Sparrow Fart

Rob about to make a shot on a glamorous snooker table at Governemnt House in Brisbane

Greg finished term 2 by staying home sick on the Friday with a horribly sore throat. It’s a mixed blessing. The students expect to have an entire free period to do whatever they want, so having a day at home in a cozy bed sounds so much better. However, absences are covered internally for the most part at Maroochydore, so his colleagues will be cursing his name today.

It feels a bit like we just had a vacation 2 weeks ago. Monday was a holiday. Greg taught Tuesday and Wednesday. As soon as he finished teaching at 12:35PM on Wednesday (early finish day) we drove to the Gold Coast to stay with some Canadian friends – Randall, Karen, Erica, and Christa - who are also on exchange from British Columbia. All of the Queensland exchange teachers were invited to Government House in Brisbane for a formal gathering to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. Afterwards, we stayed the night at Randall and Karen’s place. Thursday morning Greg used one of his school visitation days to see the High School in Southport and then we flew to Sydney that night.

Government House

We were told to dress formally well in advance, so the challenge was to find suit jackets for the lowest cost. Heather found a suit jacket for Greg at a school fair for 5 dollars. It is very nice and fits him perfectly. The winner, however, was Randall who found a very nice suit jacket at a second hand clothing fair for 2 dollars.

Our group of Canadian exchange teachers piled in to one vehicle and drove into Brisi for a hoity toity night with Royalty. Although, we knew that no members of the Royal Family would be present. Heather stayed behind to babysit. Thank you Heather! When we arrived, an attendant asked for our formal invitations – which Greg had just realized he did not bring. Mission Impossible music began to play (in his head) as he began to strategize how to gain access into what seemed a heavily guarded Government House. As we were entering the house, each invitee was providing proof of invitation except for one man who had mistakenly been separated from his wife. “My wife has the invitation” said the poor bloke to the formally dressed security guard. As Greg passed by he mimicked the man and said “Same for me”. Lying is the wrong thing to do, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

The house was stunning. As we entered, the guard informed us that we were not to wander beyond the hallway and that no photos could be taken inside. We were, however, allowed to see the games room. It was easily Greg’s favorite room as it had big plush leather seats surrounding an enormous ornate Snooker table. The table was set up with the balls racked and they practically were begging us to break. We didn’t think this was a good idea. Not yet anyways.

We were then invited upstairs to shake hands with Governor General Penelope Wensley and listen to her very well written speech while being served glass after glass of wine. The funny thing was when the toast to the Queen was made, Greg clinked his wine glass with Lori (an exchange teacher from Ontario) and the sound seemed to resonate through the room as no one else dared to disgrace her majesty with such casual behaviour. How embarrassing.

We went out onto the large balcony to take pictures – which was allowed – and had a fantastic time. We met the first female Governor General, Leneen Ford, who (to our surprise) was Canadian born. As the effects of the wine grew stronger, our inhibitions seemed to wash away and we ventured back downstairs for a game of snooker on that beautiful table. In hindsight, Greg still thinks it is perfectly appropriate to play snooker on a table that is set up during a party where drinks are free. Especially in Australia.

 

The posted laboratory rules at Southport High School

Sydney

Thursday was spent with Greg watching some Aussie teachers teach Science in Southport and Heather entertaining Fenton at Randall and Karen’s. Once Greg was done “work”, we zipped off to the Brisbane airport to spend the long weekend in Sydney. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed by almost an hour, so we did not get to our destination until late Thursday night. Also, Fenton did not have his much needed nap and became over tired to the point of being rather unruly on the plane, kicking the seat in front of him despite our efforts to keep him entertained. We took a shuttle to our hotel, which was atypical in that there was no lobby and the doors were locked after 7:00PM. In addition to this, it was located in King’s Cross, Sydney’s former red light district. Even on a week night King’s Cross is quite busy with inebriated people shouting, fighting, and staggering around. It felt very vulnerable to be standing at a locked door with Fenton in our arms and our luggage at our feet after being told to “wait 5 minutes” for someone to walk a couple blocks from another hotel to let us in.

The elevator at Regent's Court - our hotel in King's Cross

Waking up on a Friday morning in Sydney was worth the hassle. We walked to St. Mary’s Cathedral, the city centre and then to the Opera House. In fact, we chose to walk every day. We went to a market at the Rocks and picnicked at the Botanical Gardens. The only time that we used public transportation was when we took the Ferry to Manly and when we met up with Greg’s long time friend, Ian. 

Market at the Rocks

St. Mary's Cathedral

Heather was fascinated by the Botanical Gardens

Greg was fascinated by Manly beach

Greg met Ian when he traveled New Zealand and Australia 12 years ago. We stayed in touch during this time by phone, then through Skype and Facebook. Ian drove us around the area, stopping by his old digs in Bondi, and then to his house for lunch. Ian’s wife, Cindy, made a wonderful spread for us and we spent the day visiting and playing with their lovely daughters, Chloe and Milly.

Our next big adventure…

Now that term 2 is over, we have another 2 week holiday. Our plan is to fly sparrow fart from Brisbane to Cairns, rent a camper van, and drive to Darwin. After that we fly back to Brisbane from Darwin. Not much more planning has gone into this holiday, so it looks like it will be rather spontaneous.

We should explain the term “sparrow fart”. This is Aussie lingo for early in the morning. Apparently sparrows fart in the dawn? Our flight leaves Saturday morning at 6:00AM and it takes an hour to drive to the airport. This means that we will be leaving around 3:00AM! Sparrows will definitely be letting it rip at that hour.

New Beginnings

 

I am well into term 2.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that starting a new term in Australia is similar to starting a new year in Edmonton. I am very grateful for this new start because I really needed the chance to restructure the lessons. I have a much better understanding of how to get the students who misbehave to consider making better choices.

At the start of the term I had to reverse the environment from one that was completely out of control to one that is in control. All teachers learn in their first years that it is much easier to set high expectations at the beginning of the year than it is later on. Well… I guess I am lucky to have that lesson again 15 years later. I have insisted on the standards, been laughed at, and have given consequence after consequence. I have been phoning parents everyday, spending my lunches giving out detentions, and most importantly, having those important one on one chats with the students who consistently choose to distract students from learning.

Last week, I had a couple of teachers come in to watch my last block class. I was teaching the “challenge class” of Science 8. “Challenge” classes are Maroochydore’s version of Advanced Placement and these students tend to be more motivated and better behaved. Unfortunately, the class was not going well for me. The students were chatty and off task and I was horribly embarrassed to have colleagues see me struggle with a class that any other teacher here would find a walk in the park. After the class was over I asked one of the observers (my department head, Sharon) if she could give me any pointers on how to improve. She made a one-hour appointment with me for Wednesday.

I had mixed feelings about our meeting to discuss the lesson. I really wanted the feedback, and I felt ashamed that I was doing so poor. I have gained a fair bit of empathy for teachers who struggle. I listened very carefully to her advice and decided to give every recommendation a fair go – even if I didn’t agree with it. I went home feeling pretty low that day. However, there really is no point focusing on the negative, it really just makes one feel worse. Instead, I figured, I will do absolutely everything she advised. What was amazing was how well her suggestions worked.

I have learned that low-key interventions like proximity, desk tapping, name use, and eye contact are really quite useless at Maroochygore. Continuous lifeguard-like scanning is essential, especially when my attention is taken away giving one on one help. I have had to expand my mind to engage in several conversations at once. “OK, there’s 2 sodiums on the left and one on the right, so what can you do to balance them? Bryson, I’ll be right there, can you go on to the next question? Amber you need to go back to your seat please, Blake you still haven’t started the question, do you know what you are supposed to do? Adam, you need to stay in your chair. Josh, put that phone away and start on the activity please. Yes! Put a 2 in front of sodium chloride! Good job! Now compare the numbers of nitrate on each side…”. On Thursday during the last period of the day I had my most challenging class. I typically walk to this class with an adrenaline rush because I have never had any resemblance of control with these guys at the end of the day. Students jump out windows, run water all over the counters, throw paper, get in fights, and even throw chairs. However, after implementing Sharon’s advice, the class went really well. They were learning chemistry – almost all of them. Like a normal class! Sharon popped in to see how things were going and she looked at me with shock, whispering “have they been like this all class?” She made sure to tell the class how impressed she was with them and that she had never seen them like this before. I was so proud of them because these guys rarely get genuine praise. At the end of the day I made sure to find Sharon and thank her dearly for taking the time to mentor me. It was pretty emotional.

I often wonder how I will describe this experience once I get back home. How do I answer when someone asks “how was teaching in Australia?” The experience has been an evolution from having my spirit broken to accepting things as they are to small successes, and now big successes. I just hope that I can keep the momentum going.

Tessellating Tassie

 

The end of Thursday March 28 marked the celebration of the first of four school terms done. Good Friday and Saturday were spent getting the house chores done and packing up for our two week trip to Tasmania! This is a summary of what we saw.

You will notice that in many of our pictures, we are wearing toques, fleece jackets, and long pants. Heather sported some impressive looking leg warmers too! The temperatures are much colder here. It was embarrassing to be so soft when it cam to temperatures of only 15 C. We felt so uncomfortably cold, and hated the fact that other Aussies would see us Canadians dressed up so warm. March 21 marked the first day of autumn here and although there are few deciduous trees in Tasmania, the “feel” of fall is similar to that of Edmonton. As we drove along the Tasmanian highway to Port Arthur, many of the trees had been burnt by the fires and so it looked like our autumn trees after the leaves had fallen. 

 

Port Arthur is the site of one of the largest original penal colonies build by the British. The buildings are broken but are being restored. It is hard to describe the emotions when you visit a site like this. It is similar to visiting prisoner camps in Germany.

 

Once we had had our fill of Port Arthur, we drove to the Tasman peninsula to a place called Eaglehawk neck. Here they have special rocks that have fractured and eroded to look like tiles – known as Tessellated pavement. Along the coast, you can see other beautiful erosional features such as Devils kitchen and the Tasman Arch.

 

In order to get more Tasman penal history and experience even more natural beauty, we decided to go to Triabunna, a lovely little town with a ferry that could take us to Maria Island. 

 

There are no vehicles on this island, so most people rent bicycles to get around or go on multiple day hikes. We decided to go to the island for a day (with Fenton on my back) and try to do as much walking around as possible. Although we could not see the entire island, we did get to witness the Painted cliffs, Darlington penitentiary ruins, fossil cliffs, and even a wombat!

 

Our next destination was Freycinet National Park. There are many long hikes there, but Fenton insisted that we only do a couple of short ones. We decided on Wine Glass bay and Coles bay, two rather steep walks that gave daddy a good workout and the reward of breathtaking views.

 

Bicheno, our next stop is a lovely little fishing town. We hired a glass bottom boat to check out all of the sea life in the harbor. We learned a lot about the different kinds of fish, algae, and seaweed. There were even some bioluminescent insects that gave us a light show. We made one last stop at the blowhole and then off to our campsite.

 

We met a couple from New Zealand who highly recommended going north to Saint Helens to see the Bay of Fires and Binalong Bay. So the next day we were off to see rocks painted a vibrant red colour by the local algae. There were actually many different coloured species of algae there, ranging from white to yellow, green, red and even purple. A beautiful place.

 

Our next stop was Launceston, the “other city” in Tasmania. It is a very nice place with what I think may be one of the most spectacular running paths I’ve seen. The city built a series of trails along the Cataract Gorge complete with suspension bridges – absolutely stunning.

 

Next day we continued up north to Narawntapu National Park for some more hiking and a picnic in the historic Yorktown.

To get to the east side of the inlet (the Georgetown side) we crossed the “Batman Bride”. Why it was named this, we can’t figure out. They could have at least shaped it like the batman symbol or something. We stopped at Beauty Point to see the platypus house – we just had no luck seeing any in the wild. Apparently, the platypus is easiest to find in Tasmania because they are not nocturnal, unlike the rest of Australia. We stopped in at Deloraine to see the wonderful Liffey Falls.

 

Mole Creek is a small town in the mid north west of Tasmania. Here you can see two rather different cave systems – Marakoopa and King Solomons caves. The first was much larger than the other, but they both had stunning rock formations to look at and tight spaces to fit Fenton through. Who said traveling with children wasn’t fun?

 

After an overnight stay in Burnie, we drove to the old town of Zeehan. The buildings are very old and rustic here, and it felt like we were transformed back in time. We visited a very old cemetery, affectionately named the pioneers cemetery. The grave sites were very old and most were overgrown with vegetation. It was very sad to see these sites being allowed to deteriorate.

 

 The next day we visited the town of Strahan. It was a great place to stay, but quite expensive. The town has really catered to tourists by having loads of places to stay, cruises, walks, etc. We decided to do a few walks, one in particular being the beautiful Hogarth Falls.

 

The next day we drove through the bleak and dreary Queenstown. This was the site of a big copper mine and the devastation was quite apparent.

 

Finally, we returned to Hobart, but decided to take the ferry to Bruny Island and stay the night. We were very lucky to see the white wallabies, a species that is only found on this island. 
 

When we returned to Hobart the next day, we drove up to the top of Mt. Wellington, checked out the wharf, checked out the markets at Salamanca place, and visited the famous Museum of Old and New Art (MONA)