Little Scholarly Differences

Duo-tangs. How I miss them. And three-ring binders. I'm learning to make do, but it's been a slow process. Here in Australia, they use folders with plastic sheets inside, so students put their photocopied booklets into the plastic sheets instead of a duo-tang or a binder. When they want to use their booklets, they take them out of the plastic sheets. While we moved to binders at Esther Starkman School this past September, I have to say I've been missing duo-tangs more due to their simplicity and ease of use. Pop your booklet into your duo-tang, open when needed. Take out unit when done and start all over again. Binders are more cumbersome and take up more space, but they still allow you to look at pages without having to take them out of a plastic sleeve. They also use scrapbooks for subjects such as health, so we're gluing pages into our scrapbooks, rather than popping them into a binder or duo-tang. I can't double side because then students can't glue their page in. It's been a very interesting experience, learning how to organize our materials in our folders and scrapbooks rather than binders and duo-tangs!

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I've also had to learn brand new classroom vocabulary. Here are some examples of Australian school supplies and their Canadian equivalents:

textas = markers
coloured pencils = pencil crayons
rubber = eraser (and rub out = erase)
tissue = Kleenex
outliner = Sharpie/permanent marker
rubbish bin = garbage can (and rubbish = garbage)
sport = physical education
LOTE = Language Other Than English (in this case, Japanese)
duty = supervision

And yes, it's texta and not texter, Google it! I've been trying to use the Australian words rather than the Canadian, but sometimes I forget, so the students are adapting to me as well.

The paper in their workbooks doesn't come lined with margins, so Australian students are always "ruling up" (drawing their own margins with red pen or coloured pencil). They definitely know how to use a ruler better than their Canadian peers! They seem to enjoy using a ruler too, much to my surprise.

Another difference at school is the fact that there's air conditioning in all the rooms. In Edmonton, it would be nice to have air conditioning for the 15 days or so during the school year when the thermometer makes its way past 25 degrees Celsius. We don't have it, but it would be nice. Here, it's a necessity. Since school started February 4th, the average temperature has been about 37 degrees (and that's not including what it really feels like with the humidity). Unfortunately, I find the air con cold and often have goosebumps. It's hard to know what to wear when it's so warm outside, but so cool inside. I didn't pack my cardigans as I knew it would be warm, but now I'm wishing I had a couple. I will have to go shopping sometime soon.

For physical education, or sport as it's called here, students play outside in the undercover area, on the basketball/netball courts, on the oval or in the school yard. There is no gymnasium. They have a specialized sport teacher who takes them for one hour a week. On Fridays there is Senior Sport for students in grades 4-7, where they rotate through winter carnival sports, including soft cross, netball, tennis, soccer, touch, volleyball and cricket. My station is soccer, which I can handle (I wouldn't have a clue how to run soft cross, netball or touch). My students are going to teach me how to play cricket and maybe touch sometime during the year. I look forward to bringing it back to Canada to teach the students there next year.

Students also have LOTE (Japanese) and Music once a week for an hour, and another teacher takes them for Science for an hour once a week as well, which means I get 4 hours of DOTT (Duties Other Than Teaching) time a week, which is a much sweeter deal than what I get back home in Edmonton, which I think was 80 minutes a week. During that time I can actually get most of my planning and photocopying done so that I don't have to go in on the weekend and I don't bring a lot of work home (besides marking). School starts at 8:15 and runs until 2:30, with one 20 minute recess and one 40 minute lunch break. I have three 20 minute duties per week, which I think is reasonable considering the size of staff and the student population.

Coming soon, a post about swimming with whale sharks and snorkelling the Ningaloo Reef!

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