School Days, School Days

I had the pleasure of visiting a few primary schools in Warrnambool today. Warrnambool Primary School (a government school) was having a morning tea to honor the Deakin student teachers who were at their school, so a few of the faculty went out to be a part of it. There are about 600 students at this P-6 school. This is largest primary school in Warrnambool and has 3-4 teachers per grade level. The tea was held in the staff room – check out the comfy couches and the exercise equipment in that room!

I loved the original old building. It reminded me of Sacred Heart School where I went to grade school. But behind this older building, there were many new structures housing lots of classrooms.

At every school I go to, I have learned to ask, “What did you do with your stimulus money?” A few years ago, the Australian government doled out stimulus money to try to weather the global financial crisis. They chose to invest their money into schools. (The U.S. could take a lesson…) All schools were given a choice of multi-purpose or gymnasium structures. Some people complained because what some schools really needed were more classrooms, but still, the “stimulus buildings” I saw this week were pretty nice and appeared to be well-used.

After the morning tea at Warrnambool Primary, the Wellbeing Captain for Year 6 brought in trays of decorated cupcakes. She showed me which ones she decorated, and I told her, “I reckon you could give the Great Australian Bake-Off a go.” (I didn’t actually say it that way, but in my Australian, I might have said it in that way.) She let us know that they were selling them for $1 each to raise money for the RSPCA, and Bernadette and I each bought two of them. I asked her how students got to be captains, and she explained to me that they had five categories of captain: wellbeing, sustainability, sport, arts, and multimedia. In Year 5 they put their name forward and they were voted on by students in their house for the following year (there were 4 houses total). She told me that one of her functions as Wellbeing Captain was to be in charge of helping to organize fundraisers for various organizations in town and to have wellbeing activities at the school.

The second school we went to is my neighborhood’s school, Warrnambool East Primary School, which has about 500 students. This school wins many awards for the landscape gardens on their grounds. I can see why - they were really quite amazing. 

The school participates in a program where each class gets a creature that they use as part of their science curriculum. I saw a tree frog, an axolotl, and two bearded dragons. Very cool. A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture at Deakin by one of the professors who was studying this program. The purpose of the research is to assess the ways in which the animals are integrated into the science curriculum.

one of the classrooms at WEPS

 I sat and watched a class for about 20 minutes while my colleagues were talking with student teachers. One teacher was leading the class in a vote about what game they would play outside. There were 6 choices, or so. One of the choices was “Indians and Teepees,” which I thought was particularly intriguing. The group put their heads down and their hands up, and the teacher narrowed down the choices to Dodgeball and Gang Up Chasey. They voted again and Gang Up Chasey was the winner in the final round. Here they are playing it on their tremendous field area. Not sure what the rules of the game are, but I surmise it involves ganging up and chasing.