May 16 - More of Alice Springs

Terrain in the area surrounding Alice Springs

Today we saw a desert park, an indigenous school, the School of the Air, and had a barbeque by the pool. We started off at the park, walking around near Alice Springs in a more desert-like area than our other park visits. There were red kangaroos and nocturnal animals, but the highlight was an open-air bird show -- none of the birds were prevented from flying off, but had been painstakingly trained to want to hang out. One by one, they flew around us, collecting the treats the handler threw into the air. The big surprise for everyone was when a female kite showed up when a male was performing and basically scared him off. After a walk through the nocturnal animal area, we had another talk by an indigenous ranger who spoke about his culture and displayed some of the weapons his ancestors had used. Most interesting was the statement was that some knowledge was men's and some was women's and several of our questions veered into the women's areas for which he had no answers.

Below: several of the birds in the airshow

Next we took a bus to an interesting independent school that is focused on teaching primarily indigenous students using tales from their ancestors and including bilingual instruction in 4 of the local original languages. The government provides 70% of their funding, but they have a number of challenges because their students have unstable homes and have irregular attendance patterns. One thing they find important is for the students not to be hungry, so they provide a nutritious, non-sugary breakfast and lunch every day. The government cut funding for lunches, so to continue the program, they had to find ways to cut back other areas. Research in the US years ago showed that hungry children don't learn, supporting this contention.

Jim with the two kids who read to us

They also have a series of books for reading learners that uses the English version of home language to facilitate the children learning to decode English. It is not totally grammatical and addresses activities in the students' own culture. Once students can phonetically sound out words accurately, English grammatical rules are included, but it sounds very colloquial at lower levels, which helps engage the children. After an introductory presentation, we met a year 3 class and each student got a book and brought it to us to read. My partner was clearly challenged by the material and the teacher provided a simpler book for her. Reading levels in this one age-consistent class were all over the map because of the different attendance patterns. It seems like a really effective model and most of us contributed materials to help support the program. We also had lunch there and the principal told us about some of the challenges he had working with government programs and mandates. A while back, the government provided $1 million per school to build a multi-purpose room. They already had one, but hated to let the money disappear, so they applied for a multi-purpose room, stage 2 -- a swimming pool. In the application, the principal cited research that showed that regular swimming helped clear up typical nasal and skin infections that lead to hearing loss and other issues, and they were granted the funds for the pool. However, they can only label is a Multi-Purpose Room, Stage 2.

Our next stop was the School of the Air, which has operated since 1951. It was greatly supported by the same guy that started the Royal Flying Doctor Service and was inspired by that program.  A woman observed the value of the radio communications to outlying clinics and thought a similar program would be helpful to support educational programs in the sparsely populated parts of the country. There are now several schools of the air. The one in Alice Springs covers students over a 521,000 square mile area, twice the size of Texas. Students are provided with computers, web cams, and Internet access at no cost. There is an assigned local tutor (a parent 80% of the time, but hired the other 20%) who provides local support and gets regular training and help from the school. There are essentially TV studios in Alice Springs with multiple cameras in the classroom plus webcams on each student. The program covers kids up to 9th grade and is supplemented by a stack of written materials sent out every two weeks. With such a large and sparsely populated country once you get away from the east coast, this is a god send.

After a quick stop at the grocery store for snacks to keep us fed on the long bus ride to Uluru tomorrow (I am totally NOT losing weight on this trip despite walking a record number of steps!), we repaired to our room to prep for departure and finished the evening with a barbeque prepared by Vic -- kangaroo, teriyaki chicken, beef sausage, lamb chops, salads, prawns, and dessert. WOW!

Todd River, which only has water after rains. Called an upside down river because there is water about 3 feet down.