Teaching down under

Hello there! I have just completed my first week of teaching at a school in a South- East suburb of Melbourne called Berwick.

The bad news is that Berwick is a one hour train journey away. So I have to get up at 5.45am in the morning!! I catch the 6.45am train from Southern Cross station (only five mins from our apartment).

The good news is that there are only 17 kids in the class (one child has left) so the teaching day is easy! Also in Australia the children are taught by specialist teachers for Music, Art, Library, R.E and Sport. This means that the children are collected from the classroom by a specialist teacher giving the class teacher (namely me!) lots of free time to do very little! During a week each class teacher must get about five hours of non-contact time. It makes good sense for certain subjects to be taught by specialist staff. I will be writing to Tony Blair on my return to suggest that we adopt the same system in our schools (all for the good of the children of course!)

Anyway, the staff at the school are great- very friendly and helpful to me. The kids like our kids are lovely and a joy to teach. They still think that I travelled all the way from England just to teach them! The strange thing is that they call me Donna (all the teachers are addressed by their first names here).

I am really enjoying teaching again. I am doing all the nice parts of the job without the stress of planning at the weekend and completing mounds of paperwork!! (The planning and resources were all left ready for me)

Chris and I treated ourselves to a yummy meal last night. Although it is supposedly Autumn we were able to sit outside to eat. They had a Jazz band playing; I’m sure you would have liked it Dad and Mom I’m sure you could have slept through it! (only joking). Chrissy boy enjoyed oysters, duck risotto and Tiramisu, whilst I tucked into Caesar salad, seafood linguini and Dutch pudding. All washed down with ……………a nice bottle of red of course!!

Next weekend we are going wine tasting in the Yarra Valley. (Mom, Dad and Deb we can do this in Sydney visiting the Hunter wine region).

Love to all

Don