One thing about CRT work that is hard to get used to is that it's incredibly unpredictable. One week I might get called all 3 days and the next week just 1 day. The way substitutes are organized here is very different from when I have worked as a substitute in the States. I started subbing over my first winter break of college, so December of 1997, for Carroll County Public Schools. Over the course of college I spent many days as a sub in CCPS and also in Wicomico County Public Schools. Their systems for finding subs were telephone-based, so a teacher would call out and then the system would start calling potential relief teachers until someone accepted the job. These calls might occur the night before or early in the morning (probably by 7am at the latest) on the day of absence. I would imagine that in 2012 they have probably gone to an internet-based system but I cannot confirm that for sure. Here in Oz, there is NO telephone system and NO internet system...it's just done by people in an office who get calls from the daily managers at schools around 7am and then start calling substitutes for the day. So usually I do not get calls about working until 7:30am and sometimes as late as 7:45, when the school needs you to be there at 8:15 or 8:30. The point is, that I have to get up and "get ready" to go to work, when I might not even get called to go to work!! I did explain these telephone systems to 2 different CRT agencies (the school systems don't find substitutes...they hire agencies to do so), and they seemed amazed that such a system could exist (which I find amusing because the telephone system was operating in the 1990's!). The agencies did mention that they like their system because it helps them build relationships with the schools and the CRT teachers by communicating via the phone, but usually when I get a call they talk to me for 2 minutes and then call the next CRT teacher.
Physical education teachers might be the only ones that understand the next quirky thing about Aussie schools, but perhaps elementary school teachers reading this might decide to come to teach here because of it! When teaching PE in elementary school in the States, the grade level teachers walk their class to PE and then pick them up at the end of class. Here, the PE teacher does both! In addition, the PE teacher might be required to take morning attendance in the classroom or to take the students back to the classroom at the end of the day to help them pack up their things. I had to do that with kindergartners last week and it was nearly impossible to get twenty-some 5 year old kids packed up with ALL of their belongings in the 15 minutes of time that I had allotted for "end of the day" activities!
Last week was my first experience with kindergartners (technically they are called "grade prep" here..."kinder" is like pre-K and is not associated with schools), and I had 3 separate classes for an hour each in PE. I think an hour is a really long time to have that age group in PE, so I tried to mix it up and played many different games with them. It was a fun change from my typical subbing of high school students, because it's always nice when you tell kids to go run and touch a wall and they get excited like it's the best thing they've done all day. :) After running around for a while, these 5 year olds are yelling "I'm puffed" and "I'm gassed", as apparently those are Aussie words used to describe "out of breath" or "exhausted", ha! I also had a student take a tissue out of his pocket to tell me that he "bless you'ed" and his mum (they don't use "mom" here) had given him a tissue for when he bless you'ed, so I promptly told him to put it in the "rubbish bin" (saying "trash can" might have confused the kid!).
In the high school setting the students are generally very curious about where I'm from and why I'm here. Most don't really make an effort to learn my name and they just call me "Miss", but I have noticed that some of the students call their regular teachers "Miss" as well, so I think that might be a common occurrence here. At the high school level I'm often getting stuck with year 9 maths (not sure why they add an "s" to math, but they do!), which is often quite challenging. I have been lucky to get a few groups of 12th graders and I have really enjoyed working with the older students.
Two other random observations from both schools are that: Lachlan is a ridiculously common Aussie name, and I kind of like it. Some of the boys abbreviate it to "Lachy" or "Lachie" though and I'm not a fan of those names. Also, teacher's mailboxes are called "pigeon holes". I have absolutely no idea why we just don't call them mailboxes. The only thing I can think of is that mail here is called "post", so maybe postboxes would be weird?! I just know that the first time another teacher told me to leave notes for the teacher I was covering in their "pigeon hole", I was a bit confused. :)
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| Sunrise from our bedroom "balcony" one morning last week |
hahaha this is hilarious!!
ReplyDeleteI think you are making lots of generalisations here based on your limited experience of working in Australia. Most schools do not work through agencies but rather ring their casuals themselves, mostly by 7 am.
ReplyDeletePerhaps that is the case in the Eastern suburbs where there are more schools? I found that in the Western suburbs, where I was looking for work, most schools use agencies to find CRTs. Nearly 2 years after this blog post was written, I still find it a bit "behind the times" that schools do not use a telephone or internet system to find relief teachers!
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