Teaching in Queensland - or trying to

"I don't believe in ANZAC day so I'm not doing this, " said the eight year old, who then waited to see what I would do next. This was my first day of teaching in Australia, after enjoying 18 months of not doing it, and, as a supply teacher, I needed to weigh up my confrontation options quickly. Fortunately, I had brought with me the world's most boring Harry Potter word search so I sent him off to a corner and we were both happy.

Let me start by saying that having your qualified teacher status recognised in Queensland is no easy task. It involves reams of paper, endless queueing up to see a JP and a disturbing trip down memory lane. I will attempt to demonstrate how frustrating this ridiculous, pompous and bureaucratic process is.

Round 1 involved tracking down academic transcripts I didn't even know I had. Not content with seeing my degree and post graduate qualifications for teaching, Queensland College of Teachers wanted to see documentation of the grades I obtained for each module of my courses. In the case of my PGCE, this was a pointless exercise since either a pass or a fail was awarded. In the case of my degree, it was just plain embarrassing having to revisit that infinite list of Cs and Ds.

Qualifications weren't the only things I had to track down. I personally had to obtain references from former head teachers. This is a humiliating experience if, like me, you have left the country in a blaze of smugness vowing never to be a teacher again. But $270 a day is a hard prospect to ignore, so I made contact. Only to find out that one head had retired and the other one was on her way. Thankfully, a lovely ex colleague stepped in to write a reference in place of the first head teacher and to jog the memory of the stubborn second.

Next thing I had to do was to get copies of my passport, birth certificate, degree and post grad certificates, degree and post grad transcripts and first aid certificate all certified by a JP. This is such a common ludicrous practice that there are usually JP 'clinics' at a local shopping centre or magistrates court, staffed by volunteers, at certain times of the week. To date, I have gone through this process four times just to be able to teach. I had to be registered with Queensland College of Teachers, Education Queensland and two supply registers.

So, now that I have a foot in the door, how different is it from teaching in the UK? With all my uni commitments, so far my aussie teaching experiences are only based on one school. And it's not so different. Except for the silly christian names on the class register (eg.Saxon..??), the lack of assemblies and the fact that yesterday I had to send a boy home who had a tick embedded in the back of his head. Classroom areas can quite often be open plan with the classroom next door, which can quite often be very annoying. There are no interactive whiteboards in the classrooms. In fact it has been the first time in 7 years that I have had to use a blackboard. Support assistants are few and far between as the children get older. However, they do have specialist teachers who come in to teach PE, music and ICT, leaving you with the ever precious non contact time. Hooray!

Curriculum wise the subject areas are broken down into English, Maths, Science, the Arts (dance, drama, media, music, visual arts), Languages Other Than English (LOTE), Health and Physical Education (HPE), Studies Of Society and Environment (SOSE: History, Geography, Culture!) and Technology (DT and ICT). So there.

The Early Years have their own curriculum which is uncannily similar to the UK Early Learning Goals, except more streamlined (ie. bits missing), with less bloody paperwork. The 'Prep' year is relatively new in Queensland and is not mandatory. So it's quite common for the usual suspects to be missing off the daily roll call, which presumably only creates more hassles for the Year One teachers when they are expected to attend. In the prep class I taught, the support assistant was only present in the mornings -although the afternoons are only and hour and 20 minutes long anyway - there was no free flow outdoor area (isn't in the curriculum) and no sand or water trays. There were two snack times in the mornings and get this: The class teacher invited the children to suggest what they should learn about next. There was no actual planning!!!!!

So sod the IT masters degree I'm trying to pass, I'm going to be a prep teacher when I grow up.

PS Just seen the ads at the top of this page.

Roof monsters in the night

Midnight. A furtive knock on my bedroom door. A trembling, teenage voice calls out, "Becky..? Are you awake? What's all that noise?"

The teenager is my 17 year old brother who's staying for his holiday. The noise he's so worried about has been going on for the last 20 minutes. It can only be described as an all out assault on our tin roof. It sounds like somebody escaping from the police several times over. Whatever it is is romping, yes romping, up and down, and generally showing off. So that rules out Burglar Bill. It can only be one thing: possums.

Traditionally, homes down this part of the world have corrugated tin roofs. Which sounds a bit ramshackled, but they really work. Australians and Kiwis often reminisce about the soothing sound of rain on a tin roof. They neglect to mention the scourge of tin roofed attics and soundly sleeping home owners as possums clatter home after a hard night out; peeling back the roof panels and having a huge domestic in the loft before settling down to sleep, leaving the legitimate residents wide awake, wondering how to evict those upstairs.

And that's the tricky part - getting rid of them. Because Dame Edna's favourite marsupials are pretty cute looking and protected. Hence the proliferation in the Yellow Pages of small businesses named Possum Pete and suchlike, who can dispatch them humanely. They will hang around for the family unit upstairs to saunter out for the night - and it can be a long line of mums, dads, aunties and kids - and quickly block up the entry before they get back and find they're locked out. And then all hell really does break out.

Kiwis don't have this problem as possums are not a protected species in New Zealand. In fact they are an introduced, non native species who chew up tons of vegetation each night and who the NZ government actively try to eliminate. Their souvenir shops are full of socks, hats and handbags, all made out of possum.

We however found an alternative solution: As our own particular roof monster was making it's routine, early evening trip up one of the palm trees outside, we shone Dave's ten squibillion mega watt dive torch at it. It looked at us somewhat blindly with surprise, and we've never had a sleepless night since.

Being British

OK, OK, I appreciate I may have upset one or two Brits with my last post, suggesting that Cool Britannia was turning into chav central. As I was trying to spot kangaroos while driving down the road the other day, it occurred to me that I may have violated one of the rules of British humour: self deprecation. After all, if you're poking fun at the Motherland from a safe distance overseas, then the bottom line is you're just taking the p*ss. To a Brit, it's only really acceptable to do this if you're resident in the country and suffering like everyone else.

So let me say that I am proud to be British. I am even proud to say I'm from Blackpool... sometimes. Living abroad seems to focus the mind on what your nationality means to you. This might be due to the impression it makes on people you meet, or it could just be down to the everyday things you miss about home.

Whilst studying at an international campus, it has been interesting to observe the reactions of lecturers and fellow students on finding out I'm a pom. Instantly, they have a frame of reference; something they can talk to you about. Usually, the lecturers have spent time in the UK and in lectures they like to invite me to comment on issues from a UK perspective. But students will ask anything: From wanting to know if everywhere in Britain is like it is on Shameless, to asking if my parents live in a castle. Recently, a Japanese student asked me if the English really were proud of their well known hero, William Wallace (Braveheart)! My usual effort to make a connection with the other students is along the lines of, "So...er.. where exactly is Taiwan then?" Yes folks, it's good to be a Brit abroad.

One of the things I have missed while living overseas is the cultural references you have in common when chatting to other poms. Being British means different things to different people depending on their circumstances. But here's a not very definitive list from a thirty something, occasionally homesick pom - ette (?):

Terry Wogan in the mornings, Chris Evans on the way home, Jonathan Ross on Friday nights, frosty mornings, autumn trees, winter evenings next to a coal fire, being offered endless cups of tea, Sunday lunch in the local village pub, dinners in the curry house, sarcasm, good music, the Lake District, not having enough traffic police around to spoil my racing other cars down the A43 at Silverstone...oh, the list goes on....

It is of course a highly romanticised view which does not take into account rude shop assistants, horrid town centres, huge traffic jams and painfully overpriced petrol. But no doubt I'll be whinging happily about all that when I next visit Blighty in July. Bring on the bad weather and mediocre food (excepting curry of course) - I can't wait!

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