May 29th – Bondi Beach, Daceyvivle Primary, and Sydney Harbor

Views of Bondi Beach

We began our morning with a two hour hike down the coast of Bondi Beach to take in the beautiful scenery. We were able to see Sydney’s naturally occurring pools and very clean ocean water and beach, despite being a heavily populated area. Afterwards, we got lunch. Some had Mexican food while others got smoothie bowls nearby. Overall, the group enjoyed the hike.

 

Next we headed to Daceyville Primary School. Throughout the day, we have become pros (almost) at the bus and subway system in Sydney as the city is too big to walk. Although we have had to learn that the people of Sydney prefer to travel in silence or quiet whispers. The school we visited focuses on project based-learning and is community centered. An intentional way the community is prioritized is shown through the principle choosing to focus on in-zone students rather than accepting large amounts of out of zone students. The theme for the school year is history and geography where students focus on their community place and culture. This is especially important as over forty eight different languages are represented at Daceyville, reflecting the large immigrant and international population in Sydney. The school is having a themed museum night where each child can present their product relating to the theme of history and geography.

One insight the principle gave to the Australian teaching environment is the difficulty the teachers have in finding job permanency and job placement. Every other job the principle gets to advertise, but the others are handled by a central office which places teachers based off of a complex ranking system. This creates difficulties as a principal does not get to always pick a teacher that fits the school culture. The intention of this system is to create ways to incentivize teachers to teach in harder positions like rural and aboriginal populations. For instance, if a teacher works in a rural population for a few years they will receive points which can place them on top of the transfer lists, which is desirable. An issue created is that the top need schools then face a high turn over rate of teachers rather than teachers who invest in the community and form roots.
After the great school visit and time spent with the Australian primary kids, we had time to rest and then headed to a group dinner. We went to a nice restaurant called Black Bird Cafe where we were able to eat kangaroo. One interesting thing we learned about today is Kangatarians. Kangatarians are a type of vegetarian who only eat kangaroo meat because they are ethically hunted in the wild in order to prevent over population which harms the kangaroos. After dinner, we boarded a cruise around the Sydney harbor and took many pictures of the vivid festival. Many of the buildings and popular landmarks in the city were lit in bright colors. It was beautiful and many interactive displays were also available.

Views from the Sydney harbor cruise