Teaching in Ontario (Canada) is brilliant for a number of reasons; the pension’s reputedly one of the best in the world, and the teacher salary benefits: massage, dental, optometry, even orthopedics! — are something to write home about.
But of course traveling the world is kind of amazing…and a developing–or feeding, for some!–your sense of adventure [...]
Roots Clothing.
We all love it.
But in Australia, we don’t wear it.
Here’s why: “roots” is actually a verb in Australia..and it has less to do with a tree sucking up water than it does a ‘pig’ sticking his ’snout’ into something ‘dirty’.
Uh..yeah. Yuck.
But here we have a new term for having sex in Australia, and I [...]
Continue reading about ROOTS Clothing? Don’t Pack it for Australia!
After teaching here for 3 years, I can’t think of an Australian school where the students do not wear a uniform.
We seem to gauge teacher-dress by student dress, no matter what society you are from. So I’ll explain explain what you need to pack when you’re moving from Canada and coming to teach in Australia, [...]
Continue reading about Teachers’ Dress Code in Australia – What you need to pack
On my first day of a Canadian teacher’s college in 2005, we were told that 95% of teachers quit teaching within their first five years.
I haven’t had the same experience living and teaching in Australia.
I really believe this is because in Canada, there is so little time to “recover” from long days and 20 week [...]
Continue reading about Teaching In Australia—it’s different. Here’s how…
The puke piles in the streets on Monday mornings are very telling. There is a whole troop of zamboni-cleaners who are given fulltime work in an effort to keep up with the consecutive every-20-metre splatters, yet weekend after weekend, their jobs still exist.
The newspapers distress about teenage binge drinking, parents wage war with letter writing [...]
I previously wrote about the unique pronunciation of Australians. Today I’m going to take a look at words or phrases that will confuse the hell out of you.
1. fairdinkum. I’m not kidding, this is a word. It means ‘authentic’. For example, “was $3.49 really the price of that mango?” “Fairdinkum!”
2. far out. This is not only said [...]
Continue reading about Australian Slang: 25 Essential Words and Phrases
North Americans will find it abrasive coming to Australia given that Australians tend to “take the piss out” (mock) of everything. There is a history of humour between Australians and Australia’s Aboriginal Peoples (not that I purport to be an expert on history) that goes something like this:
“Hey, let’s have a festival.”
“Yeah, we’ll use one [...]
The Aussie accent (fondly referred to by Aussies as ” ‘Strine” –from the “LLLL – less”, “RRRRR-less,” fast way they pronounce the last half of “Australian” is a combination of Irish, Italian, Greek, Scottish, English mish-mash.
Like the English pronunciation, often the emphasis/stress of a word is on the first syllable. Of course this isn’t a [...]
Continue reading about Decoding the Australian Accent (or Clues to Speaking ‘Strine)
In Australia, I spent my first job curriculum curving and tuning my ear into their accent.
Fights broke out regularly in our playground, and I was lucky if it didn’t happen in my classroom. My class was a sort of bike-crashed, cut-up and scabbed lot with teeth, and uniform going everywhere, suggesting that they were neither [...]
Continue reading about Classroom ‘Culture Shock’ in Australia! And tips on Aussie-Speak
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