Social media is a great resource in preparing for our year-long teaching exchange in Australia. We have connected with our exchange partners creating many opportunities to zip messages back and forth, to see pictures of the people and places in each others’ lives. We also made a group to connect with work colleagues beforehand. He and I now have some faces and names of the people with whom we will work during the year away. I enjoy reading other exchange participants’ blogs and Twitter posts (#teacherexchange) to get a sense of the opportunities and challenges ahead.

My 10 year old son received a journal for his birthday that he absolutely loves and I’m looking forward to him doing some more writing and blogging himself while we’re away. Many of his friends have already asked for his e-mail so they can keep in touch. Personally, blogging will serve as our own record and reflections on the experience – a way to communicate with people back home. As a consumer of exchange blogs myself, I hope it will be useful to others curious about or going on exchange themselves. We have been playing with 4Square to record fun places we have been and to find recreation and dining spots we might not otherwise have found. I expect we’ll do a little Geocaching while we’re there to get off the beaten path and explore the kind of spots only Geocachers seem to know about.

For definitive information, please contact your local exchange coordinator. This post just gives a sense of the kinds of documents you will need. Some of them can’t be tended to until others are done.

The Exchange Application

You need pictures and floor plans for your accommodations, your teaching timetable, and professional, personal, and community profiles as well as

Exchange Acceptance 

Once my exchange partner and I agreed to the exchange, we formally accepted the offer and had our respective principals and superintendents sign the agreement.

Program Participation documents

This included naming community and school sponsors who will greet, and serve as points of contact for my exchange partner. I also had to prepare at least 4 weeks lessons plans to ease transition into the position. Another form included school duties beyond the classroom.

Travel Arrangements

We worked with an online travel agent based in BC. He needed copies of our passport information pages, and a payment authorization form.

Visa Application (Australia)

Passport – you will want your passport to be valid for the full length of the exchange and possibly a few months afterward. My passport was due to expire two weeks prior to our return. I was able to go to the passport office and arrange an early renewal. They wanted a letter detailing the reason for the request, but it was processed without difficulty. Certified copied of the ID page are required for visa applications, and the passport number is needed for booking international travel.

Birth Certificate – this is one of the many documents for which you will need a certified copy. One copy for the visa application and another for my New South Wales teaching certification application.

Criminal Record / Sensitive Sector reports

Health Insurance / Coverage – provincial health providers may offer term certificates for health coverage while on extended travel. In order to get this, I needed to complete an application for extension of benefits and show evidence of the exchange agreement (provided by my provincial coordinator)

Extended Health coverage provided through my employer wanted copies of the provincial term certificates to extend our plan coverage while overseas.

Teaching Certificate – this was required for my New South Wales teaching certification application.

Visa Application (China)

Because we are planning a layover on the way there, we needed transit visas for our stop in China. The online form resulted in a PDF we mailed along with travel itineraries, and our original passports meaning that we could not leave the country until we got them back!)

Teaching Certification

Getting permission to teach in New South Wales involved filling out an online form, sending university transcripts, and a copy of my current certification and birth certificate.

Power of Attorney

We also met with our lawyer to arrange for temporary power of attorney while we are away and updated our wills.

Child’s School Registration

The visa under which I am working in Australia allows my son to attend schools at no additional costs. We received a registration form and letter for him and have to include his passport information page, and our specific work visa number.

Medical Benefits

We had to apply for an extension of our provincial health care benefits and contact our work health plan for an extension of benefits for the duration of our stay.

Working our way through these requirements is really making us “clean house” and get everything in order. There is a lot of paperwork to manage, but we worked at being organized from the start with a central binder for correspondence, copies of documents, and the program documentation. We also have a folder for current and outstanding items that are time sensitive, or conditional on other documents. It is a bit of a puzzle as some pieces can be placed early, while others have to wait until more pieces are in place.

My exchange partner and I aren’t the only ones participating in the exchange. Of course our significant others are coming, and our families are preparing to pick-up and welcome our counterparts. Our school colleagues are making connections and the students are anticipating the arrival of the exchange teacher. Our neighbours and friends in the community are excited for our opportunity and looking forward to meeting and getting to know the visiting Aussies. As personal an experience as we think the exchange is, there are huge ripples extending far beyond our own family.
As the weather turns here to autumn we realize it will be a long time before we are here in the summer again. The garden perennials having a season to grow without me poking at them. I wonder how many volunteer tomato plants there will be in the veggie garden next year.

“You must just be counting down the days until you go to Australia,” a colleague said in passing. Would that it were just a matter of passing the time until departure date. We have spent considerable time in the summer break purging and cleaning and doing all those little repair jobs around the house and yard to prepare the space for our exchange partners.
A couple days ago an email arrived with several documents and checklists of things to do related to the exchange. I guess deep down you know that there will be a fair bit of paperwork, but wow… just… wow. It looks like the administrative preparations for the exchange will be a part-time job for a while!
Skimming through the package initially left me bewildered – where do you even start!? Visas, teacher certification, health coverage, passport renewals, criminal record checks, house and vehicle exchange agreements, school applications for my son, and more.
Fortunately, the package included several checklists to help you stay on track. Today’s accomplishments included the application for accreditation in New South Wales (an online form supported by official academic transcripts and notarised proof of identity and teaching certification to be mailed to Australia). Also worked through the visa application taking note of supporting documents and information I need to dig up like proof of health coverage, financial status.
While it is overwhelming, it is also exciting – we’ll continue to organize and fill our calendar with appointments, and daily tasks to manage both the exchange requirements as well as the demands of daily life.

We made contact with an Australian teacher who was also not matched in the official process. After a few e-mails and a Skype, we determined that our teaching load, accommodations, and location were acceptable enough to proceed with an exchange. Neither of our locations was anything either of us had considered, but he commented in an initial e-mail:

Would have never thought of your location, but in my travels I have found that a lot of the time the places you wouldn’t have thought of turn out to be the best times.

We decided to approach our exchange coordinators and request the match. The coordinators sent details of the proposed exchange along with our application packages to the proposed schools. Included was a form by which the proposed exchange was accepted. Three signatures are required on either side of the exchange, ours, our school administrator, and our superintendent. These forms are then returned to the exchange coordinators who then communicate with each other to confirm that all is acceptable at their end.

This is where we sit at the moment. While we are beyond excited, everything is tempered by the lengthy list of things to do between now and the end of December when we board the plane. Cleaning out closets, getting around to all the little repair jobs that never seemed that urgent, making a list of seasonal maintenance issues, tucking away personal knick-knacks and photos. It’s rewarding work, but time-consuming nontheless. We talk about how the house will feel ready for sale when we’re done but we’ll benefit from the effort when we return.

I’m also thinking more about the school and the classroom. Encountering a YouTube video from my exchange school showing some school activities really brought home how personal the exchange is – It isn’t just a year of professional growth for me, it’s a year with individual students for whom, I hope, the exchange year will be one of learning, sharing, cultural and academic exploration. My expectations are realistic – reading other exchange blogs it’s clear that for many students school is school, and a teacher is a teacher. It will, no doubt, be a challenging year being the new teacher in the school managing new curricula, and not being able to bring my decade’s accumulation of cred with me – really starting from scratch.

Google Earth is on almost all the time now and we have done a tremendous amount of reading and researching information about the community, the job, our son’s school, and travel opportunities. I mentioned elsewhere in the blog how our thinking has has been very general, iconic, and continental. Now with a specific community and address, we are thinking street level. Where to get groceries, how long is the walk to school, where do we fuel the car, who sells the best curry in town. We are also enjoying exploring possibilities for layover opportunities there and back like Fiji, Cook Islands, Hawaii, or Beijing.

Any travel suggestions?