Remote and remoter: serving two of Queensland's most isolated communities
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 124 No 2, 15 March 2019, page no. 20
QTU member Sarah Dioth divides her time between two of Queensland’s remotest communities. Here she explains the challenges and benefits.
As a cluster teacher, my job involves me travelling between two schools to provide support and non-contact time to the teaching principals in each school.
I work between Birdsville and Bedourie, which are both located in the Diamantina shire. Birdsville is located on the edge of the Simpson Desert and is classed as one of the most remote towns in Queensland. Our closest large town – Mount Isa – is seven hours away. Each week I fly between the two towns – a 25-minute plane trip is much nicer that a two-hour dirt road drive!
It almost feels like a fly-in/fly-out job – each week it is a different scene and at times this can be impractical. I find myself planning weeks ahead and you cannot commit to outside events or activities without thinking about where I am going to be that week. Of course, I also have two principals, both of whom are amazing educators and are more than willing to share their knowledge. Each of them has their own areas of strength, which I can draw from at different times.
Physically it can be very exhausting, as each week I am in a different place. I have two houses and, although my partner lives in Bedourie, fly out day is a headache. Before I leave I have to make sure that I have everything done (planning is left at the school I am leaving) and have anything I might need for the week ahead, as I do not have a car in Birdsville to drive back to Bedourie if I have forgotten something.
Professionally, you are teaching units of work in half of the allocated time and you are only seeing the kids every second week. It has taken a lot of time to get my head around the multi-age setting – sometimes I’m teaching four different year levels at one time and differentiating for each year level, allowing them all to work on the same activity or concept. Most of the jobs a typical year level teacher would do for their one class, I get to do twice.
But the benefits are huge. One is the professional knowledge, skills and learning that you gain. Another is the strong relationships you build with your students, you learn new ways to make each lesson exciting. We don’t have specialist teachers to teach different subjects, so we do it all. You are also given amazing opportunities, for example being acting principal for the last four weeks of term four while your principal is on long service leave. As a person, you learn how to separate your work life and your personal/social life and create a stable work/life balance.
Working in such remote places has taught me to value every experience and not take anything for granted. It has taught me to be flexible and work with what we have at our finger tips. Not everything is going to go to plan and basic tasks can take moving mountains to achieve.
It has shown me what it is like to become part of such a small community and become accepted and respected for the job that we are doing. As my partner moved with me, we have both grown to love the community and all of the people in it.
Having such a positive impact has made my job a lot more exciting and rewarding. I love coming back to either place after being away and catching up with the students and hearing their stories and seeing how excited they are to see me back in each place. It’s also very rewarding seeing the kids outside of school - they come running up to you to show you something they have done, or they might ask you to come and watch them ride their motorbike in an event or the poddy calf at the rodeo, and their faces light up when they see you there.