International

Perhaps if you read this blog, you might think I'm a workaholic with nothing more on my mind than teaching, ICT, and the mathematics progression points. You'd be wrong. I have many interests, but none more pervasive than my love of travel.

My love of travel began by realising that not everyone has my ethnic heritage. On this blog, I have mentioned my Italian connections, but on my mother's side, my ancestry is Serbian. This is a more subtle influence on my life, visible only through the occasional Serbian dish cooked, my severe temper, and my support for Serbia in the Eurovision song contest (seriously, how did this song not win last time?).


My love of all things not Australian extends to wanting to link our kids up to experiences beyond the borders of Australia. It's a big world out there, and as someone who has travelled to 34 countries*, I'd like my kids to be more aware of the world beyond these shores.

We are lucky enough at The North School to have one of our virtual experts being located in Florida. Despite being a dinky-di Aussie, "Dr Chrisso", as he's known on our site, provides expert chemistry advice to 11 and 12 year-olds in Australia from the other side of the globe. And last week, the time zones aligned and our kids finally got to see Dr Chrisso face-to-face, when he talked to one of our students trying to run a chromatography experiment....



Speaking of which, I finally got the rubrics written up for our seven inquiry questions. I'm particularly proud of the one for the group investigating why people from different countries eat different foods, as it borrows from health, civics&citizenship, and history.













*New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, United States, Israel, India, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Andorra. So there.