Heading to Cootamundra for Practicum...

I am just finalising a month's worth of lesson plans for Advanced English and Modern History. Then, it is bed time. I will be leaving real early in the morning to head out to Cootamundra. I am doing my final practicum at Cootmaundra High School over the next four weeks, which also happen to be the first four weeks of the last school term in NSW.

To be honest, I am looking forward to the teaching. I enjoy teaching a whole lot. I most enjoy watching young people learn, particularly those "lights on" moments where it all clicks into place and the youngster finally gets it.

Funnily enough, I had a "lights on" moment today. I have been doing some work with a young fellow about to embark on his HSC, the defining end of high school moment for students in NSW. We have been working on English and Modern History. But, in the last 48 hours his English has gone from average to wow. And, it has been nothing more than re-arranging the pieces of the puzzle so that they are easier to spot. Hopefully, this carries over for him through the HSC exams.

But, I digress sort of.

In terms of blogging, I guess it will be a time thing. The place I am staying, the White Ibis, has a good wireless internet connection of reasonable speed. So, maybe I will log more or less unchanged. I am tending to think that I might have more time now than when I did while I was studying.

I will be sure to keep my loyal readers (and any others who only drop by because of the misleading "tags") updated and informed of the time in Coota.

Building the Education Revolution Indonesian Style...

Education is the key to the future. This is a universal truth. However, you would be forgiven for thinking that most governments and people do not take the future seriously considering how little attention is paid to education or how little respect is given to teachers who are responsible for educating that future. Yet, it is governments and others that are quick out of the blocks to blame teachers and schools for perceived failures in educating that future based on arbitrary test scores and the like (the subject matter for another post perhaps).

Nevertheless, this post is about the educational policies of the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) government that sees it set to allocate some IDR 9.3 trillion to a program that is expected to repair and renovate some 132,000 classrooms at the elementary school level and build new classrooms in more remote areas of the archipelago. What is amazing is that this is the allocation for 2010-2011 and is the best part of the IDR 14 trillion that is supposedly set aside for the renovating and building program.

According to the Department of Education, the building component of the program is focusing on kindergarten facilities that are to be integrated into elementary schools and the building of new junior high schools so that Indonesian children have access to educational facilities that are no more that 2 kilometres from their homes. The idea of no student having to travel more than two kilometres to school is an admirable one, but one fraught with difficulties considering the reality of remoteness that many students will find themselves in outside of the more densely populated islands of Java and Sumatra.

The budget allocation and the plan is a good one. Perhaps once the renovating and building program is complete, the government can then direct some much-needed policy attention to ensuring that there are sufficient teachers available to staff the schools that exist. Then perhaps a little bit of time can be devoted to professional development of teachers to ensure that teachers are always at the cutting edge of teaching pedagogies and technology. After all, it is these teachers who we are tasking with the shaping of our collective futures. Finally, perhaps the government can spend a little (no pun intended) on teacher salaries. Not just thinking about salaries, but actually doing something to see those salaries increase and reflect the level of trust that we as a community put in teachers to educate our children.

Hopefully, governments and the powers that be around the world can dedicate their collective energies to making 2011 the start of a global educational revolution, one aimed at building our future together.

Photos from the Bus...

I recently went Beyond the Line. It sounds much more dramatic than it really is. The Beyond the Line program is a program that introduces prospective new teachers to the joys of teaching in rural and remote schools in New South Wales.

The Beyond the Line program recently took me to Bingara via Moree and Narrabri. This photo was taken as I was sitting on the bus and in between Narrabri and Bingara. The photo is of a field of cotton just waiting to be harvested.

Bingara -- Beyond the Line...

Just a few happy snappies from my time in Bingara. If you want to look it up you can, a simple Google search will do the trick. However, for those of you less inclined to do so, then it is about 1.5 hours from Moree.

The Beyond the Line program is a program run by the Department of Education and Training in New South Wales. The program is designed to encourage new teachers to take the plunge in a rural and / or remote school.

For me, there is not a lot of choice. I am on a Beyond the Line scholarship, so I am destined to go teaching in a rural or remote school.

Adios!

Lawyer Drought...

This was an interesting program. It is available in podcast if you are so inclined and technologically capable. Otherwise, you can just access the transcript and read what was said. Just go to the Law Report section on the ABC or follow this link.

The title of the program is a clever play on the fact that droughts tend to wreak the greatest havoc in rural areas, so it seems will a shortage of lawyers wreak a greater havoc in rural areas than in the larger urban areas.

A recent survey shows that the number of lawyers practicing in rural areas is declining fast and is set to decline even faster still in the coming years. Some 71% of the legal practitioners that are currently practicing in a number of areas believe that there are not enough lawyers to service their communities and that they feel the problem is only going to get worse.

It was interesting to see that what was really being lost from these communities was the pro bono work that local lawyers do for no other reason than it is of benefit to the community. It seems that young lawyers just cannot see a future in practicing law in rural areas, and they are always keen to return to the city or large urban areas.

The Law Council of Australia is currently running an initiative in an attempt to address this problem. You can find an article here.

Maybe I will have to complete my College of Law exams and go bush.