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Australian Adventures!

a travel blog by cowane1

Enjoy reading and viewing my trip in the land Down Under! I will be teaching for 4 weeks, and then touring for another 10 days!
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Orientation - Day 1

Caboolture, Australia

Monday was our first day of orientation. They didn't load us full of information because all of the other students didn't arrive until Sunday and jetlag plus lots of details just simply don't mix. We were introduced to several very important people to our stay - including our homestay coordinators, school supervisors, professors at QUT (Queensland University of Technology - the school with which MSU coordinates this experience), and even the head of the college! We also got our pictures taken and received our official QUT Identification cards. We were given a Subway lunch, complete with the Australian cookies Tim-Tams, and additional sweets Lamingtons. Even though you would think Subway would be universal, there definitely were things that were different here in Australia! At supper this evening I found out that they do not have graham crackers here in Australia, and that most people do not know what a s'more is! I also heard some unusual vocabulary that you might enjoy! jumper = jacket, boot = trunk, hire = rent.

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 16, 2010 from Caboolture, Australia
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Orientation - Day 2

Caboolture, Australia

We began our day with a very exciting lecture by one of the QUT professors, Jenny. The class was about the middle years, and her lecture focused particularly on the adolescent brain! Following her lecture, we were sent to the library for instruction about searching out accessible curriculum items, and where to find them within the library. After that we discussed our homestay experiences and some of the differences and similarities we'd seen thus far! Many of the things mentioned were things that I had noticed at first when mom and dad were here. Unfortunately two of the girls who had come mentioned that they were concerned with the amount of food they were being given and fed by their homestay mom. QUT staff were amazing and suggested several things, and even offered to politely mention it to her. Being from Minnesota, we wouldn't allow that and since then it apparently has gotten a bit better. After the discussion we were free to eat our packed lunches on the school campus. After that we were to be in another class with the QUT students, and much to our surprise it was a sheep brain DISECTION! Apparently, sheep brains are quite close to our brains and through this disection we were able to see the different parts of the brain. It was interesting, because we had very few safety regulations. We were given only gloves and steak knives. The disection wasn't even completed in a labratory, but rather just a regular classroom! I don't think it would've flown to proceed in this way at MSU. I was also able to talk to some QUT students who mentioned that they REALLY missed having Mello Yello (they had it for some time but then it stopped), but didn't really care for Dr. Pepper (which they also had for some time but then it stopped.) After the brain disection and a short lecture, we were given another lecture (separate from the QUT students) about the Australian curriculum. This was concluded with a competition to see who could build the tallest marshmallow/toothpick tower. Dave and I got 2nd.... it was his fault. :) Later that night I attended what is called Girl Guides. It is the equivalent of Girl Scouts in the US. It was fun to finally see some Australian children, even if they were a bit wired! My host family's daughter, Shannan, is a leader and so I spent the evening meeting here and enjoying the guides. One of the things I noticed was that they call "jumping rope", "skipping rope"! What a difference to have kids yell to me, "Watch me skip! Watch me skip!" when they meant for me to watch them jump rope!

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 17, 2010 from Caboolture, Australia
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Orientation - Day 3

Wamuran, Australia

Today for orientation we got the opportunity to visit a different Australian school than the one that we would be teaching at. We would simply get the opportunity to sit in throughout the day, help out as we wanted, and observe the differences in culture. The school we visited was Wamuran State School. We were told to meet our "drivers" at the Caboolture train station and that they would provide us transportation to the school. As we were waiting at the train station, we saw SEVERAL kids (they had school uniforms on), who couldn't have been but 13 or 14 years old smoking one cigarette after another! It not only shocked us, but we were APALLED! Our teachers told us that sadly enough their parents probably bought them the smokes. On the way to the school I saw the remnants of an accident - the very 1st one I've seen since being here. Upon driving up to the school we were charmed by the sign they put up outside their school "A Warm Wam Welcome to the USA Pre-Service Teachers!". As we got out at the school we were welcomed by the school leaders, a group of year 7 students known for their good behavior and grades. After we had signed in, we were presented pineapples as a "welcome gift". The Wamuran school district is a rural district known for its pineapple, banana and strawberry crops. Two of the school leaders took us individually on a tour of the school. It was remarkable to hear the pride in their voices as they talked about their school. I was also impressed with how professional they presented themselves! The two girl leaders then dropped me off in my "class" for the day, a year 4 classroom led by Mr. Collins and a student teacher named Mrs. Cabrera. I walked in during roll call and was fascinated by the structure in which it was done. The teacher would say, "Good Morning Alice" and the student was required to reply, "Good Morning Mr. Collins and Mrs. Cabrera, I'm feeling like a 10 this morning". This not only proved respect by the student, but also gave you a gauge of how they were feeling in the morning. One of the first things I noticed about the classroom was that it was VERY compact. There was no small group reading table, and only 2 bookshelves. Besides that there were only the students' desks and a teachers desk, and I had a DIFFICULT time squeezing around the classroom! Nothing like the classroom sizes of MN! A few other differences I noticed were that they gave the students the option of playing the Playstation as a reward! I was amazed by that. Also, at this school as well as every other Australian school, the students are REQUIRED to wear a wide-brimmed hat while they are outside. This is to help the extremely high rate of skin cancer found in this country. They all function under a "No Hat - No Play" rule... similar to a "No Boots - No Play" type rule we have during MN winters! The school also hired a company to come once a week and teach the students a choreographed dance. This time is used as the 30 minutes of REQUIRED active time each class must do besides P.E. and recess. At the end of the day, because of the students' good behavior, they were allowed to teach me a few games outside to finish the day. I officially learned how to play "I've got it!", a rather fun game that I wish I would've known when I worked at camp!

During the evening, Tina, Trevor and myself went into Brisbane to Shannan's house, had fajitas for supper, and talked about our days. I told the group that at the end of the day, the student teacher asked me if I thought that these children seemed like a bunch of "bogans". I told her I had NO idea what a bogan was. She told me that she guessed it would probably be like what we considered people from Texas to be like. I was still very confused about this so I asked Shannan (who giggled when I told her how the teacher had described them). Shannan said that bogan is the equivalent of trailerpark trash, or redneck! I didn't feel like the students were like that at all!

After supper we all went to this entertainment center where every night they show a free movie. So, I got to see Sherlock Holmes, which was very exciting! :)

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 18, 2010 from Wamuran, Australia
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Orientation - Day 4

Beerwah, Australia

The university had decided that we had had enough DIFFICULT serious orientation stuff to fill our brain for the time being, and decided that all of Thursday was going to be devoted to going to the Australia Zoo! The Australia Zoo is extremely famous, and widely visited because it was the home of the late Steve Irwin. It had previously been named The Reptile Park, but when other non-reptile animals were added they changed it to a more appropriate name. We were VERY fortunate because it was the warmest that it has been since I've been in Brisbane that day, 27 degrees C! (about 80 degrees F!) This, being my third "zoo" since I've been in Australia, wasn't in as great of wonderment as the others, but I enjoyed it and did some NEW things nonetheless! Like... petting a baby crocodile and fed an elephant! Besides the usual Australian animals, kangaroos, koalas, dingos, tasmanian devils, wombats, echidnas, cassowaries, this park also featured tigers, elephants and other Asian animals. But what I found most amazing were the massive crocodiles they home. We also went to a show in the Crocoseum where a zoo keeper tempted a crocodile to snap at him several times. Apparently that was the part of the show that Steve usd to do. Overall, the zoo was very very fun, and left me quite exhausted afterward! Tina surprised me by stopping at a local politician and getting me a free Australian flag and information about the Australian flag, emblem, flowers, and anthem. We ate supper with Grandma, Trevor's mother, and enjoyed a board thereafter. Both of which I enjoyed greatly. Tina and Trevor have asked that I cook them something Minnesotan while I am here and the first thing I thought of was Tater-Tot Hotdish. They had never heard of it, or even tater-tots for that matter! They apparently call them potato gems or potato jewels. We also discoverd that there are several things that are the same word, but because of our dialect we pronounce differently - like the word route, tomato, roof, etc. Silly little cultural differences!

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 19, 2010 from Beerwah, Australia
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Orientation - Day 5

Caboolture, Australia

For our last day of orientation, they wanted to familiarize us with the school, teacher, and class we would be teaching for the next 4 weeks. Those of us who are elementary (or primary as it is called here) teachers began our day at Morayfield East State School. We were taught how to sign in in the visitors book and given a packet of information about the school. We were then sent with our teachers to our respective classrooms. My teacher, Miss Kyryn Wright was much younger than I had expected her to be! She can't be older than 25 years old. And though she comes across as very serious with her class, she is very very friendly and I can see that she will be wonderful to teach alongside. I later learned from the principal of the school that she was a phenomenal aboriginal student who received a scholarship that helped her with much of her schooling and that they are lucky to have her. (The aboriginals are similar to our Native Americans in the fact that there is the stereotype of "not worth anything"). I was nervous to meet my class because this was a portion of the email the that Kyryn had sent me previously about them:

In this class we have 26 students with only about 8 girls so we are very boy heavy, I have 6 students that have special needs and they range from Autism, Aspergers, Intellectually Impaired, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Hearing Impairment as well as a 2 behaviour 'problem' children. I have had a few of these kids try to jump out of windows of my demountable classroom, be aggressive towards myself and other staff or calling me a variety of names using'colourful' language. So this is a hard class but in general we have worked really hard together to build up a reportoire with myself and the students so they do know their boundaries. They will try to push you to see how far you will go but you need to be firm with them and let them know that you mean business.

I was PLEASED to find out that she had done a GREAT job with behavior management and became particularly excited to teach such a well behaved group of year 3 students! I also was pleased with how very active Kyryn made me in the classroom; even though I was only in there for a few short hours she had me take roll, lead a small group guided reading session, and give a spelling test. A vocabulary word that I think you might find different was that they call their water fountains, bubblers! :) After this we were brought back to QUT for some concluding orientation things. We were again asked about our homestays. Thankfully the girls who said they weren't being fed enough admitted that their homestay mom had lightened up and was feeding them well now. We ate a "good luck" lunch of pizza, tim-tams and fruit. The pizza here is VERY different. If you ordered a pizza with just meat on it, it would likely have BBQ sauce as the sauce and not regular pizza sauce. And any other pizza we've had has had about a MILLION different toppings on it. Needless to say, I've gone OUT of my comfort range and eaten several different types of pizza while being here. All of the MN students say that they could REALLY go for a regular pepperoni pizza however. After lunch we were given a description of what our final presentation was to be like, and then sent home for the day.

After orientation, Tina and I went shopping for some much needed stuff. I wound up buying a $20 bottle of contact solution, that I could buy for 6 dollars at Target in the US! We then ate supper at Nan and Pops' (Tina's parents) and finished the night by playing Rummy-O as well as some other card games for money. Sad to say, I think I lost a good chunk of Australian money that night! :( ha ha!

I've also found that even in normal conversations with my homestay family, certain words, phrases, or ideas will come up as different and neither of us are afraid to ask about it. This just goes to show that, yes life IS very different here in Australia! Even the most common things may be different. Something that I learned this day was that here in Australia, if a couple is living together for 6 months, the relationship is considered "defacto" and that they now have the rights to half of the other's property. So if someone was buying a house, and they had their mate move in, but then they broke up after 6 or 7 months, even if the mate hadn't paid a cent towards the house he/she had rights to half of the house! Unbelievable!

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 20, 2010 from Caboolture, Australia
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BBQ & Brisbane

Brisbane, Australia

It was nice to get to sleep in for once, even if I didn't fully sleep the entire morning. Tina had an appointment at a clinic along this beautiful beach. While she and Trevor were there, I sat along the beach, checked out some of the seashells, and read my book. It was quite peaceful, and something I could NEVER do in MN! After her appointment we went down to a different area along a shore and had a BBQ with Nan and Pops, Wesley (Tina and Trevor's son), Zander (their grandson), and two foreign exchange students Wesley was being a homestay for. It was quite fun and I ate WAY too much! It was also good to finally meet the Zander that Tina and Trevor so fondly mention from time to time. After the BBQ, we had to stop so Tina and Trevor could vote for their new prime minister. Unlike in the US, it is compulsary (MANDATORY) that all Australians vote. If they do not, they will receive a fine. This voting was also quite an experience because posted outside each polling place are TONS of campaigners harrassing you and handing out flyers JUST as you are walking in to vote. It was an interesting and again, different experience to have. When we returned home Tina and Trevor showed me videos of previous homestay students they had had and the adventures that they went on. After that, Tina and Trevor were going to a play in the city (Brisbane), and had asked if I wanted to bring some friends along to explore the city with while they were at the play. So, Kelly, Sara Sickels and I went and enjoyed those sights! We first rode the Wheel of Brisbane - a magnificent roller coaster set beside the cultural centre. We also walked along the beautiful south bank, complete with shoreside walking paths, and a goreous pool. After that we crossed the Victoria Bridge and did some souvenir shopping at the shops in the Queen Street Mall. We were all SO happy to find pairs of $3 slippers, because our feet get cold in our homestay houses at night. We also tried to go into the famous casino right off of the bridge, but were rejected because Kelly and I had holes in our jeans and it was not appropriate attire. After that, Tina and Trevor were finished, picked us up and we went for a drive over the famous Story Bridge. A perfect ending to a night in Brisbane City. :)

I've noticed that a common phrase here starts with, "I reckon". It's funny to me, but sounds so natural to them because that is genuinely how they talk! Another good vocabulary word is yonks, which simpy means a LONG time. Used in a sentece you could say, "I haven't had these chilps in yonks!".

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 21, 2010 from Brisbane, Australia
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Weekend Explorations...

Maleny, Australia

Sunday began, as it should, with going to church. Tina helped me find a Catholic Church here in town and Kelly asked if she could come with. We attended St. Eugene of Mazenod and were overjoyed to find that they sang MANY of the same songs as we do in our Catholic Churches. After church, Tina and Trevor told me that they were going to take me for a drive. Along our way we stopped beside a pineapple Field and Trevor explained to me just how a pineapple grows on this peculiar plant. We continued by driving into the Blackall Mountains. We stopped at a place at which we could walk through a rainforest on the side of one of the Mountains. Tina and Trevor did a wonderful job of enlightening me with different bird species, tree species and animal species we either saw or heard along the way. From there we drove a little further up the Mountain to the small and charming community of Maleny where we walked around a bit before deciding to eat at The Old Bank Cafe. After that we checked out a few more shops, and found a secondhand bookstore at which I talked up "Out of the Dust" and Tina ended up buying it to explore American history a bit, and I purchased another Dear America book that I don't think I have. After checking out a few more shops and peeking in others, we left Maleny and began our trip down the Mountain. We stopped at a quaint coffee shop along the way, where they both enjoyed a cup of coffee (I just had water). I was so exhausted that I fell asleep for practically the entire trip home. When we got home I spent much of the evening preparing lesson plans for the upcoming week. Miss Wright has asked that I teach Maths (yes, they call it Maths, this is not a typo) for the whole first week and we will add on from there.

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 22, 2010 from Maleny, Australia
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First Day of School; nervewracking yet exciting!

Morayfield, Australia

I didn't sleep well last night, partially because I got warm in the middle of the night but mostly because of nerves with this being the first day and having to teach a lesson. I woke up excited nonetheless, and ready to take on those 3rd years! Upon arriving at the classroom Miss Wright showed me basic things like, where the copy machine is and how to use it, as well as basic things and routines around the classroom. I again took roll call and was quite pleased with myself for remembering many of their names from Friday. The morning went along quite fine. Several of the children came in late, something that Miss Wright said happens quite often and their "late slips" usually have reasons like, "Slept In" or "Was Shopping in the Morning". I was also amazed at how many "breaks" there are during a day. The students start school at 8am. They have a "fruit break" around 10 am (10-15 min), have a short lunch around 11am (30 min), and another longer lunch at around 12:30 (1 hour)!

My lesson was on something that I had said I was hoping I didn't have to teach - how to count money. If I was in the US, I wouldn't mind teaching this at all, but because Australia has a different currency, it made this a bit more difficult! It felt good to begin teaching again, and the students appeared to not only be enjoying having me teach, but learning something as well! For part of my lesson I broke the students up into groups and had them count money as a group. Miss Wright prepared me that because of space limitations as well as the character of the class she has that she does not work in groups much at all, but encouraged me to try it! With some mental preparation, the students were quite successful not only with the group structure but also with counting money! It was wonderful to see third grade students leaning over, helping their partners, and encouraging their group members in a positive manner. Very encouraging to me as a teacher. After my lesson, I asked Miss Wright what she thought I could improve on, and she said that she simply wants me to slow down. She said that several of the above average and average students were right on pace with me, but her lower level students tended to struggle. I'll have to work on that in future lessons.

As I was working with several students, I got the feeling of just how far behind some of the students were. Several of the students had trouble simply copying information off of the board. I attempted to help speed one of the students up by spelling the words for him; sadly he looked at me and asked "What's a 'd' look like again?". He didn't know what more than half of the alphabet looked like! It was even more heartbreaking because he was working his very hardest to keep up the pace, but not knowing your letters is a big crutch to try to overcome. Apparently several of the children in my class come from a rough and tough background, providing them with very little background knowledge for us to build on. I'm sure I'll have more on that in another day.

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 23, 2010 from Morayfield, Australia
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Day #2 in Year 3

Morayfield, Australia

Today just seemed to drag on forever! My day didn't start real well when I forgot my name badge/blue card at home. Tina so kindly drove and retrieved it for me. From then it was a busy, long day. I took roll call and found out what the students' favorite foods were, several of them being pizza, ice cream or a specific fruit. I then was faced with a difficult task leading a small guided reading group with two of the most difficult students in the class. Neither of these students have been diagnosed with anything, however they are simply terrors. When I am my lessons or simply taking roll, they both are of great distraction to the rest of the class, extremely needy, and difficult all around. Having them together in a group for small group reading was absolutely awful. They kept standing up, flipping to the wrong pages, egging eachother on, making fists at eachother, refusing to read, pretending that they didn't know simple words, as well as NOT obeying a single direction I gave. After that was over, the day went much smoother. My lesson went over very very well, and it appeard that the students had a STRONG understanding of what I taught them. I continually reminded myself to pace myself and think I improved in that as well. We seemed to have a strange case of a mysterious sickness passing around the room as well, because 3 of the boys in the class repeatedly said they felt "sick". Two of these boys were the ones mentioned previously. I simply told them for the hundredth time to tough it out, and that there wasn't much longer left. The last part of the day (Science), the students were looking at cross sections of different fruits and vegetables. All of the specimens were very common but I found it interesting that in the Australia they call Bell Peppers, Capsicum. After school, Kyryn and I talked about the students' workbooks. She told me that the school purchases workbooks (which are essentially notebooks/grid paper books for math) for the students as well as scissors, glue, erasers, and pencils. The students do not have a single textbok. I told her that culturally, this is very different in the United States and that the school purchases the textbooks while the parents/families are asked to purchase the supplies. Very very interesting. On a lighter note, I was also asked "Truth or Dare, Romance or Scare" by one of my students today. I politely declined his invitation into that game. :)

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 24, 2010 from Morayfield, Australia
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Almost finished with the first week!

Morayfield, Australia

School has gone just splendid the past two days and I have REALLY enjoyed going, interacting, and of course teaching! Yesterday I taught the Maths again. Like Tuesday, it was for an hour and a half straight! 3rd graders simply CANNOT handle 2-digit and 3-digit subtraction with regrouping for an hour and a half straight!! My lesson was going particularly well, but a time comes when they simply need a break. When I saw that the students had reached that point, I made them all stand up and we sang the "Sticky Moose" song, a "something" I learned at camp! They simply loved it and told me over and over how they still had it stuck in their head. Needless to say, it worked by making them look a little bit more alive, but also seemed to make them chatty. You take some and you give some I guess. Miss Wright has been pleased with how well I've paced my lessons these past two days and has even stated that she was impressed with and planned to snitch a few of my ideas. She simply told me to keep doing what I was doing and to try to put a few subtraction problems into each lesson. I have also gotten experience at creating a test over the information I have/will be teaching tomorrow. Tomorrow, after my lesson the students will take the "Mini-Test" I've created to test their comprehension and retention of the skills I've taught them this week. I'm GREATLY interested to see the results!

Last night Tina and I again took the train into Brisbane to Shannan's house for supper (I ate my very first mango!) and then we all went to an entertainment center for the weekly free movie. This week it was the Lovely Bones... I didn't quite know what to think about it. I found it slightly disturbing and quite depressing, but fascinating nonetheless!

Today was the easiest day thus far - I didn't have to teach at all! PE and Drama class had taken all of the Maths time available. I did however have the opportunity to sit with and work individually with 3 of the most severe (academically) students in the class. While the rest of the class was working on breaking their spelling words into phonemes and putting them into sentences, we were writing their spelling words (significantly easier words) rainbow style! This simply means to write one each letter in a different color repeatedly. After that we play a good game of hangman. I gave them each a turn to pick a word and we would try and guess it. One of the students had hardly written down the lines for the letters when another student asked if the first letter was an "S". When he said that it was, both of the boys said they knew what it was... the boy's NAME! He got quite upset and I told him that he deserved another chance. He then began searching the room for another word, found one, stared at it, and marked down the spaces. The other boys obviously saw this and guessed that one right away. By then he got quite upset, so again I told him that he could have yet another turn. This time I helped him by writing the word he wanted down on a piece of paper so he had something he could reference that the boys couldn't see. It's interesting to see the different and simple things that make moods change. I truly enjoyed working with these students and several of the activities they do/ manipulatives they use are ones I would consider for my classroom of almost any age!

After school Tina and I went on a nice long bike ride into an area of Burpengary that she has never seen before. It was good excerise that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise, but I have no doubt my butt will hurt in the morn! :) Then after planning a few of next weeks lessons, I ate my first passionfruit. It was a bit sour, but I could definitely see how it would be AMAZING on vanilla ice cream... and I'm not even that big of an ice cream fan!

A major difference I have noticed between Morayfield E.S.S. and the MN schools was the amount of absence and truancy (tardiness) is MUCH higher here than back in the states. It has not been uncommon to have 4 or 5 students walk in late (anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour an a half) each morning. Another 3 or 4 are usually absent. Usually the tardiness notes read, "Slept In" or "Was shopping in the AM". I have heard several parents come up to Miss Wright explaining that their son/daughter will be missing tomorrow because he/she will be going to Dreamworld (an amusement park in Brisbane) or absent for the next two weeks because his/her family is having a holiday (vacation) along the coast. Unbelievable!! When I asked Miss Wright about it, she said that it is solely the parents' fault and that they obviously do not have as strict of policies for absence and truancy as we do in the US.

permalink written by  cowane1 on August 26, 2010 from Morayfield, Australia
from the travel blog: Australian Adventures!
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