For the second time in just over a decade, local teachers Rick and Colleen Sereda spent a year living and working in Australia on a teacher exchange.
Eleven years ago they spent time in Brisbane before returning last year to the city of Cairns on the northeast coast near the Great Barrier Reef, 1,700 kilometres north of Brisbane.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Rick said.
While the Seredas were in Cairns, Australian teacher Scott Gray was living in their house in Westlock and working in Rick’s job as a teacher at Thorhild Central School. For their part, the Seredas lived in Gray’s home.
Rick spent the year teaching full time at St. Andrew’s Catholic College, a private school in Cairns with an enrolment of about 1,600 kids in grades K-12.
Although Colleen joined Rick in more of a companion capacity, she too spent time teaching at St. Andrew’s as a substitute teacher.
“I got to see what it was like in the schools and what the kids were like,” she said. “That was actually one of my big highlights, working with the little kids. I really enjoyed it.”
While they enjoyed the opportunity to travel and explore what Oceania had to offer, Rick said the trip was first and foremost a chance for professional development and to exchange teaching experiences.
“By going to another part of the world and experiencing another school system and a different culture, you come back hopefully a better person and maybe a more enlightened person,” he said. “That’s really what happened.”
He may have 28 years of teaching experience under his belt, but Rick said his time at St. Andrew’s made him feel like a “rookie” again.
“It really forces you to rejuvenate yourself and learn new skills and sharpen up some of the other skills that you feel you’ve already developed,” he said. “It’s about as good a professional development experience as you could possibly imagine.”
Of course, being a teacher and working in the school left the biggest impression on Colleen.
“Kids are kids,” she said. “They’re brought up in a different culture and a different part of the world … but in reality kids are kids. They want the same things no matter what grade they are and what country they live in.”
Unlike the Alberta school year, which runs from late August until mid-June, with a two-month summer break, Australian schools operate year round. After 10 weeks of instruction, students and teachers get a two-week break, and this pattern repeats every 12 weeks.
Thanks to those regular breaks, Rick and Colleen were able to fully explore the local Cairns area, as well as communities and countries further abroad.
“It’s a very beautiful place,” Rick said. “Cairns is right on the edge of the rainforest in tropical north Queensland, right on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s as close to paradise as you could be lucky enough to live.”
During their time off, Rick and Colleen snorkeled in and around the Great Barrier Reef several times, as well as spent some time sightseeing on land.
“We got to go into the rainforest many times and experience some of the beauty that’s there,” Rick said.
When they made their way out of the Cairns area, the Seredas took advantage of having two weeks off at a time to travel far afield.
Among their trips were excursions to Tasmania, Melbourne and the isle of Bali in Indonesia.
“It was hard on the pocketbook, but it was beautiful on the eyes,” Rick said.
For Colleen, the experience drove home the idea that modern life does not need to be complicated, and that one doesn’t really need a lot of material possessions or need to be doing something all the time.
“It’s important to keep our lives simpler,” she said.
“You realize you can do with less.”
One thing she noticed was when they came home and were going through the things they did not bring with them to Australia, they realized many of them were things they could do without.
Overall, their time in Cairns and at St. Andrew’s served as a perfect followup to their experience in Brisbane 11 years ago, Rick said. “I couldn’t ask for any better,” he said. “It was a magical experience for both my wife and I.”
