Friday, September 7, 2007

 

School update!

 

I realize that as we’ve settled in to life in Tasmania, I’ve started focusing on our weekend travels, and not reporting much on the rest of our life. But of course, most of our life happens during the week, with the exploration of the island scrunched into the weekend – often just one day! School of course, has been different and interesting (as has work, but that will wait for a later blog update). So here are a few highlights of what’s been happening in the kids’ school lives.

 

Eileen: Eileen has been counting down until the end of the school term for more reasons than one! Her student teacher, Mrs. F., will be completing her practice teaching and their regular teacher will return. Now, I’m certainly the first to admit that teaching 4^th and 5^th grade is a challenging task, but it’s also a really fun age. I’d say the biggest problem has been that Mrs. F. doesn’t seem to enjoy the kids. She is particularly unsuited for teaching – pretty much in every respect – and Eileen has been counting the days until Mr. White returns. Mr. White is funny, consistent, creative, and much liked – pretty much the opposite in every way. He’s been taking the class at least one day a week, and has also come along for big events, like the field trip.

 

All in all Eileen had a fairly short week. She stayed home with Rama on Monday, and they celebrated Labor Day together with a fun series of trips downtown, a delightful lunch out, and a visit to the library. She also picked up the cold that Annapurna and Rama had been passing around, and was pretty stuffy by evening, and stayed home again on Tuesday (this time with a big box of Kleenex). Then Wednesday was a trip to the Bonorong wildlife park to finish up their class unit on endangered species. Rama went along as a chaperone (interestingly, he was the only parent to go along on the bus and be there for the entire trip) and saw Mrs. F. and Mr. White in action. The trip was a big hit with all the kids. Rama, as one of the few adults along, led a third of the kids through the park. He said they were a really nice group of kids! They kept coming over to show him interesting things or to tell him about what they saw. Just as in the Tasmanian Devil park, everyone got a chance to touch or feed lots of the animals. Eileen loved being able to get so close to the animals.

 

Then Thursday was the last day of the school before the holidays! Mr. White was there and they had a party for Mrs. F.’s last day. Eileen and I made brownies and lots of kids brought chips. Everyone played games and had a great final afternoon.  In Music earlier that day they did square dancing, and Eileen played in the pickup soccer game at recess, so it was a fun day. At school Eileen sits next to Lizzie, who she likes, and at recess she often plays with Claudie and Alex, or else with Alyssha and her little sister Jess, who is in Kindergarten (the equivalent of pre-K in the US) and is special needs. Jess likes Eileen a lot, and Eileen thinks she’s very cute!  (It turns out Lizzie’s big sister is Alison, who is friends with Annapurna on the bus!)

 

At lunch the kids eat under the Oak tree, a big tree in the center of the playground. When they’re done, they just get up and start playing, or sometimes someone will take their lunch to eat it on top of the monkey bars. If it’s raining, they eat in their classrooms. The 6^th graders run a canteen where kids can buy popsicles, milk and ice cream.  On Friday they sell some hot lunch items, but I think you have to order them the day before. All the kids have lunch at the same time and play on any of the playgrounds or wherever they want, all around the school grounds. The library is also open during lunch. Only the pre-K (they call it Kindergarten) playground is off limits to the older kids when the little ones are there (just 2 days a week). But the little ones are allowed anywhere in the larger playground that they like. It’s just that the little playground is kept for those who want a quieter playground experience.

 

We couldn’t help but notice that in the weekly school bulletin there was an announcement of Mrs. F.’s departure, and a recommendation to see all the fine work the children have done on the bulletin board. They also commented on how much Mr. White was looking forward to returning to his class. But there was no comment on how much she would be missed, which is usually present in notes of that kind. I guess we were not the only people who noticed her way with the kids…

 

Annapurna: Annapurna has been enjoying both school and bus ride. Since basically everyone rides the bus or walks to school, the bus trip has gone from a time to be endured to a fun half hour chatting with her friends and including a lot of laughs. Several nice girls a grade below her ride the bus all the way to her stop or just before. They love her cute accent and quaint words for things and are constantly asking her to say specific words or phrases so they can hear how it sounds. Annapurna loves how they call markers “texters” and their mothers “Mum”. Her bus friends are Tamsin, Bec, Alison, and Mary. Boys and girls hang out together much more than at home, and there’s a lot of friendly banter.

 

Interestingly, Annapurna has noticed that most of her friends come from larger families than we do at home. A few kids have just one sibling, like she does, but many have 2 or 3. In fact, she thinks most kids at Taroona High have 4 children in their family, and some have 8 or 10! I was wondering if some of this is because she is going to a public school, when there are so many, many private schools around that many people send their kids to. Perhaps larger families are more likely to go with the free public schools? Although Mary, who comes from a family with 10 children, has only recently started going to public school.

 

At school, they have 40 minutes for lunch and can roam anywhere on the school property. Annapurna (who goes by “Anna”, to rhyme with banana while at Taroona – she felt they just could not get the vowels of Annapurna right) usually hangs out with her friends outside between the school buildings. They sit and wander around chatting and hanging out. Some of the kids go down to the rocks by the water, others play pickup games of soccer, etc. At lunch, Anna hangs out with Mary, Lydia, Katherine, Kate, Nia, and Mel. There is very little teacher supervision, and we were told on our first visit that they trust the kids to stay on the school grounds. There is also a recess time (for about 20 minutes) that they use in a similar way. There is a canteen, but it doesn’t serve complete lunches. You can buy a hamburger or a sandwich there but most people only buy potato wedges (fries) or candy. Kids generally bring most of their lunch and supplement it with a treat there if they like. If it rains, everyone crowds into the halls to eat and it is crazy.

 

Classes take turns with cleanup duty, wandering around the campus with tongs to pick up trash. On rainy days they wander the halls. Anna recounted a particularly amusing incident in which one girl, irritated that a boy had dropped a plastic juice bottle in the hall, picked it up with her tongs and threw it at him. Since they’re all amazingly athletic, she was able to use the length of the tongs to add to her throw to really increase the force. It bounced off him and he, who for some reason also had a pair of tongs, picked it up and threw it back. Things escalated (as they do!) and she spiked it back at him with amazing force. Just as he tossed it back across, a teacher walked by. Sounds like all they earned was a lecture.

 

Generally, Annapurna said the kids are really good, and although the kids spend a lot of classtime chatting to each other, most people are very good-natured. There is nothing like the kind of behavior problems she sees at Edmunds (her school back home). Of course, the socioeconomic mix is quite different here. The school is generally completely middle class and pretty homogeneous. There are a few Asian kids who come as exchange students from Korea or Japan, but other than that the school is very, very white. Mary, Annapurna’s friend from the bus, is African, but she is in a distinct minority. Annapurna has been surprised by the casual racism of her classmates. Australia is lacking the painful experiences that the US has gone through, that has made people at home much more aware of issues and slights.

 

Like Eileen, Annapurna has noticed that people in Australia are crazy about sports and the general level of play is very high. She told us the first week that she feels “remedial” in sports here and noticed that even the worst kids at different events would be considered very skilled at home. We’ve noticed that there is very little homework here and I think that most kids do sports almost every afternoon. When Mick Arnold, the 8^th grade coordinator (also the 8^th grade social studies teacher), walked us back to the bus stop after our first visit, he asked Annapurna what sports she likes to play. When she said “not any, really”, he was speechless.

 

So this brings me to Underwater Hockey…

Annapurna came back after an end of term assembly to report that the underwater hockey team had been praised at the assembly. At first I thought she must have heard wrong, but she said no (although she often misunderstands her teachers because of their accent). Then I thought it must have been a game thought up by the school, but no, they competed against other schools. And then the newsletter for August came home. The front page was devoted to the Taroona Underwater Hockey teams and of course, the competitions (Australians are even more crazy about sports competitions than just doing the sports). Apparently the two Taroona Junior teams (grade 7/8) completely dominated the competition and came in 1^st and 2^nd. Now, one thing to notice is that not only did they do well, they actually had enough players to field TWO teams!

 

Still can’t imagine what underwater hockey is? I will quote from the newsletter:

“ For a start, you need a mask, snorkel, and fins, and this stuff will help get you to the bottom of the pool, accelerate quickly, and see where you are going. To do something down there though, you also need a glove (to protect your fingers) and a short (30 cm) stick. Now you are ready to flick or steer the rubber-sheathed lead puck across the tiles of the court and into the goal (about 2m wide). You do what you can on one breath, and then head back up to the surface, get another few lungfuls of air, and then get back down again to be ready for another pass or a big glory move. And you keep doing that for a half an hour, together with the other 6 players (and up to 4 subs) on your team.”

 

Really! I am not making this up! I typed underwater hockey into google and found that lots of people do it, although mostly not in the US. In fact, the 4^th hit was for the Tasmanian Underwater Hockey Association! For more info, and an interesting description of how to make your own underwater latex glove (make sure the room is well-ventilated!) go to http://www.underwaterhockey.com.au/schools_info.html. Both boys and girls participate together on the team, and flippers even out strength differences. Sounds like breath control is a must! Of course, remember that a lot of people I work with like to go diving for crayfish, and that’s a hold your breath kind of endeavor. And we haven’t even gotten to Australian rules football yet!

 

And now, on to the holidays!