Day 3- First Day of Internship

Well today has been quite the experiences of "firsts." This morning was the first morning I woke up chilly and even had to pull the sheet over me to keep warm! The morning breeze was very nice and the pleasant weather lasted throughout the day. It stayed around the mid 80's all day and was absolutely perfect! However, I do catch myself waking up rather early, and I am not sure quite why! I got up around 5 AM and was wide awake and never got tired throughout the day. Maybe I'm establishing a new routine! Before school, I had breakfast with Ryan (my host family's son who has been diagnosed as autistic) and Steve (my host dad). My host mom, Janette, is a principal at a school nearby and had to get to work very early. I learned a good bit about Ryan today, who has been quite shy around me. So far, I know he loves hats and works at a company that does work for Quantas Airlines. He untangles the headsets we use on flights and sometimes cleans them. What is wonderful about the education system here is that they begin job specific skills for children with disabilities as young as 12. At age 16 they begin going out and having work related experiences just like we do in the states.

After breakfast, it was time to head off to school. Steve drove me into school, which is only about a 10 minute drive, and attempted to teach me the bus routes. They keep telling me how easy it is to learn. I think I am just going to actually do it rather than having someone tell me what routes to take so I'll actually learn it! Once I got to school, I was greeted by my mentoring teacher we will call "Penny." Penny is an interesting person and was such a big help throughout the day. She is in charge of the entire "team", or staff as we call it, of special educators. Here they like to call it "ed support." I knew it was meant to be when I saw a group of elephants tattooed around her arm, I really wanted to look at her and give her a "roll tide." Since today was just a professional development day I was able to learn a lot about how their education system works. For starters, their grades are completely different from ours, they go by years in school. So an example would be 7th grade would be known as "Year 8" here which are children ages 12-13. It definitely is going to take some getting used to. They are not exactly sure where I am going to be placed in the school, but hopefully I will know something by the middle of the week!

During the meetings I also got to hear about their revamping of the curriculum. Currently, the commonwealth is making major changes to what the Australian Curriculum should be, which is very similar to the changes our education system is going through back in the US. What the main focus is, or what I got out of it, is there should be uniformity across all areas of curriculum. A good bit of the meetings were things I was not able to understand, but thanks to the friendly staff they were able to clear things up for me.

Speaking of the staff, everyone is absolutely amazing and EXTREMELY laid back. I was a bit overdressed, most people wore jeans and flip flops since it was a relaxed sort of day. The "team" I am with are very tight knit and say the best cure to avoid stress is laughter. One of the interpreters who is on the team looked at me and said "If you see us laughing hysterically, you know that is when we are working through something personally that way we don't end up behind bars!" I really liked that idea. And they all love to drink! That is all they ever talk about. One of the first things Penny asked was if I liked to drink! They even have these meetings once a month called "sun downs" where all the teachers get together and drink at school with each other, sort of like a big party. While that is very uncommon for us at home, schools across Australia all do this and it is not seen as unprofessional. I think their approach to their jobs and the camaraderie they have with one another makes for a wonderful working environment!

I also was able to learn some new Australian lingo at school today. One of the math teachers was referring to tutoring centers in the area and said they were "light on the ground." It took me a second to realize, but once he began talking about the shortage I realized he meant there were very few in the area. Also they refer to cinnamon rolls as "sticky bread" which makes perfect sense. They also think it is quite bizarre how the US still does not use the metric system, fortunately I have an app on my Iphone to do all of the conversions for me!

After school, Penny dropped me off at home and since then I have been blogging away. I haven't had a chance to take any pictures of my school but I am sure sometime this week I will be able to. Janette invited me to a Zumba course tonight which I am looking forward to. This will be my FIRST time ever trying out this type of exercise. I just hope that everyone in the class doesn't laugh to hard at my pitiful dance skills. For those of you who don't know what Zumba is, GOOGLE IT! You'll giggle when you picture me trying to do it!