I am constantly amazed at how much I learn from participating in my share of the home schooling. In a lot of ways I am a student as much as I am the teacher for three days a week.

In my reflecting on the week, I once again was reminded of something Soren Kierkegaard  wrote:

‘to be a teacher is to truly be a learner: if one is truly to succeed in leading a person to a specific place, one must first and foremost take care to find that person where he or she is and begin there’[i]

As an example of the journey I’m talking about, here are some photos of a small field trip we embarked upon last week.

My plan for the morning was to expand our focus on geography by having a closer look at ecosystems, the local environment and landforms.

As part of this we looked for evidence of animals and noted the variety of trees and plants, most of which we found were native to the Eastern Australian coastal habitat. We explored a little further and located significant erosion, building rubble and even part of old metal track used for railways. There was some degree of surprise at the level of waste left from what appeared to have been an industrial use of the area.

This gave up an opportunity for discussion on the negative and positive aspects of human interaction with the environment.

The list of items we discovered included, Gum, Wattle (Acacia), Iron-Bark, and Bottle Brush. We also encountered some bromeliads, a large spider and  a couple of kangaroos which appeared in a paddock not too far off.