Hill Climbing

It is now week 4 of my international teacher exchange. The last two weeks have been a blur and as we develop our lives in Australia, it has become more difficult to make time to write in the blog.

Heather, Fenton, and I just got off Skype with our exchange partners, the Turners. It was really interesting to have a conversation about our two worlds, one that each of us know intimately, and the other that we are each assimilating into. As Gary put it, it is absolutely amazing how two school systems can be so different in so many ways despite the fact that we are both Commonwealth countries that speak the same language. Prior to this experience, I would have expected an exchange like this to be a great adventure, plenty of travel, meeting amazing people, and learning great things. The funny thing about such a prediction is all of those things are happening, but it does not feel the way I thought it would. The challenges have been so much more uncomfortable then I had ever imagined.

Many differences exist between our cultures, and the differences between the two school systems are screamingly obvious. However, there are many things about the Aussie school system that I believe are much better than our system. One simple (and easy to put in place) difference is the teaching schedule. In Australia, teachers and students have two short lunch breaks; a 40 minute “morning tea” and a 20 minute  “afternoon tea”.  In addition we have three to four 70 minute preparation periods a week. At Londonderry, a teacher is “on” from the beginning of school day until the end with with one 30 minute lunch break - often taken up tutoring students, supervising, or providing supports in other ways.  Full time teachers at Londonderry have two 50 minute preparation periods a week. I was surprised to calculate that the total weekly teaching minutes in each teaching schedule are almost identical. In Edmonton I finish the day rattled, and it takes effort to reel back in and produce a "to do" list in order to prepare for the next day. Here in Australia, I work a longer day, but the extra break makes an enormous difference and it does not feel nearly as extreme as at home. Having this opportunity to shut off part way through the day is a gift that I will miss dearly.

How is all of this affecting me? Back home throughout my development as an educator, I learned how to work efficiently. As such, I can prepare quality lessons in a short period of time; and I can do all of this while maintaining life balance. This skill is not needed in Australia because we are given enough time to prepare lessons during the work day. In Canada, I developed skills to motivate my students in a setting where most of them already accepted the idea that school could increase their quality of life. Even the least motivated Edmonton kids knew that success in school could mean the opportunity to have some choice regarding what they do for a living. This is simply not the case here at Maroochydore. I have realized that I need to develop the skill to sell education to my students in a different way. I have to acquire a new set of skills if I am to be successful this year. A new Aussie friend told me to "be brave" and that has become my motto for the year.

Every day I ride Gary's bicycle to school and I must climb a very steep hill. The hill is so steep that I cannot make it up without getting out of the saddle. Every day I get better and I am able to climb higher while seated. The goal is to climb the entire hill seated. Once I achieve that I will take on a bigger hill.  My average speed to work is faster and faster each week. 

The ride to work and back home has become symbolic of the daily challenges I take on as an educator here. 

Our Little Koala

We spent this past weekend in Brisbane attending an exchange teacher conference put on by the Queensland Exchange Teacher Association. We met some new Aussie friends, some new Canadian friends from Ontario, and were also reacquainted with Alberta friends we met at the Edmonton exchange teacher meeting put on by the Alberta Teachers Association. We were very well received by the Aussies and had great conversations about teaching in Australia. The Queensland government has decided to discontinue their involvement in international teacher exchanges due to the cost of the administration. This Association may save the program if they are able to take over the administration the way that the ATA did for Alberta.

After an info session, the volunteers of the Association lead us in a car convoy to Mowbray Park where we caught the City Cat for a tour of Brisbane by river. We stopped off briefly at South Bank for a splash and play in the park before catching the City Cat back to our cars where we said farewell until the next meeting. 

We spent the night in Cleveland, a suburb of Brisbane, with our Albertan friends Nancy and Boyd, also on exchange. While there we walked a couple of blocks away from their house to a small treelined park where we saw giant fruit bats, termite nests and KOALAS! The Koalas were such a highlight that we visited them again the next morning before walking to the Sunday market.

We spent the rest of the day at sunny Wellington Point where there are huge trees shading a playground. The beach is so shallow that young children can be seen playing quite far out without any fear of waves or a dropoff. A young Aussie girl seemed to be quite fond of Fenton and kept rocking the turtle he was riding. Fenton just gave her a hard look and she went on her way.

Next weekend we will head to the famous Noosa and finally hit a beach!

Gluing and Pockets

I have now been teaching at Maroochydore State High School for one week. It was clear before the exchange started that it was going to be different. It is. I am actually surprised at how much there is to learn when on an exchange. The differences are so many that it is like being a first year teacher again.

Maroochydore is a good school with a visionary leader. The students are good kids, the facilities are very good, and my colleagues are helpful and supportive. One would think that this would be an easy transition. It isn’t.

After a week I have started to learn how to manage an Aussie classroom. My Canadian tricks did not seem to work well and as a result I have applied different strategies. Planning has changed for me as well. Collaboration is a big part of planning over here. This is, of course, a great thing. However, for someone who is not used to it, it represents something else that needs to be learned. The best thing about doing an exchange is how much you learn – even if you are a very experienced teacher. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for someone who was not lucky enough to have the support I’ve had.

There are also the day to day things that need to be learned. For example, paper is not hole punched here. Instead, when a handout is given, students will pull out their scissors, cut off the boarder, and glue it in their scribblers. Yes, that’s right. They use glue sticks to permanently stick all handouts. This represents a problem when I photocopy two sided. They must glue only a small part of the handout – the side, fix that into their books, and then flip it like a page to access the other side. The other option is to keep handouts in plastic pockets that can be fastened into two ring binders. I wondered if it was possible to punch holes in paper to fix them directly into such a binder. No such punches exist. They have their ways and they work well.

The students wear uniforms and they must meet very specific standards. The shoes must be black leather, the socks must be white, etc. Facial piercings are forbidden. It is hard for an experienced Canadian teacher to enforce rules that have never been important in the past.

The best thing about teaching here is that I finally get to teach the way that I have always wanted to. I get to do far more experiments. There are two full time lab technicians (tekies) who will set up any lab you want and then clean up when you are finished. If you would like to do a lab that they have never done before, you simply hand them a description with a day or two of notice and it will be done. They will purchase what is needed and then set it up for you the next day. The summative assessment of Science by having students design their own experiments, perform them, and then write up reports is decades ahead of Alberta. We try to have students perform authentic tasks, but I now see that we don’t really know how and that so many things prevent us from accomplishing this, most notably our heavy program of studies. It is amazing how much easier it is to teach concepts when the context is there in the form of an authentic task. This experience has convinced me that we can do this back home… with some work.

Tomorrow I will start my Grade 8’s on their first “prac”. Their task is to design a lab that will determine which material is ideal for a Science lab coat, perform it, and do a write up which I will have to mark.  May the force be with me!

Home Wet Home

It has been a week since we arrived in Buderim. We’ve experienced extreme heat, extreme humidity and extreme wind and rain (AKA ex-cyclone Oswald). Having said that, we’ve been very fortunate.

We were greeted at the airport by Col’s shuttle and greeted on the lawn of our new house by Karen’s Mum and partner, Jan and Dave. Since the house had been vacant for almost a month, Jan and Dave busied themselves by removing all the creepy crawlies, dusting, opening windows, turning on fans and filling the fruit bowl full of delicious watermelon, cantaloupe, passion fruit, nectarines, avocado and a few others (we’re still not sure what they are called!) Jan and Dave have been wonderful to show us around Buderim and introduce us to some local Canadians. Karen and Gary also ensured their neighbors and friends called upon us. We’ve already made tentative plans to head to Noosa next weekend to meet one couple!

Our first weekend in Buderim was spent safe and dry indoors while ex-cyclone Oswald pounded eastern Queensland with rain, wind and more rain. We suffered a few down trees and a down fence and a lot of leaves in the backyard pool while others suffered extended power losses, the loss of their homes and all of their belongings. Some even suffered the loss of life. As Oswald moves south, New South Wales and Victoria residents are being flooded, evacuated and under water bans. Every television channel has footage of the devastation. Australia has suffered 9 natural disasters in the past 5 years at a cost of 6 billion dollars.

When the rain stopped we entertained some Aussie friends and some newly befriended Canadians with a backyard BBQ and dip in the pool. We plan on getting together with them again soon.

We’ve made several trips to various grocers, a trip to open a bank account and Fenton and Heather made a trip to the library and Good Life Community/Recreation Centre. Driving has been interesting but not too difficult. Thank goodness for google maps and directions which even tell you how many roundabouts to go through and which exit to take!

This weekend we travel to Brisbane for an exchange teacher meeting. We’re staying with some other exchangees and look forward to hearing their travels, their teaching experiences and their Canadian “accents”.

In summary, here’s a list of some good and some not so good things that happened in the first week of our new home.

The good things:

-tasty yummy tasty fruit – juicy cold watermelon, peaches, apples, passion fruit, avocado and other fruits we’ve never experienced

-tasty yummy tasty Australian wine – we’ve been buying it by the box

-tasty yummy tasty Cadbury dairymilk chocolate – we’ve also been buying in bulk!

-large warm backyard low maintenance pool with plenty of room and toys for Fenton to play with

-spacious home with plenty of room and toys for Fenton to play with 

-a backyard forest with plenty of kookaburras and cicadas chorusing throughout the night

-6 p.m. darkness – good for putting Fenton to sleep!

The not so good things:

-rain, rain and more rain and gale force winds – we had a big clean up to do once the cyclone finished dumping on us. And a big load of laundry! Nothing dries here – ever.

-Coackroaches, cockroaches and coackroaches. And ants. And spiders. And cane toads. And supersized grass hoppers. And geckos. Though I’m starting to like the geckos. Apparently they eat the mozzies.  

-Driving – can be confusing on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, with roundabouts instead of traffic lights. Expect to get lost at least once every trip, both directions. (If that’s all that happens, you’re doing well!)

All In All The Time

I never believed that I would experience any kind of culture shock in Australia. My mother was born there so I know most of the Aussie slang. I have traveled the country extensively and know many Australians. Most of the time Canadians and Aussies get along just great, so why would I need to worry about culture shock? Within a mere 3 days I have realized that there are many more struggles when one lives in a new place compared to simply travelling. To put it simply, everything is different, from turning on the light switch in the morning to driving to and from work. That being said… a difficult day here is in fact a difficult day in a tropical paradise. I’ve had worse. In fact, I know that when I return to Edmonton I will miss going into the pool, eating amazing fresh fruit every day, cycling all year, the wide selection of gluten free treats, and of course the people.

Heather and I landed on the morning of January 22. We were fortunate to have an incredible house to live in and to be greeted by David and Jan, the parents of Karen Turner. January 23 was my first day at work. Murray Gillis, a new colleague, picked me up and took me to school. We will be teaching Chemistry 11 together and it is a great opportunity to plan so closely with a teacher. It is clear that Gary and Murray have been extremely collaborative and I am very happy to continue that tradition.

After 3 days of professional development, meetings, schmoozing, and planning it is clear that teaching at Maroochydore is different than at Londonderry.

Our first order of the day was to go to a meeting. The Principal, Boyd Jorgenson spoke at length about the school focus. “All In… All The Time”. Mr. Jorgenson was in an interesting role last year as a curriculum auditor and had the opportunity to visit many schools in the Queensland area. He believes that the most successful schools have policies that all staff understand, buy into, and implement consistently. The analogy is two parents who have the same rules for their kids versus those that are inconsistent. Teachers at Maroochydore have a certain degree of professional freedom, however, it is clear that consistency is a strong value here.

All teachers of a particular course must follow the same unit plan. For example, all of us in Science 8 are expected to cover lab safety, lab equipment, and scientific method in the first week. Each week is planned out and all teachers of the same course follow the plan. Teachers may experiment and try unique methods of delivery, however, the timeline must be followed as set.  The plans are handed out to the students each term and the format of the plans is consistent – same cover page, layout, font, etc.

We all implement the same rules. All students are expected to line up outside the door before each class (every day all year) in alphabetical order. The teacher will greet each student at the door and check to make sure that he/she is wearing the correct uniform, has all necessary equipment, and is sent to the correct seat in the seating plan. These are just a few of the many examples of “All in all the time”.

I have never taught in a school like this, so it will be very interesting to experience such a high degree of structure. It may even be difficult to go back to the Edmonton way.

There are more differences, but I would rather wait until I teach some classes before reporting on them. The purpose behind doing a teacher exchange is to put ones self out of the comfort zone in an effort to learn something new. This will certainly be a year of discomfort and learning and I look forward to it!

Bad News

Heather woke me at 3:45AM. In 15 minutes, the Australian High Commission (AHC) will open in Ottawa. I must call them to determine if we can enter Australia or if we must fly to Aukland and visit the AHC there. In our hotel we had an internet limit of only 25GB (about 30 minutes of average internet use). When I logged in it was essential that I conserve my use to checking my email account to see if we had been granted visas and to call the AHC in Ottawa if no email was received. My heart sank when I saw no new messages in my email account. I was nervous about phoning Ottawa. It was not very likely that they could do anything for me and we had accepted the idea that we would not be permitted to board the plane to Brisbane that morning. A woman named Charmaine answered the phone. In my most polite voice I asked if she could check the status of my visa. She was not very friendly. In fact, she was quite perturbed that I had not memorized the number of the application form and that she needed to use my name and birth date to determine my visa status. Not a good start. She informed me that the visa had not yet been processed. In fact, she said that it was “nowhere even close” to having completed the three steps necessary to receive a yes or no. I informed her that I was leaving to the airport in an hour and a half and that it needed to be processed by then. “What can I do to make this happen?” I said. After a long discussion where I needed to explain the consequences of missing the flight, we realized that I needed to speak with a supervisor. The supervisor had obviously been informed by Charmaine that I was an unhappy applicant.

When I was in Human Resources, I spoke to many unhappy applicants. I think that the most important thing to do in the supervisory position is to listen very carefully to the applicant, make sure that he/she realizes that I understand their position, and then be completely honest about possible options. The supervisor did none of these things. She informed me that I needed to make “alternative travel plans” and that I could not leave Canada until I received word that the visa had been approved. I explained several times that I am in New Zealand, not Canada. In a teaching job one cannot make “alternative plans”. The kids show up on the first day of school and we must be there. This is not a start date that can be moved. She remained firm that it was highly unlikely that the visa would be processed in one hour and that I should not attempt to enter Australia until I have received confirmation of a positive answer.  This was very bad news indeed.

I have been in many situations when a person close to me has given advice contrary to policy and I have never yet regretted following such a path. Heather thought that the best course of action was to go to the airport and take our chances. We just might make it through after all. It seemed to be the most logical thing to do. If we follow the recommendation of the supervisor, we may miss out on the opportunity to enter Australia on time if the visa does go through. That being said, we may jeopardize our chances altogether if we are caught trying to enter the country without a visa.

So I used Skype once again to phone Carolyn Freed, the International Educational Exchange Program Liason in Edmonton, and let her know what we were going to do. There was no answer, so I left a voicemail. Off we went to Christchurch airport to try to board the plane.

We arrived at Christchurch airport, checked our bags, and headed off to security. There was no drama during security. Even Heather managed to get through without having to be scanned. Things were looking up… until we got to customs. Heather turned to me and for the first time she looked stressed. “Are you ready for the hard questions?” Heather and I had rehearsed exactly what to say as if I was a witness in court.

It was very strange. The customs official was confused that we were Canadian, yet our customs form had indicated that we were moving to Australia for a year. “Are you Canadian or Australian?” she asked. Did she not have our information in front of her on the computer screen? I smiled and explained that I am on an international teacher exchange. She said “oh… what a wonderful opportunity! Have a great flight!” There were no high fives, no acts of relief, not even any discussion about the situation. Not until we got to the gate. At that point we didn’t want to show any signs of celebration. What if someone found it suspicious and decided to investigate? We decided that it was best to contact Carolyn ASAP and let her know what we had done. Visions of being deported or hauled off the airplane - with all of the other passengers watching - went through my mind. When I connected to the WiFi at the airport, my mail program made that dinging sound indicating that I had mail.

Dear GREGORY PATRICK WONDGA

Notification of grant of a Temporary Work (class GD) International Relations (subclass 403) visa

I wish to advise that a decision has been made on this application and visas have been granted on 21 January 2013 to the applicant(s) listed in the attached Visa Grant Notice, which contains important information about your visa.

Please keep a copy of this letter and the Visa Grant Notice in a safe place for your reference.

Unbelievable.

Another email came from Carolyn Freed

I received your voice message that you were enroute to Christchirch airport not knowing if you would be on the plane or not.

I persisted with AHC, spoke with another agent this time, and I have word that you will be on that plane to Australia!  A decision was made in the last 2 hours I was told, directly from the Dept of Immigration in Australia, not Ottawa. Talk about the 11^th hour- it was processed directly in Australia, not in Ottawa apparently accordingly to the agent I spoke with. (which perhaps explains why Ottawa told you they were nowhere near processing your application) Hopefully the call last week helped push it through.

Please let me know once you have arrived and your heart rate has returned to normal.

I am glad this has worked out, but it was too close to the wire for my liking.  I can’t imagine your stress levels.

Hopefully you are reading this email from Australia!

Regards,

Carolyn

Currently we are in the Turner’s home. It is a beautiful place. The first thing that we did was swim in the pool. A kookaburra, only meters away, made its classic hilarious laugh from a gum tree.  Fenton, Heather, and I looked at each other and erupted in our own laughter and the high fives followed.

Chalkboards

For our last night in the Batmobile, we haded to the beautiful Banks Peninsula for a day on a boat. The peninsula is a former volcano that has eroded down to one third its height. The first European settlers were French, who later lost their claim to New Zealand’s South Island in exchange for Fiji. The French community in the Banks peninsula is still strong and most of the street names are in French. We stayed in Akaroa and took a nearly three hour boat ride to see penguins, cormorants, seals, and dolphins. Fenton spent the entire time in a backpack and ended up having a long nap. We enjoyed having the time to focus on wildlife rather than his needs but regretted this long slumber when he resisted going to bed that night. Trade offs.

We had a wonderful last dinner with Stefan and Heike, exchanged some pictures and Skype addresses, then headed to our final New Zealand destination, Christchurch.

12 years ago, Christchurch was much different than it is now. The city was devastated by an earthquake February 22, 2011. Until today, I had not appreciated the extent of the damage. The city was completely unrecognizable. In fact the entire vibe of the city has changed. Christchurch was once a vibrant city with a youthful spirit thanks to the University there. Today, the entire city centre is closed off and construction is ongoing to rebuild. The cost to the economy of the city is incredible. Several buildings had messages on the sides where the people of the city are encouraged to add their thoughts in chalk. One message was “Before I die I want to…” Many answers were scrawled in chalk, some were inspiring, others were silly. Another message was “I hope Christchurch will…” The walls ask the people of Christchurch to find hope, set goals, and create a new and better city. I hope that if I ever visit this great city again, it will live up to its dreams.

Tonight is our last night in New Zealand… or is it? We have still not received any notification from the Australian High Commission that we have permission to enter the country. They have spent a long time processing our application, and despite numerous calls, there has been no promise that a visa will be in place by the time of our flight. It is one of those things that are beyond our control, yet by not having a visa, we are forced to stay in a hotel ($$), change our tickets ($$), call up my new principal to arrange for a substitute teacher ($$), and possibly travel to Auckland to speak to someone at the embassy there ($$). We will not know until we attempt to check in at the airport. May the force be with us.