First Day

My first day of work was last Friday; I didn’t know what was going on most of the time. I was introduced to a lot of people; they have a staff of roughly 100. It is difficult to remember names with so many new faces, and new names, some of them very difficult for me to pronounce. After morning snacks and coffee we gathered in a room as a staff and everyone sang a song together, I tried to imagine the staff of GMD singing in the new school year. I didn’t join in the singing but wish I had of given it my best shot, a loud voice singing the wrong tune with an incomprehensible accent might have been just the start I needed. After singing the meeting carried on, in Danish of course, with a brief English section when I was introduced. I sat listening and wondering if staff meetings were better or worse when you can’t understand them, if I could have figured out when the meeting was nearing conclusion I would have raised my hand and said “I didn’t get any of that.” but I learned in subsequent meetings that it is harder to pick up on the cues that suggest a meeting is coming to it’s conclusion when you can’t understand a word.

At lunch I joined a table and promptly brought all conversation to a stop, they were too polite to continue conversation in Danish knowing I couldn’t understand, and so amid some awkward silence all conversation then centered on yours truly and it was challenging to find the time to eat. All the staff has been very friendly and they seem truly interested in Canada and my life there. The idea that I live on an island 8 hours away by ferry is a strange one; Europe is small enough that going anywhere is relatively close in Canadian terms.

Despite the language issue I did understand that teachers in Denmark are experiencing changes in their work situation and this topic seemed to take up much of the time. The way I understand it they are being required to log their working hours to increase accountability, I guess the idea is that this will demonstrate their productive use of prep time. Time for preparation and marking is a big part of a teachers work and here that is reflected in a teachers schedule, which (again if I understand correctly) gives a teacher half of their paid time for prep. I am pretty sure I have that right for those teachers reading this and experiencing disbelief. The current situation seems to be a reflection of what people think of teacher scheduling, I guess they want to be sure that teachers are using the time they are given and if they are logging the time that will demonstrate that they are using it? I must be missing something somewhere.