Things Overheard in an Australian High School

For the past few months, I have been spending about two days per week doing CRT work at a local high school. As if it's already not difficult enough to be a substitute teacher for adolescents ages 12 to 18, teaching in another country adds a new dimension to the job. I've been fortunate to become a "preferred" CRT teacher for this local school, so that means I'm one of the first people that gets called if they need substitutes. What that also means is I have subjected myself to filling in for all subject areas, so I've taught Wood Tech, Media, Maths (way too many times considering I'm terrible at math), and Year 8 Italian, to name a few. I thought you might be interested in learning a few things about how school is different in Oz compared to the United States, so I've created my own top ten list of things that would help you survive in the classroom if you decided to "have a go" at teaching these lovely Aussie children.

10. High school here is, in fact, called College. For example, instead of attending Westminster High School, I would have attended Westminster College. If students graduate high school (they can legally drop out after Year 10, I believe), they go on to "Uni", or University, though the longer version of the word is rarely used here. Students do understand if I use the term "high school" and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that they are familiar with the American educational system due to watching television shows and movies.

9. To get into Uni, students do not take the SAT or ACT. They have exams in each subject, collectively called the VCE, throughout the course of Years 11 and 12 (some accelerated students can start taking VCE exams in earlier grades). Those scores are compared with other students around the state and they basically get ranked by their test scores, similar to how the SAT scores work with percentiles, I think. All students must take VCE exams if they want to graduate from high school, even if they do not plan on attending college. I still have much to learn about VCE testing, but from what I gather, what you do in Years 7-10 doesn't matter that much because it's all about how well you do on your VCE examinations. I was told by a Year 12 class last week that sometimes in lower grades students do not even receive letter grades, just marks such as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, but I have not yet confirmed that finding.

8. If a student asks if an assignment needs to be done in grey-lead, they are asking if it needs to be completed in pencil. I found this term commonly used in the university class that I taught this semester as well!

7. There are several breaks during the course of the day and they are wonderful! At the school where I teach most often, there are two 47 minute classes in the morning followed by a 20-ish minute break for snack/recess, two more classes followed by a 47 minute lunch, and then two final classes before the end of the day. Sometimes those "two" classes are actually a double of the same subject. There is also a 20 minute period of "sustained silent reading" or "SSR" after the recess period in the morning, and the students seem to adhere quite well to the rules of being silent and having something to read (teachers must read as well...no grading or internet searching allowed during SSR).

6. Hamish is a very popular name and it's pronounced HAYmish, not HAMish.

5. Aussie children, and many adults, cannot distinguish between the Canadian and American accent. And apparently it is rare to be an American CRT, as many of their foreign teachers have been Canuks. Admittedly, I can not differentiate between the Australian accent and the New Zealand accent, but I'm getting better, I think!

4. When a student asks their classmate for a "rubber", they are talking about an eraser. Pencils (or grey-leads!) don't seem to be manufactured with erasers on top here, which I find very strange.

3. Study up on the NBA, because that is pretty much the only U.S. sport these Aussie children care about. I've tried to explain many times that college basketball is far superior to the NBA, but usually that just causes blank stares.

2. A marker is called a "texta". A white board marker can, according to the students, be called a marker, but a marker that you might color with or a Sharpie, for example, those are textas.

1. Be prepared to answer the question "is college really like it is in the movies, like American Pie"?! I find that is a difficult question to answer. College/Uni lifestyle seems much different here than at home. Many students live with their parents and commute, because some universities have very little on-campus housing. I sometimes think that my Australian students seem to overlook the fact that occasionally college students in America do go to class and they must actually pass all of their classes in order to remain enrolled in college. They tend to focus on the frat parties, sporting events, and Spring Break trips that they see on television instead.

This is by no means an inclusive list, but it will help get you started. While you are working hard to remember these items, you should know that they do not use the word "schedule" here, but "timetable" instead. Be sure to get up-to-date on your technology too, because attendance is taken using your own personal iPad (quite a nice perk if you ask me)! Also, be sure not to use the terms freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior, because the students will surely look at you like you have a second head.

The "bright" side of getting up early to go to work. :)

Casual Relief Teaching

At the moment, I'm still working several different jobs and I'm enjoying the variety that they have to offer. Presently, I am available for casual relief teaching (Aussie-speak for substitute teaching) 3 days a week. I have made myself available for primary (basically kindergarten through 6th grade) and secondary (7th through 12 grade) schools, and I'm more likely to work as a CRT (the common abbreviation for casual relief teachers) in Physical Education, because that is the subject area for my teaching degree.

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. :)

Sunrise from our bedroom "balcony" one morning last week