Brittany:
Having experience in a rural school gave me that experience of community. Every member of the community takes responsibility for teaching the child. And so the support that you can give to these students is far greater 'cause you know every child in the school.
Clinton Lobley:
In a nutshell, they've gotta get out there and experience the world. If they don't have a wide range of experiences, they're never gonna know the kind of school that they would like to teach in.
Tony Hand:
The biggest support is our staff size. So, for me, I've got 16 teachers at the secondary school, so they become one of a team very quickly and they know everybody and it's that support that they feel they can go and talk to anyone which I think is unique to smaller settings.
Bek:
Everybody was just open arms, wanted to know me, wanted to meet me, and it was just lovely to be seen I suppose, rather than just, oh, that's just a student teacher we don't really need to go and approach. There's other people to do that, whereas everybody was so gung-ho about it.
Melissa Mitchell:
Hopefully, it's really an eye-opener to how wonderful it can be to live in a regional area. People know each other and look out for each other and I think that that's a really wonderful element of living in a smaller community.
Bek:
Everything's so close by, you run into everybody down the street, so it's almost like a social gathering every time you leave the house and it's fantastic.
Clinton Lobley:
Great place to raise a family. You could afford to buy a house, which is a big thing. Drive to work without any traffic, virtually no traffic at all compared to bumper to bumper. If you are the sort of person who really wants to move up through the ranks and become leadership, assistant principal, principal, that sort of thing, if you can prove yourself in a country school, you can probably move up those ranks a little bit quicker.
Brittany:
My mentor, when I do my lesson plans, she'll give me tips and tricks and sometimes she goes, 'Just go for it. Fly by the seat of your pants.' And I think one thing that's been really valuable is that they've taken in my learning and have implemented across the school and I think that was the most insightful and also my proudest moment for being here was seeing my work can make a change in their lives too.
Tony Hand:
It's just nice to see someone coming in and they've got fresh ideas and it allows a teacher to sit back and watch someone else in a classroom, even though this person might be learning, but just to pick up different ideas from them as well.
Brittany:
I definitely encourage everyone to definitely try it. A lot of the time, we learn about this in theory, but to have practical understanding is next to none. You have to experience this to really fully understand. And I think if I had the chance again, I'd do all my placements out in regional.
Updated