Meet the Teacher

Today we went to the school to meet everyone's teachers.  Bobby had a meeting so Nana and I went with the kids.  We were a little nervous when we pulled into the parking lot and didn't see many "American" looking people going inside.  Once inside though, everyone was speaking english and it seems very international overall.  I was nervous that the kids may not understand their teachers if they spoke with accents.

Avery's class was first and her teacher was still on the plane to Qatar from the USA!  The assistant teacher was there and super nice.  Her name is Ms. Rochelle and she was from the Philippines  we think.  We looked at the class list and couldn't pronounce a single name on it except Ellen.  She is from Kansas and her mom is really nice.  I am sure all the other kids will be sweet, too and she will make friends quickly.  I think the accent shouldn't be a problem in this class since the teacher is coming from the USA.

We then went to find the second grade area, which is upstairs.  Chase was happy to find out that he is in a class with 10 boys and 6 girls.  Very similar to his class last year!  His teacher, Ms. Kim, is from Canada (shout out to Bill and Nancy)!  She seemed very fun, bubbly, and like she will be a good fit for Chase.  We met with the school nurses earlier in the week and have a diabetes plan pretty well in place.
It is nice that since the school has two nurses, one can be in the clinic, and the other will come to Chase's class to do the diabetes management.  Chase seemed pretty happy about that.  We met two kids in his class while we were there (one girl from Hawaii, and one boy from South Korea).  Chase observed that the classrooms are much smaller than Hidden Oak but the class sizes are also smaller.  Chase picked Arabic as his foreign language.  We all though that was going to be really cool, but then both his and Natalie's teachers seemed really surprised that he picked it and just said "good luck".  It must be really hard....  We may decide to switch to spanish on the first day but will keep you posted.

Natalie's teacher is Ms. Debbie.  She as lived in Qatar for several years but grew up in Alaska.  She was really nice to talk to and very personable.  I think she will be a really good fit for Natalie.  There are only 11 kids in her class and 7 of them are girls.  She was really happy about that, too.  She is picking Spanish as her foreign language.  Natalie's teacher has 3 kids and was able to give me good information about soccer here.

We then toured the pool and gymnasium area and got to see a really cool recess area.  The kids will each have a 6 week P.E. session during the school year in the pool.  It is a pretty cool idea.  It sounds like there will also be lots of afterschool clubs to choose from including soccer skills, swimming, art, drama, etc.

The school week here is Sunday to Thursday since the religious holiday is Friday.  It is going to be really weird to think of Saturday night as a school night.  Sunday is the first day.  Avery will be going until 12:30 every day and the big kids go until 2:30 except early dismissal on Tuesdays at 12:30.

All the kids were excited for the first day after meeting their teachers!