Aussie News - Issue 23 - December 2006
Edith Cowan Student Teachers in Mauritius
ECU Story Telling Afternoon at the
Saddall Government School in Mauritius
September once again saw approximately 25 enthusiastic and capable student teachers from Edith Cowan University (ECU) make their annual two-week teaching and learning visit to classrooms in Mauritius. This is the eighth year of the program and it is an excellent collaborative program. The student teachers relished the opportunity to work in an ESL (English as a Second Language) and multicultural environment. At the same time, the students are developing their educational knowledge combined with the experience of living and working in another country.
The student teachers participated in a variety of other activities additional to the daily classroom teaching and tutorials. ECU worked in collaboration with Mr Om Varma and other members of the Rotary Club of Vacoas and the Australian High Commission to implement two special projects with a focus on literacy and service to disadvantaged schools in Mauritius.
The first project was The Book Drive. This project actually commenced in 2005 when, for two months preceding the trip to Mauritius, a committee of ECU students worked with Belinda Nelson to collect donations of books from schools, bookshops and libraries in Perth. This collection process was overwhelmingly successful and 395 kilograms of books were boxed and labelled for delivery to Mauritius. The Rotary Club of Vacoas handed these books over to specially selected schools at ceremonies held early in 2006. The recipient schools each lacked English materials or the resources to readily acquire them. The cost to air freight the books to Mauritius was taken up by the Rotary Club of Vacoas, IDP Education Australia and Air Mauritius.
The second project was The Story Telling Afternoon. This entailed the student teachers visiting four selected disadvantaged schools to share Australian stories with the children. The storytelling sessions were relaxed and informal and, as a bonus for the children, also provided afternoon tea. They concluded with small ceremonies during which a set of Australian story books was donated to each school. The afternoon tea was provided by the Rotary Club of Vacoas. The Story Telling Afternoon was featured on MBC’s news bulletin and it highlighted the purpose of the project and ECU students’ visit to Mauritius. The Australian High Commission and the Rotary Club of Vacoas are keen to support similar projects next year. To round out their visit to Mauritius, the High Commissioner, Ian McConville, invited the student teachers to a reception at his residence on 5 October 2006, where they were able to meet representatives of the Mauritius education, government and media sectors. The students demonstrated once again that they are great Ambassadors for Australia and we look forward to their next visit in 2007.