EDITOR'S NOTE: Former Attleboro resident Deeya Pavelle packed all her belongings in 2003 and crossed `` The Pond'' to England, where she started a new job and a new life teaching at an English PRU, or Pupil Referral Unit, in London. This is an alternative high school where students are sent when they have trouble fitting into the mainstream of school life. Here is her latest dispatch.

I used to have a sign that said something like, `` The only con stant in life is that it will change.'' Should anyone have the actual quote, feel free to e-mail it to me, I must say I do love hearing from you. And so -- life at the PRU has changed yet again. We now have a rootin' tootin' trou bleshooter, a big gun sent in from the big brass, and given the aegis to change everything and anything. My borough is like the system that Silber went in to save, business-run education. Did he succeed in turning it around? I can't remember. Well, our business umbrella is not doing well, four PRUs, all in Special Measures.

Anyway, this new guy is brilliant. He and I are able to communicate about what the kids need and what they have not gotten, and he seems to understand. Miraculously, he has found money for resources and additional staff and was honest enough to say that my choice to leave was a good one. Well, we knew that! I would stay if he were to be the Head, but I met the front contender for the position and was not impressed, so I need to say bye-bye.

The decision to leave is liberating, frightening, empowering and angst provoking, but that is nothing new to me. I have always taken risks, done the hard jobs, protested for causes, stood up against the oppressors, fought for the rights of women and children. Goodness, I miss the '60s, '70s and '80s.

I remember when I made the choice to end my marriage. I was so scared, but it wasn't working anymore and we both deserved a better life than the one we were living. That is how I feel about the PRU. I have done all I can and now have to start fresh. I like our school admin person and will miss her, and the market on Chapel Street is where I shop and laugh with `` my vendors.'' For someone who claims not to like change, I sure do shift a lot! So with all my conflicting emotions I am looking for a new job. The good news is I don't have to move. In the UK we have six-month leases and people move house on a regular basis. Well, my landlady decided she was too old for all this and I was faced with another flat search. It was depressing. A rotten job, the need to find a new flat and my laser eye surgery was not a real success. I am the lucky minority that needs a second procedure. So, I have been feeling a bit of stress in too many sections of my life.

And, true to the quote, it all changes again. I have leads to jobs. I have temporary reading glasses so I can do my paper for grad school. My friends have rallied around me and my landlady has given me just about everything in the flat. The new landlord will just have to replace what she gave me, and as this very proper British matron said, `` sod it.'' Allow me say, sod, is quite vulgar here.

I am enjoying my two-week break between terms. I have read my course work and seen some of the English countryside and a castle, and walked where Shakespeare walked. Friends and I have caught up and life has settled back into a calm rhythm. I am looking forward to going back to school and observing the changes we were promised before we broke up.

Will we have a new staff room, a new cooking room, and a new paint job? Will the staff have been hired to fill out the three current teachers? Yes, three teachers for an entire school. Why should the students come when there is nothing to learn but English, Math and Literacy, clearly, a self-fulfilling prescription for failure, which our new guru has explained in his language of real authority? (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

I look forward to watching `` my kids'' graduate and hopefully will get the twins to be able to fill out an application before I leave. I am also looking forward to coming Stateside and watching my son James graduate from college. And then I will look forward to coming home and continuing the journey I have embarked upon'85here across the Pond.

DEEYA PAVELLE can be contacted at missmoon(at)(at)blueyonder.co.uk