In early 2017, I left inner-city Sydney to live and work as a teacher in a small regional town in north-central Victoria. I swapped my 45-minute heavily-trafficked bus commute for a seven-minute country cycle. My familiar soundscape of planes, trains and honking cars has become magpies warbling and occasional explosives testing noise from the nearby army base.
When I moved to Victoria, I made the choice to actively involve myself in the local community. In a flurry of enthusiasm, I joined the shire concert band, volunteered as a scout leader and signed up to the local netball and tennis clubs. The combination of small-town community dynamics as well as choices in how I use my time mean that I now spend a lot of my non-work hours with students, parents and other teachers.
I swapped my 45-minute heavily-trafficked bus commute for a seven-minute country cycle.
One of the most important things that I have learnt during my first term of teaching in a regional school has been the benefit of developing informal relationships with school families. Being able to see students excel outside of school – and on one particularly memorable occasion being flogged by a (very gracious and somewhat apologetic) Year 8 student on the tennis court – has allowed me to (sometimes) remember to view my students as whole and complex people, rather than just by the behaviour and attitudes that they bring to my classes.
Additionally, there has been the opportunity to begin to develop relationships with some parents and carers who might have pre-existing suspicions about education or who are reluctant to formally engage with the school. This brings the possibility of understanding the community at a wider level and challenges teachers to adjust our expectations and approaches to suit the context we work in.
Within the school, I was very encouraged to find a tight-knit and supportive staff community. Mentoring from, objectively, the world’s best in-school mentor as well as advice and support from more experienced colleagues has guided me through the chaos of term one.
The regional lifestyle has also opened avenues for building relationships with colleagues outside of school. Ultimately, the strong sense of teamwork and collegiality within the staff has invaluably enhanced my first teaching experiences. I will never forget the moment in my first week of school, when the principal and assistant principal dropped everything to help me vacuum and source furniture for my previously unloved classroom.
I realised that I’ve fallen in love with the town and the community that I now call home.
Scenic country life.
While the regional move has certainly had countless positive impacts on my work and life, there are also challenges associated with moving into such a small and close-knit community. Students seem to always turn up on those rare (okay, maybe not that rare) occasions when I rock up to Coles in my trackies to buy chocolate after a difficult day/week. I also sometimes feel the lack of emotional distance from school. For example, leaving after a particularly challenging day, only to remember that you live on the same block as those two boys who made your final class for the day so tough.
As a fairly typical first-year teacher, there are days when I wake up and am challenged by just the notion of going to work. There are also days when I come home, struggling with the realisation that I know so little about my students and that the distance between where I am now and where I want to be is so far that it seems unattainable.
However, after crawling across the finishing line of my first term in the classroom, I realised that I’ve fallen in love with the town and the community that I now call home. The students that I work with have pushed me to find more strength and resilience than I ever knew I had. I have also had to dig deep to display humility and empathy when these are the last things I feel capable of showing. One of the more unexpected but motivating outcomes of term one has been the slow recognition of the privilege and opportunities that I have in being a part of the tangle of lives that make up this small pocket of regional Victoria – bring on term two*!
*after copious sleep, chocolate and finally finishing that assignment.
