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. :)

Autumn Arrives

March 1st was the official start of autumn in Australia. However, this past week has felt much like summer, with mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 70's and low 80's. The forecast for the next few days looks like much of the same, but towards the end of the week it appears that temps will start to fall. It's a strange thing to have the days getting shorter instead of longer in March and normally we'd be looking forward to summer right now. We don't have much room to complain though, considering we essentially got to enjoy two summers back to back in 2011! I'm not sure how much color-changing of the trees we will see, but I'm excited to find out what the fall and winter have to hold for us in our new country of residence.

Hoping for a fall season full of sunsets like this one!

This week I actually felt the stress of work for the first time in months. It wasn't completely overwhelming, but I was quite exhausted by the end of the week, and I think that going from not working at all to working so many different jobs actually caught up with me a bit. I also had a very challenging day of CRT (substitute teaching) work at a high school teaching an extremely rowdy group of 9th grade boys, which reminded me of my days teaching boy's freshman health, who were the most challenging group of students I've ever taught. I also had the opportunity to play cricket with a group of 7th grade boys, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the fact that I was a terrible bowler (a position similar to that of a pitcher in baseball) at the beginning of class. Eventually I did improve my bowling skills and was able to hit the wicket, and the boys actually seemed quite impressed with my progress.

After a long week I was happy to catch up with a few friends this weekend. One of my former workmates is moving to Vancouver to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, and she had quite a lively going away party on Saturday night. On Sunday, I enjoyed catching up with another former coworker, as we took a stroll along the Maribyrnong River and followed that up with a delicious lunch of Columbian food in West Footscray at a charming little place called Besito. The food had terrific flavor and I will definitely be dragging Erik there to try additional items on the menu.

A delicious treat! Arequipe, a Columbian caramel sauce topped with chocolate ganache. AMAZING!

I am absolutely missing March Madness over here. Unfortunately I've only been able to watch clips of the exciting games, and it's just not the same as watching them live. It seems like there have been several huge upsets this year, and even though those games have busted my bracket, I love to see that happen (unless it's Carolina that is being upset, of course!). I'm totally bummed that I have to work tomorrow during the Carolina-Creighton game, because with the tournament on network television instead of ESPN, it is not possible to watch replays of the games. I'll be cheering on the 'Heels in spirit though and hoping that I will have several more chances to watch them in 2012!!

Moomba

This past weekend was Labour Day weekend in the state of Victoria. Yes, for the sake of this holiday, I am using the Australian spelling of "labour", but I have been reluctant to change my spelling of other words such as favourite, behaviour, and of course all of the words that substitute an "s" in place of the lovely "z" or "zed". I learned that Australia does not celebrate Labour Day on the same day, as it differs drastically between states, which I think is interesting given there are only 7 states in Oz.

A beautiful day for skiing on the Yarra River

Erik and I had been looking forward to this weekend for quite a while, not because it was a 3 day weekend (we actually just learned of the Labour Day holiday a few weeks ago), but because of the Moomba Masters Water Ski Tournament. In the water ski community, Moomba is considered one of the greatest water ski tournaments in the world. Until this weekend, Erik and I actually thought that the festival was named after Moomba boats! Turns out that the festival is much more than a water ski tournament, and there are live entertainers performing, carnival rides and games, delicious food stands, fireworks, and a parade on the last day of the festival. Moomba is Australia's largest free community festival, having been held for more than 50 years, and the word moomba actually means "let's get together and have fun".

Quite a large crowd gathered to watch slalom

Clearly there are people that could care less about the water skiing portion of the festival, but that was certainly the highlight for us and I would say that it drew a large crowd of spectators. The only water ski tournaments we've previously attended have been in Charleston, South Carolina, where a few people came to watch but it was mostly competitors cheering each other on along the shores of the lake. We actually watched Chris Parrish break the men's slalom record in Charleston circa 2005 and, despite the small crowd, it was really exciting.

Chris Parrish making slalom look ridiculously easy

No record breaking this time, but still fun to watch!

We spent pretty much all day at Moomba on Saturday, as we found a nice spot to sit on a grassy hill with a good view of the slalom course. One of the huge crowd-pleasers at Moomba is the jump, and Erik and I happen to have a friend, Natallia Berdnikava, who currently holds the world record in women's jump. Natallia and Erik worked together at Coble Ski School back in 2004 and 2005. We knew that Natallia was going to be jumping and also trick skiing at Moomba, and we made sure to watch her jump on Saturday where she recorded the best jump of all of the women and went on to win the jump competition on Monday! We also got a chance to catch up with her a bit after her jump and she mentioned how amazing Moomba was with the crowd, the setting (right in the CBD), and just the general atmosphere. The Yarra River does provide a beautiful backdrop for skiing even if the water looks gross (Natallia confirmed that it is!), though according to skiers it can be a tricky place to ski because of the changing tides of the river, something that is not a problem in a lake, where most ski tournaments are held.

Natallia getting ready to jump

Flying high in the air!

Night jump begins...

This past week I was called for my first casual relief teaching (substitute teaching) job. I was pretty excited because it was in a Catholic primary school (grades K-6), and I thought it would a fun day working with the little ones. "Fun" isn't exactly the word I would use to describe my day, although the students did love my accent and wanted to know if I knew Taylor Swift, since we are both from the USA. :) The school is a new concept "open" school, which I thought was great at first, until I realized that if one class was noisy or walking to a "specials" class, it was disruptive to the other nearby classes. Also, I learned that the role of a PE teacher is quite different here, at least at this school it was. Instead of the classroom teachers walking the classes to the gym, I had to pick up and drop off the students after class, and I was even responsible for taking attendance of the first class while they were still in their classroom. Furthermore, during what I thought was going to be my free period, I filled in for grade 3, teaching English and Math to the same group for almost 2 hours straight! The school seemed to emphasize freedom to move, so the students did not have desks or chairs and in PE they did not sit in spots or lines. The students could eat snacks when they pleased and many students were taking off their shoes while they were doing work! There is no bell between classes, but hip hop music plays when it's time to change subjects or go to recess. I had about 15 minutes to eat my lunch, and there is no cafeteria so I ate in the gym. Overall, it was an exhausting day! I really like some of the concepts that the school has, but at the same time I'm not sure that all of the freedom is the best idea considering when the students get into upper grades they will be expected to deal with structured classrooms and learning and won't have previous experience with that type of education.

In my last post, I mentioned that I had a meeting with a local college about teaching in their Sports Therapy program. The meeting went well, and I was offered a full course load of subjects to teach for this semester, which starts tomorrow. However, given the short notice and my previous commitments to other work, I agreed to take on 2 classes. I will be teaching First Aid, Trauma, and Emergency Support, which is right up my alley given my background in athletic training. I should have two classes of about 16 students, and each class runs for 2 hours, which should be plenty of time to discuss injuries and have the students complete hands-on practice of caring for injuries. I'm looking forward to starting this course tomorrow, though I'm not as excited about my 1 hour commute on public transport to get to the college. At least I can play my newest iPhone addiction, Draw Something, while I make my way into the city!!