This week was my first week going into schools for my new job. I wasn't scared, not really nervous. I was anxious, I was excited. And when I walked into the schools, I felt at home.

My job is to identify with the students, but I found (not super surprisingly) that I identified more with the teachers. When I finished my Teacher's College I was afraid that I was too young to be a teacher, that I wasn't mature enough. Now I know that in the 2-3 years since, I have grown and matured in the aspects I knew I needed to work on. I didn't realize it until I was there standing next to my partner, giving him shit for wearing a shirt that said "Damn I'm good" because it was inappropriate, and again for playing on his cell phone in the middle of the school cafeteria in front of students and teachers. My poor partner. I'll have to apologize for being such a hard ass when it wasn't necessarily my place, even though my intentions were in the best interest for the group and the foundation we are supposed to be representing professionally.

I realized that now I do things "by the book" don't tolerate bullshit and am not afraid to discipline students. I realized that I am professional without even having to try or put on a false face.

After one day, I told my partner.. "You know what, after this year, I think I'm going to look into going back to teaching."

Will that sentiment last throughout the year? Maybe. Hopefully. I think I was scared to walk into strange schools all by myself as a supply teacher. That's not an easy job. But if I can spend all year working in different schools with a completely different group of students every single period of every day, then I can be a supply teacher. I might even like it.

After school on Thursday we stayed behind to chat with one of the teachers. It was his 29th year teaching. He said to me "We aren't teaching anymore. We're entertaining... Every day is about surviving. The students are trying to survive and we're trying to survive with them."

Politics make teaching in Quebec very undesirable. For Chrissake, the PQ wants to abolish school boards. They want to diminish the English language as much as they can get away with it. Not a good scene for me. Would I go back to Ontario? Would I consider moving back to the States? Or would I be ok with sucking it up and working in Quebec anyway? Those are the questions I hope to answer over the next 8 months.