Volunteering in Grade 4

I haven’t given an update on my teacher education learning for a while. I really have been getting quite a lot done with my book chapter and other academic things, but I have also been spending some time at a local primary school. I go in about one morning a week to observe and volunteer in a grade 4 class. The teacher, Jacqui, is very interested in integrating cultural and identity topics and has written a grant so that the school kids can receive art lessons from Tracy, a local indigenous woman. I met Tracy last week and within two minutes, her life history and her passion for teaching kids art just spilled out of her. She was a "stolen child" and told me she always doodled when she was living with her non-indigenous family but it wasn’t until she was an adult that she realized what she was drawing was an aboriginal art style unique to the native people of Southwest Victoria. I can see much attention to indigenous history and art in the hallways of the school. The eel is the sacred totem for this area and so there are many etchings of eels around the school.

First thing in the morning, Jacqui has circle time where students share their successes, their worries, or just how they are feeling that day. Today during morning circle, Jacqui asked the students to share what they were grateful for in their lives. Many of them said their family and friends, and one boy said, “I’m grateful I live where I don’t have to carry a weapon to defend myself. Like in America.” Andy asked me later if I thought he said that because I was there, and I don’t think he even knew I was there at that point. I’m repeatedly saddened by how violence in our culture is perceived by people here.

During math I played a game about place value with Ashley. The rule was that you had to roll the dice for the other person. I wondered if that was typical of Australian practices – doing for others what you could have just as easily done for yourself. Next, the students were asked to get out their “devices” to do an online math activity. Every student in grade 4 is required to have some sort of iPad or tablet. Jacqui told me that for those who could not afford them, there were scholarships and payment plans. I was incredibly impressed with the respect they showed not only for the devices but also for the time they spent on them. One student who did not have one used the smart board, and there are also a few spare devices in the room.

During language arts time, I listened to two different girls read and we were to talk about how punctuation impacted fluency. I shared with them that we call that dot at the end of a sentence a period, where they call it a “full stop.” One girl was reading a text that appeared to be published in the US because in one of the illustrations it featured a US flag and a picture of Abe Lincoln.  I asked the student if she knew who that was, but she didn’t. The second student was reading a book that was either published in the UK or Australia because it used words like "mum" and "splodge" (which I inferred meant something like a combination of splotch and smudge). I looked on the library shelf and found books that I knew to come from the US because I used them as a teacher, even one on Native Americans, and others that appeared to be not from the US. I thought about the variety of perspectives these students get because the sources for their materials are so broad.

The lesson on writing featured the genre of “recount.” My mind went to election politics or having to start over when you're distracted while closing your till. It means to tell a story about something you did or something that happened to you, which I think we would probably call some type of “narrative.” It is so very interesting to me to observe these subtle differences in the ways we talk about and understand the world.

On a side but related note, I noticed an article in the paper today about religion instruction. Government schools are supposed to teach 30 minutes of religion once a fortnight (every two weeks) but different schools approach it differently. If you are interested in knowing more about that, you might read this article.