Postcard from Canada
Yesterday was a big PLUS 11º and everyone in the streets was wearing T-shirts! Not this little black duck – I’ve been using my Aussie-ness as an excuse to not conform again. This first took the form of not wearing a huge coat/scarf/hat/gloves for the 10 metre commute from my heated car to the front door of the overheated Norquest building and now I refuse to risk losing limbs to frostbite by revealing any of my limbs to the air! Fair dinkum, if we were in Mt Druitt we'd all be in ugg boots and trakky-daks.
Still it is good to see the sun even if it is the watered down Canadian version thereof and now that the snow (and our ice kangaroo) has disappeared from the back yard, we can clearly see that our rural habit of chucking any uneaten food hasn't worked here as it has just remained in situ, frozen solid, waiting for spring. You can understand far more clearly all those poems about daffodils and stuff when you go through winters like they have here - spring is a much-longed-for reprieve from all that snow and cold.
I have found that very often more language is generated outside the classroom…
Work is going along very nicely, thank you for asking and I have managed to continue my habit of taking my students out on field trips which we have all enjoyed. We went to a talk on anti-racism and the keynote speech was given by the province's Governor-General Norman Kwong who was a most entertaining, second generation Chinese ex-footballer with a great line in jokes. My students had entered competitions for art, poetry and essay writing on the topic and there was a ‘welcome to country’ equivalent by some First Nation people and it ended with a mini-round dance which is a traditional form of dancing. Because Edmonton is so much smaller than Sydney, for us to get ‘downtown’ is about 12 minutes and the college will subsidise buses so it only costs the students $1 a trip. This is within everyone’s budget and makes everything so much easier. I have found that very often more language is generated outside the classroom, and Norman Kwong certainly reached all my students.
The other great thing about being in such a small city is that there seems to be much more integration with the host population.
The other great thing about being in such a small city is that there seems to be much more integration with the host population. This is in part due to the fact that there are no housing commission estates as such. In fact there are very few government provided houses. What happens here is that every time a developer applies to build a new estate, they must include a percentage of low rental dwellings. So for example, the area that I live in has double storey McMansions at one end and much more modest houses at the other but of course we all share the same community facilities such as the library, transport, shops etc.
This means that there is a much greater socio-economic mix in all areas with the result that no one area has all the new arrivals. This often results in these students being integrated more easily and learning English much more quickly. It can also mean that students in schools with few resources such as ESOL teachers possibly don’t get the help they need. My younger son in Grade 4 has several much older students in his class who are not able to work to the standard of the class due to their lack of English. The system here sees elementary (primary) children going to ‘junior high’ for grades 7-9 and there seems to be huge competition between the schools to attract more students and thus funding. There are billboards outside the schools advertising what they offer and of course this reflects what the perceived market is. There are ‘immersion’ schools which have traditionally been French where all the subjects are taught in French rather than French as a subject and I have now seen ads offering Immersion Arabic and Spanish at schools in my area. Private schools exist but are not heavily patronised as there are no restrictions on which school children attend – although parents do have to pay for bus passes.
...there seems to be huge competition between the schools to attract more students and thus funding. There are billboards outside the schools advertising what they offer and of course this reflects what the perceived market is.
Working at Mt Druitt in ESOL I tend to teach the lower end of the socio-ecomonic scale – refugees and people with less money who have moved into a relatively cheap area of Sydney. At Norquest however, the students come from right across the spectrum and I have several professionals and even two PhDs in my current class! Students can also pick and choose which ESOL college they attend so we are in competition with several other providers and are therefore always looking at ways to improve what we provide. Our timetable appeals to one level of students as classes are 8:45 to 11:15 and then 12 to 2:30 which makes their day a very long five hours – and it is five days a week. Other colleges offer 4 hour classes or a 4 day program which appeals to other students.
Another change here is that I have a morning class five days a week so I see those students every morning for Reading and Writing and then I have an afternoon class for Speaking and Listening for 4 afternoons and some students are common to both sessions. This means that we get to know each other VERY well!! In some ways this is excellent for continuity but there are also good points about the TAFE system where students are exposed to different styles of teaching as they have different teachers during the course. I also feel that some of the afternoon session is ‘downtime’ as there is a limit to how much concentration available to teacher and pupil alike!
Norquest also have a set text for various levels but neither staff nor students in both my am and pm classes are happy with our current, American textbook. It does come with lots of exercises and a video which makes preparation much quicker but we all find it rather boring. Teachers here are also known as ‘instructors’ which neatly gets around the fact that there are some staff members with either no ESOL or no teaching qualifications unlike TAFE where the academic standard of ESOL teachers is extremely high.
I often come back after coffee to find them discussing the Renaissance, Cezanne or spirituality which has certainly never happened in any of my other classes.
I am blessed at the moment with 5 ‘international’ students - 4 young men from Vietnam who have been here several years and are studying to be priests. Given the number of times they manage to turn the conversation to ‘love’ accompanied with lots of giggling, I do hope they are referring to the higher, nobler love and that I won't read about another church scandal in years to come!! The other young man is a native of Aix-En-Province and brings a certain je n'est sai qua to our group with his leather trousers, goatee and general air of chic. I have to remember that he is not Peter Sellers being Clouseau but that he actually speaks with that outrageous accent! He has been a huge asset to the class especially loved by the middle aged, grammar bound Korean lady doctors who just adore him and he them! And boy they have improved in their speaking having something that they actually want to say to each other. I often come back after coffee to find them discussing the Renaissance, Cezanne or spirituality which has certainly never happened in any of my other classes.
We were driving out of Jasper after skiing, round about dusk & I saw this wolf on one side of the road. It's the main road but not that busy & he was trotting along looking a bit lost so we turned round & followed him to make sure he was OK. Then I saw another wolf on the opposite side of the road who appeared to be calling to this one - In my head I anthropomorphised it into Mum calling for her cub but my ranger friend Mark will probably tell me that's rubbish!! Anyway this wolf did cross the road safely but not before we got this shot – isn’t he handsome??
On the social front we had an exchange teacher weekend with snow-shoeing, cross country skiing and dog sledding which was really fantastic. We will probably have to abandon skiing at Thredbo after being spoiled with 9 days in the Rockies in spring, powder snow! It was real ‘hero’ snow which saw us all skiing black runs and my younger boy doing double blacks with jumps! My husband decided to teach himself jump turns at 3:30 on our last day and needless to say something went pop in his knee. Apparently he went down from the lodge to the car park in a meat wagon sled but none of us saw it as we were too busy getting the last run of the day in…
Well, ski tickets are expensive!
Marguerite xx
