Naomi Schatz, US psychology teacher, flew to Australia in May as part of Harker’s teacher exchange program. Throughout the summer, she will be sharing her experiences overseas. Watch Harker News Online this summer for further adventures!

May 31: Greetings from Down Under….

“It has been a great weekend here in Aussie land! On Friday, I was a special guest-judge at a ‘Dilemmas’ competition where students had to speak off of the top of their heads about current political issues. Pretty fun, relatively speaking. After the event, the whole student body sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me, and presented me with a special Saint Stephen’s College rugby shirt… and I love it!

“Friday night I went out with Jaime Dorrington, head of school at SSC, and a few other colleagues I met last summer on the leadership retreat, to a nice dinner and blues festival down on the coast at Broadbeach. Saturday, we went for a picnic and a lovely hike with Jaime and his family up into the mountains in an area called Spring Brook and visited an awesome waterfall, called Purling Brook Falls. Sunday I went for a walk with Eden [former exchange student], who has very fond memories of his time at Harker!

“This week, I’m planning to present to students on stress/anxiety and testing as they have exams in the upper school. Also hoping to do some sport psychology lessons with their athletes, which should be fun! Jaime is keen on me presenting on some team-building and leadership issues as well, so working on that. I’m very excited! Well, that’s it for now!”