Teaching at an International School

This year I accepted a post at the Canadian International School in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
My husband and I packed up our life in Barrie, Ontario and have settled here in Vietnam for the next two years.

I  am the Grade 7-12 Teacher-Librarian for approximately 400 students in our K-12 school.  We teach the Ontario curriculum to mostly Vietnamese students who plan to attend post secondary school in Canada or other English speaking countries.

We only have a few weeks left til the end of year and I have a few reflections:

I am having my best year yet as I close out my 26th year of teaching!
The students, my colleagues and the administration here are team oriented and want to the best for kids. Vietnam has a Teacher Day and being a teacher in Vietnam is a well respected position. So I am feeling valued, appreciated and useful here!  I have been able to co-teach with most of the high school teachers which has been rewarding and look forward to making some cross panel collaboration next year.

We have started the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading program here at CIS.  Over 400 students read books from the Blue Spruce, Silver Birch and Red Maple nominated titles.  Our hope was to create excitement around reading and to introduce our students to Canadian authors.  It was a big success and something we will do again.  We are one of a dozen schools who participated in the Ontario based reading program while being outside of Canada!  We connected with several of the authors via Twitter and email and it really helped our students get excited about their reading.
We also were able to invite one of the nominees Helaine Becker to our school to speak to the students.  Most of the students had never met an author before and it created a lot of excitement.

I'm not finished learning!
I added the role of Extended Essay coordinator of the IB diploma program to my professional learning this year.  It has been great to connect with other EE supervisors and coordinators from other schools and I enjoy helping the students to find the resources they need. It fits with the role of a TL perfectly and the IB world is a whole new teaching opportunity for me.

I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to have a career where I can try new challenges!