What do you do when you have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and have already moved to Australia!?!

As I remind myself everyday I’m in Australia, today was very important for me to remember that. I woke up extra early and even before my alarm went off so that I could be ready with plenty of time before my first day of work. The agency said they would call around 7:00am to tell where I would be teaching for the day, however that was not the case. I was at McDonald’s using their free wifi and the time kept going by with no call. So Caitlin called them about what tram ticket we should buy while I was skyping with my family. They told her she had a job and I got on the phone to ask if they had one for me. They did but it was going to be in a special education setting and it was going to be quite far away. I accepted the job and went on my way having to cut off my video chat very quickly. At this point it was already almost 8:30am. Fortunately we were both headed in the same direction and jumped on the tram. We went from the tram to the train and thought we were going to part ways. As I was jumping on the train and sitting down, Caitlin jump on the train too. She said that she was told by a helpful stranger that she had to take the same train.
So there we are chatting away and I am waiting for the Wastonia station to get off at. I start to get a little worried that I didn’t know when to get off. I looked at the map on the tram and realize that I was suppose to get off at the last stop and switch trains. I panicked and tried to get off right then cause we were stopped. A man tried to tell me how to open the door but on accident I pressed the emergency button instead. A person came on the speaker and the man on the train told me I hit the panic button! I had to tell the guy on the intercom that I was ok while Caitlin is laughing her ass off at me. I got off at the next stop and had to run to the other side of the platform to catch the right train. I luckily caught it in time and was on the right way. When I got the Wastonia station I realize it had started to rain and I knew I had quite a walk ahead of me to the school. I ended up having to walk about 25 minutes in the misty rain without an umbrella. During the wet walk I started thinking that about the crazy nerves I had been through already this morning and it was already 10:30 and I wasn’t even at the school yet. My choices were to either cry or laugh. I choose laughing because I realize that it was a terrible way for my morning to start but at least I was in Australia and I figured hopefully the day could only get better.
Well we all can be wrong. Luckily the office was very nice when I came in and told me where to go. When I got to the school it was an all special education school and it was a middle school. I assumed it would be an elementary school since I do not have any experience in middle school. When I walked into the classroom the students were playing on computers, dancing and eating. It was their snack time. I got briefed by a woman who was in there with the plans for the day and then she left. I was shocked that there wasn’t an aid for this fully special education classroom. There was a women next door and she was there for any questions I had. After eating time it was time for them to use their laptops for mathletics. This seemed simple enough however it wasn’t. First thing one of the student’s laptop couldn’t get internet. The aid came in and told me that she would be working with 2 particular students because they really can’t do focus enough to do it on their own. So while I’m trying to get one laptop working all the other students are doing pretty good on their laptops until I walk around and realize that two of them are just playing music with their headphones and some of the others are just sitting there not doing anything. The aid tries to work on the computer while I get others on task. She then has to leave remarking that I might need to sit by the two boys leaving the others in the classroom practically knowing that no one is able to walk around and see what they are actually doing on the computer. One boy is continually making noises and obviously getting frustrated while another keeps getting up and refusing to work because he is bored. I start having one boy closing his laptop so that it closes down, when a couple more laptops start to die. We finally have to go ahead and put them all up 10 minutes before it is their lunch time. I try to play a math game with them but half of them were trying to leave the room. At this time other students started coming in and mine were suggesting they were suppose to leave but every adult said no they aren’t suppose to go and would tell the other children to go back to their class. I even had one boy tell his friend, “Don’t listen to that girl, just go.” The odd part was the adults didn’t seem to act like it was a bad or unusually thing for all these students to be wondering around to different classrooms.
Lunch was supposed to be eaten in the classroom for 10 minutes then they had 30 minutes of doing whatever they wanted. It was during the first ten minutes the aid came in and said I was suppose to have already gone to lunch but I had 10 minutes before I had yard duty and that I better go eat now. By the time I got to the staff room I literally had 5 minutes to eat. Then I had to be in a hallway walking up and down and checking in on rooms for my yard duty. I soon realized that the reason for this was because they had unsupervised classroom where students are to be keeping themselves busy by entertaining themselves in any way they chose. It was the worst structure I had ever seen at a school. Within these classrooms I found students listen to inappropriate music, making their screenpages full of wrestling pictures, students playing games with chainsaws and much more very uneducational and inappropriate things to do at school. There were other adults on yard duty so I asked if they could listen to that music and play those games and they said yes. I was shocked.
I finally had to go back to my classroom where I set up stations with the other teacher where it ended up being that the kids just got to play games pretty much the rest of the afternoon. Some of the games where thought provoking where others were not so much. The children were disrespectful to me and other adults that would come in. No one seemed to have any consequence for the children. So needless to say it wasn’t my best day of teaching ever. I got off work just to walk 25 minutes in the rain again to get to the train station.
That night I had to go down to the hostel bar to forget and let the day roll off my back with Jaimie and another Canadian that had been assign to our hostel room. It was a nice end to a not so great day.