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Dear new teachers,
 Hello our names are Katie and Camille and we’re living and teaching in London and having the BEST year of our lives. Back in January ’07 we learned about the great opportunities that TimePlan has to offer. We started to think seriously about teaching overseas. We both had the travel bug after doing six years of university but also wanted to gain experience in the teaching field and this was the right fit. We knew we wanted to go somewhere where the cultural transition would not be too stressful. We had our interviews in March and made the decision almost straight away to teach and travel in London. What made our decision so easy was knowing that we would be guaranteed work everyday. It’s reassuring waking up every morning knowing you will be working and making a good salary for living and traveling comfortably in London and Europe.
We bought a one way ticket to London and with all of our life belongings in one big suitcase and one backpack we had finally arrived! We stayed in a hostel for the first week while we looked for accommodation, which we found on the TimePlan website. We both wanted to meet lots of people and thought the best way to do this was to move into a shared house. We currently live with twelve other people, but surprisingly it works really well! We spent the first week addicted to www.gumtree.com which is a great site to help you find accommodation in London. We live in Shepherd’s Bush which has everything you could possibly need within minutes.
Within a week of arriving we started our daily supply work. Of course there are always schools that are similar to Canadian schools with sometimes challenging students but there is almost always support in the classrooms. Everyday is a completely new experience, which is one of the reasons we love teaching here so much. We both feel our ability to whip up a lesson plan in a short period of time will be a benefit in our future as teachers.
With the schools being of so different it’s always helpful to go to a school before you commit to long term work. Over in England many schools offer a short trial period to see if you and the school are a good match. This is such a huge advantage because you know exactly what you are getting yourself into and can find out everything you would need to know about the school.
The TimePlan socials and orientation are a great way to meet people, in fact we have a tight group of friends that we met at the first social and we’ve continued to go every month. We even traveled with our friends to Paris for the weekend and plan to do a lot more traveling together. One thing we were not aware of was how many breaks there are throughout the school year. The first break is in October for one week, then you get Christmas where you get between 2-3 weeks off. Then in February there is another half term break for a week, two weeks in April and one week off in May. So far we’ve taken advantage of all the breaks. We traveled to Germany and Prague in October, Paris for the weekend in November where six TimePlan teachers all took a Friday off with no problem. In December we were ready for some sun and went to the Canary Islands for a week. We are hoping our next trip is to Portugal in February with a big group of our teacher friends.
We were originally planning on just coming for the year, but after only four months of being here we have decided to extend our stay for the full two years that a working holiday visa permits. Good luck!
Katie and Camille
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