Life in our Outback Schoolroom ! Four girls and 2 Home Tutors !

Life in our Outback Schoolroom ! Four girls and 2 Home Tutors !

The school day begins for George and I when we walk about 200 metres from our house to the schoolrooms. Once more .... no driving, no traffic, no stress ! (George will teach in the schoolroom until lunch time before leaving to spend the rest of the day doing some gardening and preparing the evening meal for everyone.)

Below :The view from the corner of our verandah past the helicopter shed across to the main house yards where the schoolrooms are.

 The first duty is to switch on the two computers used for on-air lessons and login to The Learning Place of the Queensland DET to access Collaborate which is the forum for online learning. This enables us to access the forums with the least amount of difficulty. As on air lessons require a phone link and computer link we are able to have two students on air at a time as we have two phone lines. We can at times when absolutely necessary have a third lesson occuring using one of our mobile phones.

Below: Shows the new schoolroom being built. This has been built as an addition to the original schoolroom behind it. The old room is being used for the second on air lesson, it has a reading corner, creative art and writing areas. The new room is being used as the main teaching room. The photo also shows the use of George's mobile for a third phone link and the SODE teaching screens during on air lessons. Once more we are grateful for a wonderful working space.

The girls arrive at 8am, from their home which is above the schoolrooms ! But usually they are out running around or playing in the yards since early in the morning and the schoolbell, which is a wide metal pipe with another thinner one that is banged around the inside to create a loud noise, needs to be rung to let them know its school time. They will then come in from wherever they are playing to the main yard, often from their cubby houses.

There are no school uniforms out here, just whatever they feel like wearing ! Sometimes this may
even be dress-ups and never any shoes. Their feet must be as tough as nails as they run all around the station with bare feet. The eldest has been training for a 3 km cross country course and completes the circuit in bare feet.

During the week students in Yrs 3 - 6 have the option to have English and Maths four days a week, and Reading three times. History and Science are offered once a week on air. Each lesson is one hour. Yrs 5 and 6 also have a language lesson, Japanese. Prep/K to 2 have one on air lesson a day, either English or Maths and a couple of reading sessions a week. Other subjects like HPE, Art, spelling, handwriting, writing, citizenship etc are taught by us from DE curriculum packages. The girls do not attend all the offered lessons as having four girls in the schoolroom there is sometimes clashes with lessons and for some subjects like science it is better to teach them off air ourselves.

At 8.30 each day their on air lessons begin. Collaborate has already been opened on the computer and we wait for their teacher to place their lessons up on the screen. At this point all that is left to do is phone in to the DET, dial the teacher's lesson code, and wait for the conference style lesson to begin. Once begun the students and teacher converse on air and use a main room for lessons, and breakout rooms for individual work and feedback. The teacher uses a video option to be able to be seen during the lesson, as can the students. The students are able to complete work directly on the screen which can be saved by the teacher. They are able to interact with their classmates and teacher through the phone and on screen.
While two of the girls are on air we have the opportunity to teach a lesson to the other two.
At 9.30 the girls will switch over so we quickly log out from the first lessons, hang up the phones and begin the login process for the computer and phone again !

At 10.30 it is smoko and we all head out for a break. Though while the girls rush out to grab something to eat and then disappear to play somewhere on the property I log the new lessons in for 11am and then rush down for smoko. This will happen all over again at lunchtime.

At the end of smoko the bell is rung for the girls. The girls can hear this from anywhere in the home paddock areas and come running ready for their second session from 11 until 12.30 /1pm depending on the day. Usually they need to clean up as often they have been climbing trees, digging holes,
building cubby houses, playing in the chook house or sheds, or just running around barefoot in the black soil and red dirt.

With four girls in the schoolroom and up to 11 on-air lessons a day the girls are on and off air from 8.30am to 3pm. It is a very busy full on day for everybody but we always make sure we down tools by 2.30 in time for some outdoor games, art, craft, cooking in the station kitchen with George or just a walk down to the river. Fitness and directed play is not as big a need for these country girls ! Their favourite out of school games involve building cubby houses all over the yards both on the ground and in the trees, pretend play and lots of running around barefooted. They also have time to ride their motor bikes and help with mustering on the weekends. All the girls are great cross country runners and the eldest is off to zone cross country !

So where does the curriculum come from ?

The girls schoolwork arrives in mail bags which can be brought in by the postie ladies twice a week with our grocery and bread orders. Or we pick them up in the SODE (school of distance ed) mailroom when we go to Emerald for mini school in the middle of each term. We are supplied with curriculum books that include a student's unit workbook/guide, a home tutors unit guide, a unit disc and a pack of resource books. These are included for english, maths, science, history, geography, pdhpe, art and manual arts. They are also available through the online Learning Place. The teachers usually supply  Work Rate Calendars for each 5 week unit.
Each day the girls take photos of their work in each area with the iPad and email them to their teachers to use as a record and for feedback.

Time with Teachers and School Friends !

The girls have opportunities to catch up with their teachers and friends during the year at different events.  Each term Emerald has a 5 day mini-school in the middle of the term which the whole school attends. Many of the families and home tutors including us camp out at the Outstation which is a hall on the school site. We also attend 2 cluster days towards the end of each term which are held at a families property. It is our families turn to host this in a fortnight so watch out for a blogpost on that ! We are also off to the schools Athletic Carnival in Rockhampton next week, a trip of 5 or 6 hours for one day ! These days enables the girls to spend time with their friends and cousins who also attend.
Other events include Home Tutor Workshop week, sports and swimming carnival days, trips away with the school for Yrs 4, 5 and 6, and Graduation.
The girls also attend other events, often sporting ones hosted by local schools and community groups. Travel may be as little as an hour away or as much as 6 hours away.
They also enter art and craft work into the local show with success.

The life of a Home Tutor is never boring !!

By Lynne

Bugs and Heat !

Bugs and Heat !   Or  The Bugs are Killing me !

As the land was much greener for a while due to some rain over Christmas so the number of bugs increased. Many wait for the wet to hatch ! So the abundance of frogs - green frogs, very small brown and pale green ones and the worst of them all cane toads, along with geckos, butterflies, moths, ants and mosquitos increased. 

Both outside and inside the house we noticed them in number, especially the small frogs and geckos who all leave small presents everywhere including on the walls. The small frogs take over our shower/bath each night and it is George, our great white hunter's job to get rid of them, but of course they keep returning. They tuck themselves into the most unlikely places.  It is not unusual to get up in the middle of the night and tread on one in the hallway, so now I always turn the light on. It wouldn't wake George anyway !  

We also had arrived to find three of our aircons not working..... And in the bush it takes a little while for the delivery and installation to happen. We therefore spent our first two weeks struggling to adjust to the heat in the house. This was made even more difficult I think because we had just returned from a two week cruise to New Zealand where the temps were generally between 17 and 23 degrees. The daily temperature was in the 39 to 47 degree range, with our night time temperature at 10 pm remaining in the 33 to 40 range. 

Eventually our new aircons were installed in the bedrooms, but the loungeroom aircon sounded like a jumbo jet taking off.  While there was nothing they could do about the dreadful noise and rattle which emanated from the living area one that shook the whole house.

A ' Killer ' of Huge Proportion !

A Killer of huge proportion !

As I mentioned in a post while we were working at Durham Downs Station, the beef that the staff and family eat is the station's own. 

A ' killer ' is chosen from the herd to supply the station's beef about 2 weeks before it is needed. It is separated from the herd and brought into a paddock with a couple of others to keep it calm. The cattle are then left for a few hours to graze and settle before the ' killer ' is put down, this ensures the steer is calm and therefore provides better beef as it is not stressed.The steer is then hung up to drain/bleed in the coolroom for a week before it is butchered.

At the end of our second week our boss came into the schoolroom and suggested the girls and George and I might like to come out and watch the men and butcher bring in and store the beef from the steer they'd brought in. 

Apparently it was an unusually big one. And It was ! 

Apparently, this steer had been avoiding being mustered each time the men went out for quite a while. They believed the steer would see the boss's chopper coming and head into the thicker bush and disappear. This time the beast was spotted on the side of the road and quickly dispatched.   

It hung from the bobcat from a height as high as the hook would go. It was thought to be close to a tonne in weight. While hanging there it was cut to make two sides of beef before being cut into four pieces and then chunks to be hung up in the coldroom once more. It took up most of the space in the coolroom.

The meat from this one steer has kept the freezer stocked for a couple of months. Now I asked at the time if the meat would be tougher as it was an older, larger animal but apparently age and size does not necessarily predict quality of meat. It is more dependent on the quality of pasture, grazing and calmness of beast when ' killed.'

By Lynne

Mini-School in Emerald

No sooner had we arrived than I was packing my bags and bedroll for mini-school in Emerald.

We had arrived late Sunday and headed straight into the schoolroom, spending all our time there till late each night. When Saturday arrived it was time to finally unpack the van, set up house - what little there was - and pack for mini-school 200kms away.... Such a short distance in comparison to our first post ! 

I left on Sunday morning with the four girls and their mother, who drove a 4wd bursting with swags, bags and school gear. We set off for the two and a half hour drive to school for a week with their on-air teachers and friends. It's always a week full of excitement ! 

Arriving in Emerald we unloaded the car and grabbed our swags to claim our space on the floor in the hall. Next stop was the shopping mall for supplies and then the pool to cool off from the heat and where the girls had a swim with all their friends. I was excited to think we were only two and a half hours from a fully serviced town.

Each School of Distance Education ( School of the Air) is a little different in it's organisation. We are working out of Emerald this year and the whole school attends Mini-School in the one week together, and a cluster is held once a term over two days at the end of term. 

( at Longreach a cluster day was held at the beginning of term, while each grade attended their own separate Mini-School in Longreach at a different time.)

At Emerald the accommodation is in a hall/shed named 'The Outstation' where about 70 children and adults slept in swags on the floor. The children slept in the middle while parents and home tutors slept around the walls. 

Above: my bedroll is against the side wall in the back right hand corner.

They have a kitchen and lounge area named 'The Tuckerbox' and an outdoor eating area. 

School began at 8.30 with assembly, but before that there was breakfast 6.30 - 7.30 and a swag inspection at 8am with a prize for the neatest swag. After school there were activities like football clinics and picture plate making, dinner and night time activities including movie night and a trivia night.

Above: looking from the 'Outstation' , sleeping quarter, past the schoolrooms up towards 'The Tuckerbox'.

 Below: Looking in the same direction as above but the playground is on the right opposite the schoolrooms

While at mini-school I was interviewed by a local journalist about our choice to live and work outback and about our work teaching on the station. The article and this photo ran in the next weeks paper.

After six busy days at Mini-School we headed back to the station Friday afternoon, and were unlucky enough to have a shredded tyre about 20kms from home on the dirt in the heat ! 

Oh well, that's life in the outback !

By Lynne

Central Queensland ... Our new Home for a Year !

We had been home, in Sydney, less than 24 hours when it was time to head off. So leaving our family once more, we traveled 1800kms north west this time to Central Qld. 

Our new position is on a station situated 70kms north of Alpha with only about 30 kms of dirt to the station. We are working on a family-owned property that is one of many managed by the sons who have carried on from their father. 

The drawcard for this property was its proximity to the coast, only 450kms to Rockhampton and Mackay, and only 200kms to the town of Emerald which is a much bigger centre than Longreach. So much so it has 3 reasonable size shopping centres, and a complete range of services. We are very excited to be so much closer to a major centre this year.  As usual the position comes with accommodation, a three bedroom house.

 Below: Our house and the green helicopter shed next door to us. Boss often goes out in the small 2-seater helicopter at sunrise each morning.

Horses in our side yard

We were fortunate that the grading cycle was kind to us !  

... and a good friend, Lance, over Christmas had worked with George to flip our axle on the caravan to enable us to travel on dirt. This gave us another 3 and a half inches of clearance under the van. They had also covered the under body with metal sheets to protect our water tank, pump and wiring from rock damage. (Thank You Lance !!) 

As a result we were able to take the more direct Tambo-Alpha Road, a 170kms of mixed dirt and bitumen that saved us a 450km circuit. Last year on our return home from visiting Alpha, we had to take a circular route west to Barcaldine and then south to home as the road was rough and our van not suited to this type of road. 

What a whirlwind start to our teaching year it has been. Leaving Friday morning late we'd stopped to visit friends in Bathurst for lunch then drove two very long days to arrive at the station on Sunday afternoon. With no time to spare we hit the ground running and organised ourselves and the schoolroom ready to begin teaching Monday morning, already three weeks behind in the teaching program.

Once more our work contract is a little different. We are teaching four girls, a Prep (Kindergarten in NSW), Yr 2, 3 and 5. I am in the schoolroom full time while George is in the schoolroom until lunch. He then does some gardening/handyman work and prepares dinner for the four ringers and ourselves. At times these numbers can grow as tradies, other staff and visitors come and go. The record stands at 17 people for dinner at present. It means late nights for George. So far we've found the days to be quite full on, long and with little time for breaks.
Below: A sunrise shot from our back verandah !

Once more, stand by  ... I will be posting blogs on everyday life for us on the station !

By Lynne