I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but somehow six months have passed.
The exchange is halfway over.
Back home, student have finished classes and teachers are breathing a sigh of relief. Canada Day is a few days away. Summer, such as it is, has dawned on our winter wonderland.
It is the first time that I have missed a graduation from the school I was working at. While I was at West Central, I attended every Grad ceremony (save one, where I was marking diploma exams). At Pioneer, while not quite the same as graduation from High School, I was there at the Grade 8 Celebration to wish them success and provide what advice I could for what to expect.
I won’t be there this year, and I didn’t realize before how much those celebrations actually meant to me.
We all have our traditions, our tiny celebrations. As we grow old the celebrations of the young mean less to us in many ways, but when you are young those milestones and celebrations mean more than older people remember. They are the clichéd “rite of passage”, the proverbial steps to adulthood. Still, it isn’t until you are removed from the familiar that those familiar traditions become so important.
I miss some of the familiar traditions.
That said, some of the traditions here are worth looking at.
First, there is the structure of school here. The schools here exist on the (end of) January to December schedule, based around four ten-week terms. Now, while I love summer break back home, there is something to be said about ten-week terms. Not only do the terms lengths give teachers (and students) a defined time to work within, it gives us all a definite end point. There is more than one benefit to that, though few but teacher will understand it. I don’t know how often, during April and May, I have stared bleakly at June 28 and wondered if I could make it. The push from January to July is a hard one, and having a week off (and it being extremely inconsistent when that week will fall) is barely sufficient to either staff or students for so long a stretch. The fact that the teaching/learning timeframe runs along an actual calendar year rather than according some concocted “school year” concept is pretty awesome, too. Born in 2020? Cool. You start school in January of 2026 and graduate in December of 2032. They still have a “long break” (after Christmas), where they have a month off from school, but the other breaks are more evenly spaced.
Second is the tradition of Houses. It’s a concept I first noted in Harry Potter, but never believed really existed. It exists. It is alive and well in New South Wales. At Muswellbrook High there are four Houses (I’m a member of House Hunter, and we wear green at events); each House is governed by a House Sponsor and led by a selected student Captain. Houses gain points through activities (which are called Carnivals – which are related to our Track and Field Days). Winners of events like the 50m front crawl (at the swimming carnival) score specific points, but massive points can be gained by House participation in “fun” activities (which are like doing lengths in the pool, either assisted or unassisted). At the end the points are tallied and one of the Houses wins. I’m told that the “buy in” to Houses has dropped in the last 20 years, which saddens me, as I think this is one of the coolest traditions that I’ve been a part of.
There are, however, other traditions here about which I am less enthusiastic. Most of those revolve around assessment and reporting of student success. I won’t criticize these too much, however, as it is not my place to comment on either school policy or national directive. What I will say is that I find reporting to be far too focused on propriety and “proper structure” than upon effective teacher feedback; as for assessment, I find the same problem in Australia as seems prevalent in the US and (increasingly, again, sadly) Alberta/Canada – a disproportionate focus on standardized tests. Sadly, here the structure of assessment has entrenched itself so deeply that students will refuse to complete a teacher-assigned task because it has “no actual value” (read all class-directed activities/formative assessments). This is especially true at Year 11 and 12 levels, where student grades are ENTIRELY dependent upon 3-4 governmentally assigned tasks. That means if a student fails to properly submit the first two tasks of the year, there is no chance of them successfully finishing the year. Class-based assessment has NO VALUE in the final mark of Year 11 or 12 students, but you still can’t “teach to the test”…
But enough about the academics of it all.
Things are moving forward.
I head off on my first field trip tomorrow. It is a five-day excursion with the Performing Arts group. I’m playing in one of the Ensembles, which makes me ridiculously pleased with myself. Still, it’s been a ton of work, and now the supervision starts. I’m just glad I have great colleagues who are taking care of the hard stuff.
That makes me want to make an observation.
I have been truly blessed with the colleagues I have had the pleasure to work with. That applies back home at both of the schools I have worked in, and here at MHS. At WCHS, the staff was large but we invariably worked together well. At Pioneer we were a close-knit group (and there are several faces I will deeply miss when I return) that worked effectively together. Muswellbrook High is bigger than any school I’ve worked at since Ross Shepard. There are close to 1000 students, and I honestly don’t know all of the staff. Even so, the staff I have dealt with here are amazing. It takes a while, but once you get to know them, they open their hearts and home to you. I have been humbled by the welcome I have received here. I hope, when I return, that I bring with me a piece of Australian hospitality.
But, as much as I have more to say, the night grows late. As I head out on Tour, however, I leave you with this:
For those about to Rock… we salute you!