Adventures begin: Week 1 Induction and Training @MTC

The last couple of weeks have gone so darn fast!
It's been almost one month since I arrived in Muscat, Oman, and to my new post as Academic Team Leader at the new state-of-the-art Military Technological College www.mtc.edu.om (click on ENGLISH far left) here.

From leaving Melbourne, where at Hawthorn all things are in place and have been for many years, to here at MTC, life has taken a 360degree turn. This school is so brand new that every morning as we arrive, we walk in, over and around some kind of workman, or in-progress construction.

The desks float by, into empty classrooms, the square odds and ends of leftover carpet sit piled outside the doors of the silent rooms, the corridors echoing worker banter punctuated now and then by the muted ring tones from mobile phones that the 55 teachers, who are already here, have inside their offices. Cardboard box art installations inside the DoS' office speak of newly arrived sets of course books for the potential first intake of 960 (!!!) students on the 01 September.

It all overwhelms me, but actually much less so than the responsibility that comes with being here at this stage of the school's life.
And that really is the theme of this first week...the construction of something new, interesting, exciting, perhaps overwhelming! My view is that I have this privileged opportunity, a once in a lifetime chance to be here at the from-the-ground-up stage of building a new school that portends to be something great.

Our first day of teacher induction on Sunday (the Arab world working week = Sunday - Thursday) was one on which we met the Dean, the Vice-Deans and a few others, too. There was a lot of framework in their talk, (nice to see this support) and it's now our job to get that building going!
Monday, it was just us teachers and was given over to the theme of establishing identities - teacher identities (we are being asked to write a teaching/educational philosophy - more quivers of this later), individual identities (I adore get-to-know activities!), and an English Department identity.
The fabulous things about this is that we can decide exactly who we want to be right here and now...we can shape the future of this school; it can be what we want it to be.
The week was a great beginning to the adventure that will be my next 2 years here at MTC. By the end of next week, we'll have some amalgamated mission statements to discuss and some thoughts on where we're (nice homonyms, huh??!) heading. I'm really looking forward to it.

So, what characteristics would your ideal school have? If you could leave reality at the door, what would it be like inside?







“Through others we become ourselves.” 
― Lev S. Vygotsky

A beginning

So, hello...how does one begin to blog apart from blogging?? :)
This is a new thing for me and I hope that like the bloggers I admire I can keep this going and make it a worthwhile venture for visitors, or indeed just for me. 


What am I up to at the moment that has prompted me to do this? Well, a small change is better than none (thanks to ChristinaSkybox) and it's a distraction from what I'm meant to be doing...writing a book review!
And this is meant to be a learning curve for me...never having done this kind of thing, it's my time to learn - so, here goes!!


Teachertrainer 3 Dec 2011