Australia Zoo and Final Weeks of Teaching

 

Last weekend, Eden and I decided to experience alongside a few of our Aussie friends Steve Irwin’s famous Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Australia.  Living in the suburbs of Brisbane doesn’t exactly yield to the “Outback” wildlife which many people think of when they think of Australia, so we decided to hit up the zoo before heading to the Sunshine Coast. 

While the zoo was exciting, it wasn’t quite up to par with our expectations heading in.  Since Steve Irwin, the famous “crocodile hunter, was tragically killed a few years back, the zoo (where he spent a great deal of his time) has seemed to have taken a downward spiral.  While the set-up of the zoo is very spacious and environmentally-friendly for the animals, it really isn’t anything incredibly special and is in danger of being closed down for financial reasons.  Still, it was worth our time to see many of the famous Australian animals. While chilling with the kangaroos and watching the koalas high on life was pretty sweet, the Asian Sea Otters were personally my favorite.

 

 

After spending most of the morning on public transit and part of the afternoon at the Australia Zoo, we went to another part of the Sunshine Coast and had fish and chips by the beach (amidst thousands of screaming parrots in the trees I might add) during the evening as the sun was setting. 

Overall, the weather is starting to cool just a touch as the summer here has faded into autumn.  Actually saw a long sleeve Green Bay Packers Superbowl shirt the past week, helping validate they actually did win the damn thing and that there is at least someone in Australia that is a fan of the NFL and the Pack. From what I’ve gathered, many Australians see American football as a really slow and boring sport, which if you think about it makes some sense as real game-time within a football game only amounts to like 12-13 minutes or something like that, as the rest of the time the clock is just running while nothing is happening on the field. 

Anyway, the nights have been amazing weather-wise and last night we went up to Mount Glorious to have a few drinks with our friends at a small mountainside home overlooking Brisbane, and the temperatures actually dipped into the 50’s, which froze the Aussie’s out but made me felt right at home again. 

Teaching is rolling right along.  My coordinating teacher will finally be returning this week from her prolonged absence, but the independence and freedoms I have been given to run the class have been an invaluable experience both on the curricular and management levels.  The department head actually went and bought me a six-pack of the Belgium beer “Stella Artois” last Friday afternoon for running the show during this time and not getting paid for it—so that set the bar pretty high for future administrators haha.    Really a reflection of the great staff who work in the middle school at Kelvin Grove.  Amazing to think of the road that actually led me here—definitely all for the best.

Beaches on the Weekends: Sunshine and Gold Coasts

 

The Sunshine and Gold Coast beaches are two of the best areas for weekend getaways in all of Queensland and Australia.  Luckily, we are centrally located in Brisbane and have been able to visit both of these places in the past month.

Sunshine Coast (above)

This is Normanby, my UNI gnome I received for Xmas who is making Australia his first adventure with me.  The Sunshine Coast has been his only trip outside the house so far;  otherwise he just chills in my room with this guy who was my souvenir from the Gold Coast.  He’s a genuine Aussie toad.  I would like to believe he helps fend off the gigantic Australian wolf spiders that like to invade my room.

Finding this guy was only part of the highlight of my time at the Gold Coast—which has probably been my favorite destination so far.  For better or worse, the Gold Coast has been transformed into a Cancun-esque type place.  It’s Australia’s fasting growing city with tourism helping establish the city as one of the most prominent in all the country.  While many Australian’s are against the commercialization of their countryside and places like this in order to help maintain the “Outback” image, I felt this city (we were in the Surfer’s Paradise suburb) was built up wonderfully with their unique architectural high-rises and attractions.  While we stayed at the Darcy Arms Irish hotel (we were lucky enough to get the last reservation as we had planned ahead a whole 12-hours worth to get to the Gold Coast), there were plenty of resorts for accommodations right next to the beach.  We were essentially right on the beach as well and close to their major shopping district which was full of tourists, souvenir shops, shopping malls, and places to eat.  We ate at the Hard Rock Café and Vegas in Paradise.  After a month and half here, we finally found out Australians don’t tip at restaurants like these like Americans are used to.  Gotta love the naïve American tourists.

 

The above pics of the lifeguard huts reminded me a bit of the TV show The O.C.  Some of you (Chuck and Kels) will probably understand this lol.  Also, hidden here in the middle of my blog will be my “Shout-out” to my sister who has been bothering me for weeks to say hello and include her within the blog. 

  I took this picture with you in mind.  Don’t expect any “UGG’s” as a souvenir however as they would not fit in my luggage.  Sorry :)

 

Overall, the pictures of the Gold Coast really don’t do the place justice.  It’s a great atmosphere all day long with people eating outside restaurants late into the evening.  Safe to say we did not escape the Sunshine or Gold Coasts without some heartfelt sunburns.  It truly is amazing how intense the sun is;  Australians and my school kids are told to always wear sunscreen.  I’m sure they don’t always listen and and neither have I (not healthy for my skin I know) —but I also don’t live here year-round, otherwise I would probably buy into the trend a little more.  Saying that, we have not spent an entire day at the beach—mostly just for good parts of the afternoon.  I couldn’t imagine being outside all day in that sun without sunscreen.

Regarding the weather during my time here, it has been fabulous.  I have become a bit more accustomed to reading the weather in degree Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.  Essentially, the average temp while we have been here has hovered around 28-30 degrees Celsius, which is low-to-mid 80’s Fahrenheit.  While it has definitely toppled into the 90’s here, it has been a somewhat cool summer for Aussie standards.  Either way, the heat has been bearable, due to our own Midwestern summers and probably because I know back home is enduring the drudgery of February.   Most of the locals say these past few years the weather has been acting really strange.  Usually, it gets absurdly hot and almost like clockwork there would be an afternoon thunderstorm.  While we have been here, there has only been one eye-opening severe storm which unleashed close to half a foot of rain (they use the metric system here, which I had to teach in math one day which was fun lol so I’ve had to get use to millimeters instead of inches) on us in just hours after we had gotten off work at school.  The duration of the downpour was something like I had never seen before and when we finally got home drenched to the bone, we had a river in our backyard draining directly into what was our nice clean pool.  This was crystal clear and after the storm, it was overflowing and full of dirt and debris the flash flood dumped into it. 

All for now!  Some teaching stories and Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo in the next post. Cheers! as they say here.

Weeks 5 & 6: Teaching on the Weekdays

 

Teaching on the weekdays, beaches on the weekend; not a bad lifestyle eh?At this point of my stay in Australia, my living routine (at least during the week) has become in some manner like the Groundhog Day movie;  and I don’t mean that in a negative or monotonous way or anything.  It’s amazing how quickly one can adjust to a new place and a new style of life;  this place has definitely become my home away from home.  I feel like I have been working at Kelvin Grove for years and am extremely comfortable with the culture, environment, and way of life around here.  Saying that, I am still learning new things every day and trying to experience new places every weekend.

As I said before, Eden and I have established a living schedule of sorts.  Every morning we wake up before work at 6:00 and get ready for school.  Eden is usually up checking Facebook, etc. while I lay there until 6:15-6:30 wondering why the hell she always gets up so early.  Eventually, I get up, turn on my music, shower and prep, putting on my slacks and a long sleeve shirt for the workday.  Honestly, even with summer weather here and no air conditioning in my school building (Australian’s don’t seem to hold the same regards to AC as Americans) it’s not all that bad.  By 7:05, Eden is usually staring at me ready to go (worrying that we are going to miss the public transit bus) while I take my time to roll out the door.  By 7:10, mouthwash is in, I’m listening to my iTouch, and we are out the door to catch the 7:22 ride on the 390 bus (it must be noted that we have NEVER missed the bus although my nonchalant approach to leaving in the morning seems to frustrate Eden haha).  On our walk to the Brookside Shopping Center bus stop, we always pass the same old lady on the bridge crossing the river—which is when I always think of Groundhog Day.  I judge whether or not we are late or not by the point at which we meet her on our walk.  Lol she’s just like clockwork.  By 7:45-8:00 we arrive at Kelvin Grove State College and do prep work until school begins at 9:00 (gotta love the 9:00 start eh). 

At 9:00, I usher my class inside the school from their position outside and the school day begins. The following is a schedule of the typical Year 7 school day (Just a side-note here, students don’t have that conditioned response to go crazy when the bell rings at the end of a period as in the U.S. which is great but was definitely an eye-opener at first):

9:00-10:19 1^st Period

10:20-10:45 Morning Tea (Staff all interact in the staffroom where they have their own individual desks aside from the one they have in their classroom and have their “morning tea” here while students essentially have brunch outside)

10:45-11:55 2^nd Period

11:55-1:05 3^rd Period

1:05-1:50 Lunch

1:50-3:00 4^th Period; Dismissal

3:00-4:15 Preparation, staff meetings, coordinating teacher meetings

Whether or not I have any prep periods is dependent upon the day of the week. For example, I have no prep time Tuesday/Wednesday while having one prep period Monday/Friday and two on Thursday. Prep times are built into the schedule during my students’ specialty classes in which they attend one day a week (physical education, computer tech, music, art, and Italian). Monday through Friday I usually teach 6-8 classes a day of literacy in numeracy alongside regular curriculum mathematics (they say “maths” here with an (s) on the end instead of “math” which is a bit strange); Wednesday I construct science labs; and Thursday and Fridays I teach an English unit and run science lessons and reflections.

Regarding my schedule, because middle school teachers here aren’t specialty teachers where they only teach one subject a day, I am able to gain valuable experience (especially for international teaching) by delving into math and science at various points throughout the week while also maintaining my requirements for teaching English. It couldn’t have worked out any better in my mind. 

Departure time on the typical day is around 3:30-4:00. I catch the 390 bus from Kelvin Grove back to Everton Park—arriving home approximately 4:30-5:00 every day.  On days that are extremely hot, we usually go for a swim, eat dinner, and watch a few episodes of the TV show “Lost” which we have become addicted to.  We are halfway through Season 3 at the moment.  I must admit that I have also been watching The Bachelor with Eden;  I have found my future wife on their (Emily, a southern blonde bell) and she is still in the running…so the bachelor-dude may have also found his wife…Anyway, asides from that, we really don’t watch any television at all.  Those two shows we watch on our laptops so the TV in the house hasn’t even been turned on once.  ESPN.com is still my homepage on my laptop (as they don’t have ESPN Australia on TV or anything cool like that) so I catch up with my American sports that way—following Green Bay during their Superbowl run was difficult as I was teaching during the Superbowl as it was Monday here in Australia.  I’ve kept up with everything else in the sporting world involving UNI and the Chicago Cubs as many of you might imagine.  My students got a good laugh out of the fact that the Cubs hadn’t been to the World Series since WWII and were nicknamed “the lovable losers.”  Randomly around here you see someone wearing a NY Yankees hat and one of my students actually wore his Albert Pujols jersey to school on their “free dress” day as they are required to abide by strict school uniform policies every other day. 

Overall, school for these two weeks went exceedingly well.  My coordinating teacher has actually been gone for a good portion of my time here so essentially I’ve been given the freedom to run the show by the middle school head of department.  By law they are required to hire a teacher for the days and the entire week which she has been gone for, but essentially I am the leader—which makes me only that much more eager to run my own classroom without anyone hovering over me (as it has been for the past 4 years). 

All in all, every school day has been great so far;  they say to find a job you enjoy waking up to every day and so far this teaching experience has been far from stressful or a burden to wake up to.  I know it will only get better when I am able to incorporate coaching sports into my life alongside my teaching. 

Weeks 3 & 4: First Two Weeks of Teaching at Kelvin Grove & Cyclone Yasi

 

 

Teaching at KGSC:

These two weeks teaching kicked into high gear as the first week was full of assemblies, class rules, and preparation for Term 1 (it’s the beginning of the school year over here)—which lasts 12 total weeks.  While there was little classroom experience I gained from observation, it was an important time to get a feel for the school, the students, and the staff—especially my coordinating teacher, who has six degrees and is the only one at KGSC with her doctorate.  Not to mention finding my way around the school, which has beautiful landscaping and tree-cover from the scorching sun (which the students eat under for morning tea and lunch), but is an absolute maze to get around.  The few lessons I was able to observe I was a bit taken aback as she was much more authoritative than what I was used to during my secondary level experiences. Middle-level students as I found out are an entire different breed which requires an entirely different teaching demeanor than what I was used to.  While I would say I am relatively laid-back when I teach, I’ve found that discipline must be at the forefront at this level—a management skillset I learned to quickly acquire, adapt, and enforce in my classroom.  One must walk that fine line gaining rapport in the classroom while also maintaining the respect needed to create a lively, yet controlled atmosphere conducive to engagement and learning. 

The second week of teaching I was thrown into the fire 1st period Monday morning.  Sometimes, it’s the best way to learn and just start rolling with things from that point—which is what I did.  I ended up teaching over half the classes for that week, which is quite unusual for student teaching but it really helped me get into the flow of the school system and my teaching schedule.  After just two weeks, I truly felt I gelled right in with the school, the students, the staff, and my coordinating teacher.  There is a definite presence of that “no worries” attitude and philosophy which hits home for me personally.  Overall, the staff has been extremely helpful and my coordinator has given me free reign (with broad curriculum guidelines to follow) to go about my business in any way I feel necessary. 

I should probably quickly mention what I am teaching since I am not teaching purely English, what has been an exciting challenge in and of itself.  While I am teaching a a few classes of English, I am also leading literacy in numeracy investigations for Math and lab experiments for Science.  While it goes a bit against the grain of what UNI wants me doing, there’s a reason for everything and it is an opportunity that I have willingly accepted.  After all, what is a liberal arts core education good for if I can’t broaden my horizons internationally and use it in the real-world.  It’s strange to think about now, but my first major before switching to Psychology and English in college was actually actuarial science—the two fields I am prominently teaching here.  For those interested in literacy in numeracy, here is a bit more of an explanation for what I’m doing—those not interested scroll down further!

“Literacy and numeracy are arguably the two most prominent areas across Australia's educational system and workforce which are holding the country back. During staff meetings at the beginning of the year, Kelvin Grove State College identified these two areas in which curriculum wide needed to be focused on (50% of Australian's couldn't meet the minimum literacy or numeracy score to fully function in society one major educational survey showed). Teaching literacy across the entire core curriculum (becoming more and more popular), not just in English classes, imagine that!  Essentially, what I will be doing is using literacy in real-world numerical contexts to help deconstruct questions from a "maths investigation" workbook as well as from past NAPLAN tests (National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy http://www.naplan.edu.au/). While it still has a mathematical focus, I will definitely be using my English skills I have gained at UNI to sort through the contextual and linguistic issues. I think this an excellent opportunity to help participate and contribute to an important drive within the school and the country as a whole. I came to Australia to experience something different within their educational system and I think this will be a great experience to add to my resume, especially if I end up in an international school system such as Kelvin Grove where I will be teaching other core subject areas besides English.  It's a very unique and diverse opportunity and one I am enjoying already.”

Cyclone Yasi:

Since we have been here, Queensland, Australia, has now endured two of their worst natural disasters in their history.  What are the chances, right?  My first post detailed one of the worst floods in Queensland’s history which devastated areas to our north and Brisbane as well;  following three weeks later came Cyclone Yasi, which made international news as Australia’s most powerful cyclone to ever hit the coast.

This timelapse shows the incredible size of the cyclone as it hits the coast of Queensland

While this was being billed as a catastrophic hurricane like Katrina, their was only one person who lost their life as towns were evacuated due to the advanced warning as well as a strange twist of fate as the category 5 cyclone unexpectedly veered slightly south at the last minute, avoiding Cairns (an intensely populated city) and instead directly hitting and decimating the smaller coastal towns of Mission Beach and Tully, which are in the state of Queensland, but much further to Brisbane’s north leaving us virtually unaffected.

 

That is all for this post!  More to come on some of the more exciting things I’ve learned in Australia (aside from the boring teaching stuff)!

Week 2: Staff Meetings at Kelvin Grove State College & Stradebroke Island

The first week came and went all too fast (it’s the beginning of week 5 now and time is rollin’ on by). The beginning of the second week, reality hit and we were off to 3 days of staff meetings at Kelvin Grove State College. If American staff meetings are boring, Australian staff meetings are almost unbearable (few rooms have air conditioning) and seemingly a bit more chaotic. Teaching and class schedules (called times-tables as I eventually learned amidst the rest of the Aussie educational lingo) were still being argued about and tossed around just 48-hours prior to the first day of school with room arrangements still up in the air. With Kelvin Grove operating above capacity for students and class sizes hovering around 30, classes actually didn’t get finalized until Day 8 of the school year, which is a common school census day across Queensland. The class that I teach has 28 students. With Kelvin Grove only several kilometers from the heart of Brisbane and a gaining reputation amongst the local and international communities, the student body is made up of a large array of students from vastly different geographic and sociocultural backgrounds.

Anyway, as an English and Psych teacher, I was a bit surprised when I was led into math and science meetings for half the day. Little did I know then the middle level teachers (I’m teaching year 7 or 7th grade) teach four core subjects. Math, Science, English, and Social Studies. Unlike the majority of schools in the U.S., Kelvin Grove has yet to adopt specific subject area teachers. Instead, they teach all four core subjects to the same class of students. They also have specialty classes like Art, Computer Technology, Music, Italian and Physical Education once a week which essentially make-up teacher prep time. Not knowing this set-up at the staff meetings made things a bit more difficult to understand. If you’re interested in the philosophy and specific make-up of the core courses, check out the following link for the school. Also, on this page you can download the student handbook 2010-2011 which is a great tool that explains their curriculum for each year and subject area, their behavior management system, assignment policies, as well as their various schools of excellence (golf, tennis, dance, music, aviation) which are extremely successful.

http://kelvingrovesc.eq.edu.au/wcms/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=7&Itemid=87

Our final free weekend we spent by going on a roadtrip with a few of our Australian friends to Stradbroke Island.

North Stradbroke Island, or “Straddie” as it is referred to by the locals, is one of the largest sand islands in the world. We spent all of Saturday here and left late Sunday afternoon, taking us only about 2-hours to get back home by ferry, railway, and bus. The beaches were extremely nice and we hope to go back once more before leaving as the waters were still a bit murky from the Brisbane River flooding which emptied out into Moreton Bay, leaving the ocean-waters not quite as clear as they usually would be. Still, Point Lookout (where we spent a good deal of our time) was incredible with a great beach and a massive rocky gorge where there are usually sharks and turtles.

After spending a majority of the night hanging out on the beach, we slept in a little hut-styled room just off the beach.

This (above) was the view from the window looking out onto the ocean.

These three pictures (above) are of the beach where we spent the majority of our afternoon.

This is Brown Lake also found on Stradbroke Island, which is a Tea-tree lake. The oils from the surrounding Eucalyptus trees seep into the lake, which makes the water feel extremely soft and pure. It’s wonderful for your body and felt amazing on my scorched skin. “Fountain of Youth” of sorts they say.

Sunburnt and all, the next day my student teaching experience at Kelvin Grove State College in Brisbane, Australia began.

Week One: Destination Brisbane, Australia

 

It’s Sunday afternoon with the index hovering around 100 and it’s thundering outside.  I’ve been awake since seven in the morning which is ridiculous for me, but I have begun to rise with the sun and the screaming birds (not by choice)—giving me ample time to start this blog albeit 3 weeks late…

On January 11th, Eden and I left from Chicago’s O’Hare airport and flew to LAX in Cali.  From here, we caught our flight to Melbourne, Australia—which was about a 15-hour flight.  By far the longest I’ve ever flown, it honestly wasn’t that bad.  The plane was pretty nice as each seat had an individual small-screen television implanted in the back of the seat in front of you.  So for the majority of the time, I slept on and off and watched episodes of Modern Family and played some Pac Man on their game console. I rocked it. 

From Melbourne, Australia, we boarded our final plane to Brisbane.  That plane also had TV screens which were conveniently showing the Brisbane River inundating the city (Australia’s 3rd largest) with flood waters.  Queensland (the state to which Brisbane belongs)  had been receiving record non-stop rainfalls since Christmas time and the worst of the flooding peaked right at the time of our arrival.  Essentially, the Wivenhoe Dam built to flood-proof the city was forced to release water sending waves and deadly torrents of water through Toowoomba and on downstream to Brisbane, taking bridges, restaurants, cars, boats, and anything else with it.  There’s some good videos and pics from the flooding I’ll post.  From the air, we were able to see a good deal of the flooding, which ended up wiping out a lot of the cool touristy parks, riverboats, and such you could do on the river.  We went through part of the city a few days later when the flooding had receded and many of the low-lying areas in Brisbane were like a ghost town as traffic lights were off and the bars and businesses were shut down.  The city was pretty devastated, but this section at least was recovering pretty well from what we could see.

Crazy footage from Brisbane and the nearby town of Toowoomba

Video of flood waters around Brisbane

Thankfully, we were picked up from the airport by Gabe (the lady whose house we are staying at) just after the road had been reopened and brought to our house in Everton Park.  It’s a really sweet house about 20 minutes from Kelvin Grove State College, where I am currently doing my teaching.  We were really lucky to get a place like this. 

Above is a picture of the front of the house which is somewhat deceiving as it is a pretty spacious house with 8 bedrooms, dining hall, living room, kitchen, and backyard in-ground pool.  Of course Eden had to be in this picture as you can see her creepily standing in the doorway!

This is Gabe who owns the place, which she shares and rents out to various international friends and travelers like ourselves.  She is in Bali, Indonesia, for the next few months after spending the first few weeks here with us.  We had an awesome time with her as she is a great person whom we learned a lot from, whether it be about the house, the city, Australia, food, or life in general. 

On the 2nd day here, she took us up to Mount Glorious.  Here, we had a BBQ at our friend Cara’s house where we had lamb and a few drinks.  It’s also where I met my Australian possum mate.

We also went to a river and went jumping into a rock pool!

 

The rest of the first week Eden and I settled into the house, getting to know the area surrounding Everton Park and buying groceries.  To get an idea of  how expensive things are here, a double cheeseburger at McDonald’s is $4.25 whereas in the U.S. you could get that for $1.00!  The alcohol also unfortunately also follows this ridiculous trend of things being on average 2-3 times as much.  The McDonald’s here, however, are much nicer than back home for what that’s worth.  I’ll talk more about the food, etc. later on in a different post I’m sure as there are a lot of different variances that what we’re used to—just ask Eden who seems to think everything is going to be and taste like America haha   (Thank Windows Live Blogging and this new computer my momma gave me for these wonderful emoticons you’ll have to put up with throughout the blog like this sweet snail: )

The following video is in direct response (albeit completely random and useless in my post) to the snail emoticon I found;  Several of my friends will remember this video while others may get a laugh out of it as well (or not lol).

All for now, success for the first post!  Hopefully there will be a 2nd post before my return flight!