Teacher

And teacher

There are things

That I still have to learn

But the one thing I have is my pride

Oh, so I don’t want to learn

How to hold you, touch you

Think that you’re mine

Because there ain’t no joy

For an uptown boy

Who just isn’t willing to try

I’m so cold

Inside

Maybe just one more try.

One more try. George Michael

“Good morning, teacher!”

Picking up my morning coffee at the café across from my school, is how I am greeted daily. No name, no Miss (and thank goodness no Ma’am), just Teacher! Sometimes I get a compliment: Looking good, teacher! You look cool today, Teacher! But usually, I just get a large cappuccino (no more weird long blacks for me. Had to switch it up a bit).

Teacher. A good teacher. A cool teacher. My friend’s daughter calls me “a cool old teacher”. Talking about a backhanded compliment. Or an upside-down one, more like it (sorry, but I had to).

It’s another cold and rainy day here in Sydney. This city is determined to break the record of the wettest year on record. This morning, I was chatting with a coffee shop owner who talked about the past two years in his business. First came the pandemic, and then came “the rain”. While he was closing up his shop due to another day of wet, cold weather, he was telling me that his business wasn’t going so well. He’d seen Fire and Rain, and a global pandemic in between.

I don’t mind the rain. It gives me time to think. To organize my thoughts. To ask questions and try to figure out an answer. And maybe write about it. A German author that I follow put it well in his newsletter this week:

My writing always begins with questions that I feel I really don’t want to ask myself, and more importantly, that we as a society don’t want to ask ourselves. It’s in the nature of these questions that I don’t know beforehand what answers I’ll come across, if I’ll come across any answers at all. I just know that there is something I would like to say or tell. That I have something to tell. If that feeling isn’t there, I don’t write either.

Daniel Schreiber (translated)

And so I have been asking myself: What is a good teacher? What makes a good school? And what am I doing here?

And to answer my own questions right away – I don’t know. But I’d like to find out. And this week, I had plenty of opportunities to discover different kinds of learning and teaching thanks to the girl that calls me ‘the old cool teacher’!

I left a good teaching job back in Canada. Had a nice Grade 1 gig. Had my routine established and great resources collected over the years. Had a great boss, wonderful colleagues. The school was close to home. I had safety and stability. So why did I leave – again?

The short answer would be…because I am curious. I want to learn. I want to see how things are done in other schools. In other places. In other countries.

The German International School in Sydney is one of over 140 German Schools abroad. I teach the Grade 2 class in German. Well, in theory, I do. In reality, I teach a mix of German and English. Sometimes a French word slips out. The kids don’t seem to mind. My class has 23 students in my class and I teach German, Math, Science, Art, Religion, and Ethics.

The classroom is one of several wooden portables that were built this year. Wood on the outside, wood and felt covered walls on the inside. Cushion-covered window seats, large classroom windows with a view of the green bush around the building. Shelves and cupboards full of teaching materials and resources – which reminds me that I have to organize the room and swipe the floors and wipe the tables! But that’s for another day. Students have a 5-minute break between classes to play outside in the yard or the forest. Five minutes sometimes turn into 10, but they always return. So far!

There’s an open library before school and during lunch. Afternoon activities where we go on excursions to the beach or the park. Four chickens roam the school grounds. And my own workspace with a desktop in a roomy staff room. It’s the little things I get excited about!

And just like any school, other things are missing. Being a small, independent school, it cannot offer what large public school boards can provide. Or with a lot of personal commitment by teachers and staff. And resources !

And so I was very excited and fortunate to experience two fantastic Public School Events this week that helped me to get yet another impression of Education in Australia.

The first one was the “Metro-North Dancesport Confidence Gala Event”. A ballroom dancing event for over 600 students in Grade 5 and up. Taking place at the Olympic Park, 11 schools from the area had sent their Grade 5 students to participate in a showcase event, presenting the Salsa, Tango, Cha Cha, and Jive dancing skills they had learned at school. While it was fun and impressive to see hundreds of eleven-year-olds dance, alone or with a partner, the educational concept behind the event impressed me.

Intended to promote student wellbeing, the goal of the event was to nurture self-confidence, connections between students and staff, and collaboration within the schools and the community. The glittery costumes and quirky dance judges were a nice cherry on top of an ice-cream-sundae kind of event.

Two days later, it was time to go to the city to attend a concert at the Sydney Opera House. And not just any concert, but THE MIMOSA CONCERT! Not sure why a public school event would have the name of an alcoholic beverage, but it was short for The NSW Department of Education Festival of Instrumental Music. Five hundred students playing the recorder (what could possibly go wrong?) and 220 violinists from all over the State of New South Wales gathered in the beautiful, newly renovated Sydney Opera House to play together. And it was perfect (and I am not a biased parent, obviously). Not a single tone was out of place. I was very impressed by the organization of the event and the scale of it. Some students had travelled by car, plane, or bus for hours to make it to Sydney and perform with their student peers. Impressive soloists like the ten-year-old boy playing the piano, the harmonica and singing Billy Joel’s Piano Man, a girl playing the Mongolian flute, and others made this concert very special.

Like many other countries in the world, Australia’s Public Education System has its struggles and challenges. An article in today’s Australian newspaper read: One million left behind – Inequality has become alarmingly entrenched in Australian Education System. And I will not pretend that I am an expert in the local Education system, public or private. But attending these events showed that all schools and Boards have something unique to offer. No school is perfect, and there is always room for improvement – indeed, often there is a bitter need for it. Being able to experience different teaching styles and school forms, education systems, and methods allows me to take the best, and leave the rest, and maybe take a few of these great new ideas home with me.

So to come back to my question, what is a good teacher? What is a good school? In my eyes, one that doesn’t stop learning, that doesn’t stand still.

And one that has a good heating system is this cold, windy Sydney weather.

Cheers!