The Adventure Begins
Ok lets start at the beginning shall we.
Throughout my four years at uni doing my teaching degree, I had always thought about going country. Even in high school when I thought about doing nursing, I had this idea of living in the country and marrying a nice farmer, living on a nice farm in a nice little house, with nice farm animals and oh how nice and it would be. That idea was still in the back of my head somewhere, except that nursing hand changed to teaching. In my third year I requested to do my placement in the country, to the surprise of my friends. Each to their own, but some of them did say that they could never do it, while others saw my reasoning but couldn’t see themselves going 'bush' and some just did not care. I went to the small town of Quorn in the Flinders Rangers, just before Port Augusta, if you are travelling from Adelaide. It's only 3 hours away, so some might not even classify it as 'real country'. I loved it up there and the school was great. While I would like to possibly teach in Quorn or in another town like it in my career, to start with I really wanted to do something...BIG.
For most of my fourth year going to the UK to teach was on my mind. I looked into it and contacted the right people, spoke with my parents about how it all works, but eventually came to the conclusion that I would not be able to go until the next year, 2014. The school year over there starts in about September, and I wouldn’t finish uni until September 2013 and I would have to get some money behind me, get a visa and all those other official documents, so the idea was put aside. About Mid June 2013 I started applying for a ton of jobs all over the place- country, metropolitan, Suburbs, city, good areas, bad areas, special needs, preschool, primary...you get the idea. None eventuated to anything, but I still had my job at the childcare centre as a back up for the rest of the year and into the next year.
I first found out about the APY Lands opportunity on the Tuesday 22nd of August 2013 when a friend of mine told me that one of our teachers, Lucy*, had come to her tutorial and told everyone about the opportunity. I had recently show this friend a job advertisement for a relief teacher at her old school and she was able to look into that (Which, as far as I know is turning out positive for her) and so she gave me a heads about the APY opportunity as she knew I was interested in working in the country and as kind of a pay back. Huge thanks to that friend of mine by the way!! By having a heads up before my tutorial, which was two days later, I was able to discuss it with my parents and do some research. When it came to my tutorial and Lucy* did her little speech about the lands and finally asked, "Would anyone be interested?" I was like superman, my hand shot up faster than a speeding bullet. Lucy* gave me a few more details and gave me a DVD to watch about teaching on the lands, immediately after watching it I emailed her asking what the next step was. She replied the next day, delighted to hear I was interested, and asked me to answer 7 questions about myself professionally and personally and what I knew about the lands.
I was about to start my final Professional Experience Placement with uni and I had about 3 weeks to answer the questions and submit them by Friday the 13th September. I made some notes over the next few weeks, answered them when I had time, sent them off and waited to hear back. I sent my answers in on a Friday and received an email on the Monday asking me to come in for an interview the following Monday, the 23rd September and meet with Lucy* and Jane* who lives in Ernabella and is kind of like the head of early childhood on the lands.
Excitement charged through me, I rang my mum and I messaged my best friend to tell them the good news. I hadn’t told too many people that I was going to apply, as I did not want to build up my hopes and then be disappointed. I still kept it under wraps until I had my interview, which went really well. Jane* then called me later that same day and asked me to do the placement at Murputja school and of course I said YES. So I did the usual, told my family first, told a few close friends and then of course put it on Facebook. Since then I have been emailing the Jane* about flights etc and Jess* who I will be staying with at Murputja and who will be like my mentor.
And so here we are. I am so excited for this to finally happen. I leave Adelaide on the 20th October, fly to Alice Springs and then to fly to Yalura, the home of Uluru (Ayers Rock) and then it’s a long drive to Murputja.
Wow I have written so much for my first blog. Hopefully you found it interesting enough to check in and read some of the others I will write while I am at Murputja and look at some of the photos I’ll put up of my adventure.
Sheri :)