The Riccarton Way

Riccarton High School is located roughly between St. Thomas of Canterbury College & Villa Maria College in the Christchurch neighbourhood known as Ilam. The school is the learning centre for 1,010 male & female students, meaning this is my first co-ed teaching placement. (St. Thomas is all boys & Villa Maria is all girls). Unlike in Canada where everything is in one giant edifice, a school in New Zealand is spread out across a collection of buildings, resembling a university campus.

Riccarton's facilities are contained in 22 separate buildings, each dedicated to an area of study, administration, or maintenance. The library building is co-owned by the school & the city, thus allowing the public to access its resources as well. For physical education, students have the gym, 3 tennis courts, and a huge open field to play rugby, soccer, and cricket. There's even a building dedicated to detentions. Most students do their best to avoid being sent to building D5.

I'll admit that I was a little nervous on the first day because of the unexpected, but my previous teaching experiences quelled my nerves. There would be 8 student teachers in total at Riccarton during this placement: 3 Canadians, 1 from Bangladesh, and 4 from across New Zealand. As a whole, our knowledge spanned the subjects of music, history, social studies, Maori studies, math, biology, and technology. For me, I would be involved with the school's music program, officially called Performing Arts.

We, the student teachers, were greeted by the Deputy Principal, Fred Kramer, who gave us a tour of the school. After the walk, we settled into the boardroom where we were given 'the rundown' of how things worked at Riccarton.

As I mentioned before in a previous post, the attitudes of male & female students are the same when they're learning separately. Put them together in a co-ed situation and that's when you get the boys acting all macho, trying to impress the girls, and the girls acting all . . . um, girlish, I think, trying to impress the boys. Until I teach at other New Zealand schools, my observations will remain disproven.

The weather has been cold in the morning, warm by noon, and then cold at night. Sometimes the wind likes to surprise with sudden strong gusts. We also had one heavy rain storm without lightning on Wednesday morning. Come to think about it, I still need to buy an umbrella.

After following a year 10 class for the first two days (and meeting all the teachers), I was assigned a year 9, 12, & 13 music classes for my teaching placement. For the rest of the week, I would be printing class lists & walking around class, guessing & learning all the students' names. It's challenging to learn so many names, but the good news is that many students have the same name. Likewise, the students needed some time to pronounce my name correctly, and guess where I came from. (I was surprised to hear a student suggesting I was from South Africa). As for those students who couldn't pronounce my last name? 'Just call me Mister D.,' I advised.

For St. Patrick's Day, I wore my green tie. The students had their dress up day (called Mufti Day) on Tuesday, many coming to school wearing green civilian clothing. I even saw one male student walking around with green hair. After school, I celebrated the day with a great Irish intellectual: Guinness.

Aside from that, the music department received a large shipment of ukuleles yesterday and has been handing them out to teachers & students who paid $40. Shane Morrow, my music associate, is starting a ukulele band and there's already around 30 students & 6 teachers involved! Well, at least it's not an accordion or bagpipe band. Since I've started playing on the guitar, I guess I can expand on the ukulele.

On Friday, after school, there was a small party held in the teacher's lounge to celebrate the end of the week. There were plenty of finger foods; crackers, brie cheese, chips, grapes, salami, sliced pickles, and sliced honeydew & pineapples. What stood out the most was the alcohol bar. I'm not sure, but I don't think alcohol would have been allowed if this sort of function were held in a Canadian school due to safety concerns (not having teachers drinking while students are still on school grounds). Naturally, I stayed, ate some food, had a Corona, and chatted with several teachers & the principal, before bidding everyone a wonderful weekend.

With Week 1 observation over, I eagerly wait to begin teaching the Riccarton Way on Week 2: Commitment, Honesty, Respect, Excellence.