt with the order of commands or a few small missing blocks.  I gave the class 3 things to fix and sent them off to work together.  With some guidance, all the bugs were solved and this is the improved version that two of the girls came up with.
  Here are the bugs I left in a very basic tag game:
1. The sprites could move during the introduction countdown.
2. If the second sprite did not move, it could not be tagged.
3. When the game was over, it did not reset automatically.

   As you can see, these were fixed. The students gained a better understanding of both the details that are needed for a good project and how to read through their code and find issues.

This post by @jeffreywrensen

The Perils of Walking

    It was a calm spring night.  We went for a walk.  We walked.  All of a sudden there was a rope across the sidewalk and Janet bit the dust.  Why was the rope up?  We are full of theories, but no answers.  Janet got this:

You are right, it looks like her first of many Teardrop tattoos.  If you know Janet, she has a penchant for killing. (Kidding)  If you know Janet, you know that this is no surprise (the falling and subsequent bleeding).  Watch your step!

Hoi An

    The last place we went over Tet was Hoi An.  It is famous for its tailors and its lantern festival.  We arrived at night and the river side streets were packed with people.  Once we finally made it to our hotel and checked in we were back out to the streets.  It was bright and fun as we made our way over a fancy bridge and into the main part of the city.  While browsing at clothes Janet found a jacket she liked and 20 minutes later we had a price agreed upon and she was measured, we agreed to come back the next night and pick it up and we were back off down the street.  All at 9:30 at night.

The footbridge at night.

Jon trying on a jacket and if you're thinking what I'm thinking... yes it goes with the shoes.

The lanterns were every where and different as we walked along.

     It is the year of the snake and that was the theme of most of the lanterns.  There were some non-snake designs, but I've mostly left those pictures out.

 Doesn't seem like an animal that many people would be scared of from this little guy's expression.

 










A few of the other designs.

The watermelons were my favorite.












    There was one with sphere that housed a group of figures that rotated.  I had some fun with my endless shutter feature (and left off 30 other pictures).

There was another river that wrapped around the back of our hotel.  The hotel had a boat that brought us around into the downtown area of Hoi An.

 Hotel jetty.

 I really love the eyes on the boats.

There were many, many of these boats transporting motorbikes everywhere.












    Hoi An has a lot of nice old merchant's houses for tourists to stroll into for a small fee.  What surprised me was that these weren't just for tourists.  The families still lived in the house.  They weren't importing / exporting goods, which was the history of all the houses, but they still needed a place to live.  In both of the houses there was a small room with a curtain over the door and some people watching TV inside.

 These wise men were everywhere.

The houses had narrow stairs so moving a bed up stairs would be difficult.  These are trap doors that have a nice looking pulley hanging from the ceiling.  Pop 'em open and haul up that 54" HD TV!  I want one of these when I eventually have a 2 story house.

Jon needed a suitcase that was a little bigger to bring some clothes home.  He ended up with this neon gem, but it was still pretty early in the day.  We carted an empty bag around Hoi An for a few hours looking like some crazy people.

This is the famous Japanese bridge, it had side rooms on the far side with little alters in them. There were some nice carvings on the inside as well.

 There are a number of pagodas around town as well.

 These spiral incense burners were awesome and everywhere.

 I never figured out the pattern, but this guy was moving lit incense around the whole time.

There were flower designs on all the beds both nights.

This place was delicious and a lot of the food was cooked right behind us.

 I still prefer my tailor in Hanoi, but this one was pretty good as well.
I like that I can now use phrases like that, it makes me feel very fancy.

   Hoi An was a great place to stay for a few days.