Be Comfortable With The Uncomfortable

My fiancé and I will be moving back to NZ mid year, so we decided that I wasn't going to take a full time gig this year. We knew this would give us greater flexibility to travel and I would have less stress and pressure being a reliever. The last few weeks we have been skiing in Japan to start these travel adventures. As we were heading to our last chairlift of the trip last Thursday my phone started ringing from a random Adelaide number. It was Plympton International College and they wanted me for a 7 week contract starting today!! This was super unexpected and I was actually looking forward to being a relief teacher for this term, but I decided to jump into the deep end and take the gig. I am very out of my comfort zone because I have been given a Y8 Maths class (certainly NOT my strength!). I'm nervous about this new curriculum area but I am hoping it'll give me new knowledge to have greater numeracy connections in HPE in the future, and develop new skills/teaching strategies. 

Today was my first day and it was awful. I really didn't feel supported and I was expected to be teaching 10 minutes after I had arrived even though I had just been given my classes and I hadn't stepped foot in the school before! I was assuming I would have a couple of hours to have a tour, check out the notes from the teacher I was covering and some prep time for my lessons. Thankfully I was able to wing my way through the day but requested to have the day tomorrow, which was thankfully granted. I left today feeling very rattled, frustrated and like a lone wolf. I left feeling like I made a mistake taking this short contract, so I really hope that changes over the next week or so! This really highlighted to me the importance of support - I would love to become a HOD one day and support will be a major priority!!

Even though I've come home today feeling flat and uncertain about this change, I have reminded myself about the importance of stepping out of my comfort zone and that this is another opportunity to develop my resilience. Yubing Zhang's below Ted Talk is great food for thought with regard to getting to the edge of our comfort zones. A question she posed that you could ask yourself is: "What is it that you are not doing because of a fear of failure?"