Justice of the Peace and other Australian formalities

Weeks 32-34

Before telling you about the new part-time job I started a week ago, I wanted to write about some casual relief teacher procedures (CRT) in Australia as I was finally offered a gig after months of silence. Due to Covid-19 and school closings, there haven’t been any teacher aide gigs so I was curious to at least see an Australian school from inside and meet some other educators.

This one-day exam supervising gig was something similar to the Finnish Matriculation Exams or the Swedish National Exams. General Achievement Test (GAT), as it’s called here, is a 3h-long national exam for all year 12 students. My job was to supervise students who undertake GAT and assist them in case they needed to go to the bathroom during the exam. So nothing special about the job itself but accepting the gig was a rather interesting process. Wait for it…

GAT policies

To accept the supervising gig I needed to have a document proving that I’m not related to, or associated with, any of the students undertaking GAT. Also, I had to prove that I wasn’t related to, or associated with, any person engaged in teaching these year 12 students or organising the exam. However, being employed as a casual relief teacher or an administrator by the particular school would have been fine. But what’s the logic of this? I assumed that even as a CRT or admin of the school you would get to know the students and staff but guess not…

Imagine if in the Finnish Matriculation Exams or the Swedish National Exams some random people were supervising the exam. Wouldn’t it feel a bit strange? Usually, the teachers who teach the year 12 students supervise the exams. After all, they are the people who know the exam protocol best. I wonder how come they trust random people (like myself) more than their own teachers to supervise the national exams.

Statutory declaration

The document I needed was called a statutory declaration form. The purpose of this document is still a mystery to me as it doesn’t seem to be a reliable proof of anything. Basically how it works is that you state something on this form, go to an authorised witness (pharmacist, lawyer, police, or doctor for example) and have it signed. You need to prove your identity with your ID card or passport.

Because of the Covid restrictions, getting this one document signed took me three days. Firstly, I had to send it to the nearest paper shop to be printed out. Since they are not allowed to be open normally, it took one day to have the document on a physical paper. 

When I received the document, I had to find an authorised witness. I went to the nearest police station where they told me that they couldn’t sign declarations due to the Covid rules. They advised me to check out something called “the Justice of the Peace” (nope, not kidding) because apparently, that was the place to sign statutory declarations. I googled it and found out that the nearest “Justice of the Peace” was that very same police station. 

I decided to try a pharmacy instead. The pharmacist got angry at me because I had signed the document before her. Apparently, that is something you should never do with statutory declarations. After begging for mercy (since it was already the third day I was dealing with this task), she signed and stamped my declaration, proving that I didn’t know any of the students nor staff members of the school. But wait, how did she know that?

Dress code

In the job description, it said that the dress code for an exam supervisor was “neat and professional”. I asked my housemates what it meant in practise since I hadn’t been given any specific dress code as a teacher before. The teachers knowing how to dress practically and appropriately it usually taken for granted in Finland. 

My housemates said no to sneakers and jeans which I would normally wear as a teacher. So I ended up choosing neat black trousers, blouse, long open-knit cardigan, canvas shoes, and a mask, of course. In my eyes, this was an appropriate outfit for a job where I had to stand and walk for several hours. 

Well, I learned that what is usually considered as common sense in Finland, is not the same in Australia. We had a large team of supervisors working that day and “the professional and neat dress code” was understood as basically anything from classical pencil skirts and heeled leather boots (which by the way, made a heck of a noise when walking around the exam location) to pyjama-looking silk pants, worn-out sneakers, and belly button revealing crop tops.

I did have a fun day at the school and it was lovely to meet other educators. Just funny to notice how differently things are done in other countries. After this another interesting experience in the Australian red tape jungle, I’m happy to start with something a little more stable. From now on, I’m working as a part-time mentor teacher for early childhood educators at HEI School Australia while continuing my own business and having Finnish and Swedish lessons online. I’m excited to meet Australian educators and contribute my Finnish pedagogical expertise in a new context so HEI let’s go!

But how can the authorised witness, the nearest pharmacist for instance, confirm this information?

Lost in Daylight Saving Time

Weeks 30-31

Please welcome my favourite time of the year once again: the clock changing circus. The last time we went through this in March-April was a total disaster. Therefore, I’m now prepared with double and triple checks on all of my students’ time zones to make sure that I know what’s going on. Also, I’ve got some exciting news about the new work I accepted last week.

First let us review the facts. At the end of March, Europe changed its time from winter time (standard time) to summer time (Daylight Saving Time, DST) by setting the clocks one hour forward. On October the 25th they will change it back to the standard time. As we are located in the Southern Hemisphere and the seasons are all upside-down here in Australia, we set our clocks one hour backwards earlier this year. Now, we set the clocks forward to have the standard time again. This means that during the European spring and summer, Australian Autumn and Winter, the time difference between Finland and Eastern Australia is 7 hours and the rest of the year it’s 9h. Pretty simple, eh?

What I didn’t realise, however, was the fact that countries all around the world have different dates for changing the time. Not to mention that more than half of the countries do not observe DST, including some countries’ independent states like Queensland here in Australia. And this means that between those clock-setting dates the time difference between Finland and Victoria goes first to 8 hours for a couple of weeks and then to 7 or 9 hours depending on the time of the year.

Last March-April I wasn’t aware of the different dates when the time difference to Melbourne changed so I managed to mess up my whole schedule for a couple of weeks. The weekly lessons booked from different time zones which either changed or didn’t change the time, overlapped and I had to reschedule almost everything. 

This time I prepared myself both manually and digitally by listing all my students, their time zones, and the time changing policies of their countries and making sure Google Calendar gives me the right times based on the DST changes. After all this maths my brain hurts, however I am happy because once again it is a new task that I can do as a private online teacher.

Oh yes, the new job! I signed my very first employment contract with an Australian employer and I’ll start working next week. So excited! More on this coming up so stay tuned.

Luckily, Google Calendar knows the time zones so I can just set the lessons to the student’s own time zone and it will be automatically converted to my time.