Today was the first day of classes at one of my new schools in St. Pölten. Even though I spent last year teaching in Austria, I was incredibly nervous about moving to a new city and having to start over with new schools, new teachers and new students. And one of my schools has 1,000 students! Which is more than I had in all three schools last year.
To make the jitters worse, I was in Bischofshofen last week and ran into some former students. They were very excited to see me, but once I told them I wouldn't be back in Bischofshofen, they were pretty disappointed. It made me realize how much I liked my schools last year and I almost regretted my decision to move on to different schools for my second year.
However, things went better than expected today and I'm definitely glad I'm here. I already had an introduction lesson that I planned last year and tweaked a little. I could tell that I had more confidence in the classroom than last year and the students, for the most part, seemed interested and engaged and I got them to interact with me. They and the teachers, seemed to like my introduction lesson, even though I think talking about me is maybe not the most interesting thing to do.
I was, of course, very impressed with their English. One student even sounded like a native American English speaker! And their questions and comments were pretty self-aware and insightful. I'm really looking forward to teaching them this year and wonder why I even doubted myself.
One thing that hasn't changed is Austrian schools still are overheated!
At least you're not checking mortgage records. :-)
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