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Published: August 17th 2014
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A Brolga - a Dad Helped Project
The Longreach School of the Air has a different project and competition each year for students to do with their fathers using scrap. The theme for this was Easy Care Pets. There are lots of interesting things to do in Longreach so this morning we decided what we would do when. I really wanted to see the School of the Air, which I’d noticed on our arrival yesterday, because we’d seen one about 30 years ago at Broken Hill and I was interested to see how modern technology had changed it. We also wanted to see the Stockman’s Hall of Fame and the show that went with it. We’d checked last night and it started at 11am so we’d just have time to get there if we did the first, 9am, tour of the school.
We’d set the alarm for earlier than normal and had a quick breakfast so we just made it in time. Our guide, Fiona, had been schooled over the air herself and had schooled her own three children, too, so she knew what she was talking about.
The schooling is now done over the phone or by computer with cameras rather than by radio so it is really called the Longreach School of Distance Education (LSODE) but everyone still knows it as the old name better. They use computers with satellite, where possible, so the teachers
A Very Happy Sunflower
This was an entry in the Droughtproof Garden competition. can see the children. If one child in the group doesn’t have access, though, no-one uses it and the lesson is done by phone, so they are all equal in the group.
The children get one hour of class with their teacher each day and everything else is done by their home tutor, usually Mum. Each term they get boxes of workbooks for all their subjects for the whole term, for each child. They work through the books systematically, ending in the worksheets which they either mail, fax or email back to the teacher for marking and comments. Fiona said she had her three kids all working at different levels and she had to help them all. It was a full 5 hour a day job from Monday to Friday and on Sunday she had to spend time checking out what they would be learning the next week. All this on top of running a household and, being a farmer’s wife, often having farm duties too. They must be exhausted!
Fiona said she was doing this for nine years until the last of her children went to boarding school at 11 years old. It was a relief
Fiona and the Roll-Up Keyboard
Fiona demonstrated a roll up keyboard which is light and flexible and can easily be sent out to students so they can learn to play the piano. It does work. not to have the teaching but it also meant the end of seeing the children every day, too, so many Mums have very mixed feelings about it. Fiona said that children from properties too far from the boarding school would not come home at weekends, only during school holidays, and that as they got older they wanted to go and stay with friends at their homes. In effect, these mothers lost their children from the age of 11. That is so sad!
The children come to the Longreach School every year for a couple of weeks, to meet their classmates and teachers and be given any help required. This is a highlight of their year for most, as it is like a school camp but they stay in accommodation at the school and mother comes too, as well as any other children that Mum still needs to continue tutoring during that period or any preschoolers (not much of a break for her, then!). The kids have sports competitions and after school entertainment, too, so it’s wonderful for them.
They also bring along any projects that they’ve done during the year so they can be displayed. Each year
The Prep Teacher Taking Her Class in the Studio
This was the lesson we watched part of and then heard the children give some of their presentations to each other. She was very positive and enthusiastic. there is a project competition that gets the fathers involved, too, helping make something theme-related for their school work. They have included making flowers for a drought-proof garden out of welded metal; metal animals; spaceships and environmentally sound houses from scraps and boxes; and many others. They were very creative, too.
After our tour of the school, we were privileged to watch part of a session with a Grade 1 class of four students. The lesson was on writing poetry and the kids were presenting the rhymes they had written in their previous lessons at home, to the group, for the first time. Each child was given lots of enthusiastic, positive feedback from the teacher and the rest of the group were invited to make comments, which were very funny at times. They then had to do their first self-evaluation sheet which the teacher took them through step by step. We left them to it and marvelled at how well they’d done.
The LSODE has some government funding but not enough so the fee we paid and any product bought from the shop all goes into buying books and equipment for the kids. We were invited to buy
The Area Covered by the School
The Longreach Distance School of Education has students from all over outback Queensland. a book for $15 which we could donate back to the school. There was a selection of reading books, textbooks and Home Tutor Guides at various levels on display for any who wished to do so to choose from. I chose to get a Level 3 Tutor’s Guide, as I feel sorry for the hard-working, untrained teacher/mums and think they deserve all the help they can get! There is a name plate in front of each book which they asked us to fill in with our name, if we liked, and where we came from. Fiona said this generates interest in geography as the kids look up where the donors come from.
That had been amazing and I felt as if I’d seen a whole days worth of things and it was only 10.30am!
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