Sovereign Hill, a recreation of a 1850's gold mining town.
Peter, a teacher employed by Sovereign Hill explains to the class about Social Justice...
How the aboriginals took bark from a tree without killing the tree...
and how a family lived in the shacks.
Soldiers marching from the rifle firing demo.
Panning for gold.
October
17-21st.
Another
week passes in a blur. Time is starting to fly by.
The
school nurse came around and tested everyone on the epipen workshops
from last week. She took Don and I into a room and gave us each a
sheet with an anaphylaxic scenario on it and we had to explain and
act out what we would do to ensure the safety of the child. When we
passed the test we got another certificate.
On
Wednesday the grade 3 and 4 team took all 150 students on three
coaches to Ballarat and Sovereign Hill. This is the pioneer village
that recreates the gold mining town of the 1850's. It was an hour and
a half bus ride each way and about a three hour visit there. The
first thing my class did was take a tour of the mine. All twenty two
kids climbed down into the 'mine' and listened to a narration from
speakers in the wall that told us the history of the area. At the
last stop there was a hologram of a miner digging in the tunnel on
June 9, 1958 and discovering the largest gold nugget ever discovered
to that point. It weighed a whopping 69 kilograms and is still today
the second largest ever found (the largest was also found in
Victoria).
After
the tour we went to a class room on site where we met 'Sir' Peter who
talked to us about our topic of social justice. He dressed the kids
in period costumes and told us the history of the area and about the
social injustices of the day: whites and aboriginals (the whites
pushed them off the land), the government and miners (taxes and
licenses to mine), the police and miners (corrupt police ripped up
miner licenses and forced them to buy new ones), the Chinese miners
(who were treated badly by everyone) and the other miners, and the
inequitable roles of men and women (the men controlled all the money
and the women were subservient and did all the hard house work and
cooking).
After
lunch we took our own walking tour around the village, before going
back to school. The kids especially liked the musket firing demo and
opportunity to try their hand at panning for gold. The bus ride was
good as the kids watched a movie.
As a side note Peter told me he had been working there as a teacher for 27 years! Plus he did a teacher exchange to England a few years back and his exchange partner worked at Sovereign Hill. Now that would be a different experience! Everyday you would get a different group of kids which might be challenging but there would be no report cards!
On
Thursday we were supposed to have a surprise get together for Libby,
but she begged off with a headache. So, I asked Joel if he wanted to
go for a drink anyway, and we went to the Treehouse where we met up
with Anne and Leora. We had a good talk about school politics and
traveling. Leora and I were the last to leave and after she left I
went for a walk around the St Kilda area and had some sushi before
heading home.
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