UOW UniSpeak Edition 3

Halfway through telling her story, she stops herself.

“They don’t shush,” she says, letting the words hang. “I didn’t know how to get them to be quiet.”

The shush noise is a fundamental weapon of classroom control. To lose it could stop a teacher in her tracks, especially in a class as big as those at Srinakharinwirot University Demonstration School, where Carlie regularly taught 70 students at once.

Teachers at the school routinely use microphones to be heard by the entire class.

“Seventy kids whispering is actually pretty loud.”

It turns out what she needed doesn’t sound like a shush at all—more of a kissy-kissy noise that most Australians would associate with calling a dog or cat.

Learning how to keep a class quiet all over again was just one of the unforeseeable challenges she faced teaching in a foreign country. Carlie had to adapt to an education system that emphasises rote learning and includes the cane as part of its discipline regime.

Professional experience, or ‘PEX’, is a fundamental part of all education degrees. PEX is teaching actual classes in actual schools to real live students. Education students spend at least eleven weeks like this over the course of their degree, starting in their first year. Normally students take it in Australian schools, but at UOW they have the option to do part of if overseas.

“You have to change your expectations. Our mantra on the PEX was ‘patient and flexible’. Every time something surprised me, I just repeated that to myself.”

“High school there is almost exactly like university here. Two semesters, 13 weeks long, one month off in the middle. They have three exams a semester.”

Students in her class were diligent note-takers—almost to a fault. “They’re afraid they’re going to miss a small detail that’s going to be in the exams.”

“They’re not used to student-directed learning. I pretty much had to order them to stop taking notes and instead engage directly: listen, ask questions and interact. By the end of my time there, they were working so well together and with me.”

“There’s no way you could prepare for everything that happens on something like international PEX or exchange.

But that’s okay. That’s the thing about going overseas. You grow up—you have to.”

“If I hadn’t taken these chances to go overseas, I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun.”

Carlie thinks that university students have unique opportunities to travel, learn and try new things. “If you’re not going to take these opportunities in your time at uni, you’re just floating.”

“When you graduate and have to go out into the real world and become a proper human, it’s daunting.”

“I’ve always thought the best learning you do is through experience. Having the experiences I’ve had, I think it’s a little less daunting now.”