Australia Day with a Difference

Australia Day this year was not "just another school day" this year for me. This year it coincided with the beginning of Chinese New Year holidays here in Cambodia, and it was scheduled as a Professional Development Day for staff, while students got to start their holidays a day early.

I had offered to run a session on Positive Behaviour Support and Classroom Management for our Elementary staff, and so decided that a good way to get everyone there on time would be to offer some snacks about 20 minutes before the scheduled start time. In honour of Australia Day I went to one of the local grocery stores and stocked up for a highly unhealthy morning tea, consisting of Anzac Biscuits (freshly made last night), a fruit cake (Black & Gold brand - pretty good), three varieties of Arnott's Shapes, a tub of cream cheese drizzled with sweet chilli sauce, and a wide selection of lollies (Minties, Fantales, Jaffas, Freckles, jelly snakes, Life Savers (musk and peppermint), bananas, false teeth, black cats, Chickos, milk bottles, spearmint leaves and a few "party pack" lollies.

It worked, and a number of people enjoyed lollies they had enjoyed as children in the UK. I think the most popular item was cream cheese "dip". Others really enjoyed the fruitcake, evidenced by the fact that I didn't have a lot to bring home. A couple of people took some goodies home to share with their family after it was all over, and I'm stocked for lollies for a while.

With tummies and/or sweet teeth satisfied, I started the session by displaying the statement "Prevention is better than cure" and asked if that statement could apply to school. We had some discussion and then I presented the session that I developed as part of my uni studies last semester. One of the goals of the session was to come up with four or five positive statements or rules for the elementary school. The photos below show staff discussing their points.

First they all wrote their own four "Be ... " statements, then they paired up, then groups of four, then four groups of about 8 each. Finally I wrote all the words from all the groups on the board and we narrowed them down to five.

We still need to do some work on this, unpacking each of the statements and getting some specific statements about what they look like in different areas of the school, but we've got a starting point, and teachers can think about unpacking them at least in terms of what they look like in the classroom. From there we moved into looking at creating caring classrooms and some specific classroom management strategies, finishing off by watching a brief video where a teacher shares some simple and practical strategies.

Next on the agenda was relaunching Scholastic Book Clubs in the elementary school. I'm hoping there will be lots of excitement among the children when they get their forms after the holidays.

After that it was lunch time, which ended up being fruit and a baguette, then I did a few more jobs around school, making sure the guy dealing with work permits has all the information he needs from me, and meeting some people from one of our "sister schools" within the bigger organisation that East-West is part of.

About 4pm I decided to call it a day, and go for a walk. I'm waiting on some snail mail at the moment, so I took a walk up to the post office. Unfortunately when I arrived there at 5pm it was already closed (usually it doesn't close until 6pm). That was unexpected, since Chinese New Year isn't an official holiday here, but I guess it shouldn't have been, since already I'm noticing other businesses closing early or not open at all. Cambodians love their holidays!

By the time I got home I'd walked about 14,000 steps and climbed 50 flights of stairs today. Yes, I'd say it was definitely a different Australia Day.