Going up the Country Schools

Today we were invited to ride along with my colleague Paula on a series of school visits in rural Victoria and across the border in South Australia. We left home at 8 am and returned at about 6:30 pm. Our drive took us across many, many kilometers of fields full of sheep and eucalyptus gum trees.

Our first stop was at a government P-6 school in the town of Woolsthorpe (pop. 694). In Australia, kindergarten is generally in a pre-school type setting the year before starting at a school, and the year prior to Year One, or first grade, is called Preparatory, hence the term “P-6.” The one original school building still stands, but behind it was a brand new set of buildings that the students and staff had just moved into five days ago! It still had new building smell. There are five classrooms in total, but the rooms have movable glass walls that can all be opened up to one large room. It totally reminded me of the open classroom years. You’ll see the iPads on the tables – each student in grades 3-6 had their own iPad on which they do most of their work. They have quite a bit of technology, an arts specialist, and a Chinese language teacher, but the general education teachers teach their own PE and music. The school has a garden and a commercial kitchen. From what I saw and heard, it’s a very progressive school.

The principal gave us a brief tour and invited us to morning assembly where the whole student body of 93 sang Australia’s national anthem. The principal introduced us to the students and some of them had questions for us. “Have you ever been to Bali?” (The twins had just returned from a trip there…) “Have you ever been to Germany?” (The young girl who asked was from Germany.) “Have you ever been to New Zealand?” (The girl was from New Zealand.) It became sort of comical how the students were all sharing their lives through their questions of us. One of the teachers in the back, presumably from England, raised her hand and said, “Have you ever been to England??” After all of this, the student teacher Hannah said she had a story about America. Her sister, Madeline, had just been recruited to play college basketball at the University of South Dakota. What kind of small world IS THIS?? I told them I grew up just 25 miles from there and Andy told the kids of how when he visited Vermillion he liked how the corn grew right up to the sidewalk on the edge of town. Hannah remarked that her sister said South Dakota reminded her of here. (I gather minus the eucalyptus trees…)

After a cup of coffee, some pink lady apples from the Year 6 teacher’s heritage orchard, and a bit more of a chat about Australia school systems, we made our way to the next stop, St. Joseph’s School in Coleraine (pop. 1383). The town of Coleraine is known for their breeding of Kelpy sheep guide dogs. We pulled up to the school grounds where there are 22 students in P-6. (The other 50 children in town attend the government primary school.) The kids were out on the playground for recess. After meeting the principal and the teachers, we were introduced to a Year 2 and a Year 6 student who informed us they were the captains of their grades, and they gave us a tour of the school garden. They had chooks (chickens), two sheep, a small shitake mushroom enterprise, some fruit trees that were espalier, and a number of garden boxes full of vegetables. The Year 2 boy had lots to tell us about how much his dad contributed to the school farm. The older girl had just arrived in the past year after living the first part of her life in Perth and Melbourne.

We stopped for a visit in the student teacher’s classroom, which was well equipped with 12 (new looking, not those Apple II’s) computers for the 12 students. One student had a one-on-one aide. What was happening looked just like many classrooms in California. We walked along the cloakroom, looking at posters and artwork. Andy and I learned a new word from the anti-bullying poster: “dobbing – when a person tries to get attention or get someone else in trouble.”

After another hour or so of driving, we arrived in Mt. Gambier (pronounced Gambia – it wasn’t until I saw the road sign did I realize it was spelled with an “r”). Mt. Gambier (population 24,000) is in South Australia, a neighboring state, where the time zone is 30 minutes earlier. The first school Paula needed to visit required a “serious conversation” so she dropped us at Blue Lake with our take away lunch, and we enjoyed a leisurely stroll. Blue Lake is a volcanic crater. We’ll write more about that later – this is a post about schools.

When Paula picked us up again, we were off to Tenison Woods College. College is the term that is usually used to describe a high school, but in this case, it’s actually a Catholic P-12 school with 1400 students! (One third of all schools in Australia are parochial and the rest are public.) Paula went to talk with the student teacher and the principal took us on a brief tour of the grounds. He expressed pride in their special education program when he pointed to the 4 SPED rooms. It seems, from what I’ve seen, that special education in Australia is not as integrated as in the states. The principal highlighted the excellent athletics program. We commented on the girls playing basketball in the gymnasium. Basketball isn’t a huge sport here. He noted that they have a prestigious basketball camp every summer and take their basketball players on tours of the U.S. every two years, in part to scout universities who might recruit them with scholarships. They also had debate (yeah!) and a rather large music program with a focus on jazz ensembles.

We were welcomed so warmly at all of the schools. The kids and teachers really didn’t look too much different than many schools I’ve been to in the U.S. Having grown up in South Dakota, taught in a small Catholic school in rural Iowa, and now working in a rural part of California, I was reminded many times of these experiences as we walked the halls of these schools. The main noticeable differences to me were that there was far less racial diversity than in most of our California schools, and all kids in Australia wear school uniforms. They vary significantly from school to school, but they all have them. I’ve been quite conscious not to take pictures of students for privacy purposes, though our tour guides today would have made a great shot!