Fieldwork

Today we started fieldwork. The course demands 20 days of fieldwork practice over the year. Ungraded observation with a mixture of early, middle and later years students.

Today I met my new mate, lets call her Kerry. One of the local primary schools has a programme up and running called “My Mate,” a mentor scheme which buddies up kids with extra needs with a student teacher. We get to spend an hour together every week for eight weeks, hanging out, providing friendship and support, and doing cool stuff together. The scheme has been up and running and is immensely popular with the kids. The teacher running the programme told us how for weeks kids have been coming up to her in the playground asking for a “mate”. I thought that that some of the kids may have felt stigmatised, but this seems far from the case and Kerry quite happily pointed out everyone in her class and her friends around the school, clearly expecting me to remember all their names.

Even though I have been hanging out with eight years olds for a few years now I found, as Kerry showed me around her school, that I was having problems understanding and relating to her. I was asking her questions about her friends and hobbies and pets, trying to forge the first stages of trust and friendship, but I kept needing to clarify her answers, so I could understand her as much as to giver her confidence that I was listening and interested. In my two weeks here in Wodonga, I’m noticing cultural and linguistic differences that are much greater than I anticipated I would encounter in a decent sized country town. I think I was expecting a variation of the lower hunter, and maybe I just have a very stymied view of that area limited to my mum’s friends. But, to get back to Kerry, as I sit here writing this, it occurs to me that my communication with most of the other eight year olds I know has only used spoken language to make requests and give instructions. Our friendship has centred around smiles, gestures, visual jokes and physicality. As I left Kerry, I asked for a high five and then pulled my hand back at the last minute. Her reactions were surprisingly fast. As I walked away, I wondered if that was a bad thing to have done in a country where I’m not allowed to let a kid hold my hand. I have so much to learn.