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On Education
For my exchange trip to Australia, I spent every week attending school with my partner, Bella Nolan. There was one class she took that stuck with me after the trip. It was a physical education class, which was not just your regular gym class. We would switch from doing physical activities to learning in the classroom. For this class, we would focus on media and politics, not solely within Australia, but globally. It was an interesting experience for me to hear the Australian student’s perspectives on the current presidency in the United States, as well as discuss women’s rights and racial equity within media. In addition to these conversations, for the physical portion of the class, we would go through different sports. Currently, the class had been focusing on sports with rackets. They were not limited by sports within Australia, but through the course would explore all sports around the world and be able to try them out themselves, at least which ones were possible. When I thought about my classes, I realized they were not as globally aware, except for The Global Seminar, my Judaism, Christianity, and Islam class, and language classes. Especially particularly with my history classes, which were most entered around the United States. It seemed to me that the class had focused on Australia in connection to the rest of the world, not simply Australia alone. Today, I still wonder what classes are like around other areas of the world, and having that experience made me see education differently and change my view on learning within the United States.
For my exchange trip to Australia, I spent every week attending school with my partner, Bella Nolan. There was one class she took that stuck with me after the trip. It was a physical education class, which was not just your regular gym class. We would switch from doing physical activities to learning in the classroom. For this class, we would focus on media and politics, not solely within Australia, but globally. It was an interesting experience for me to hear the Australian student’s perspectives on the current presidency in the United States, as well as discuss women’s rights and racial equity within media. In addition to these conversations, for the physical portion of the class, we would go through different sports. Currently, the class had been focusing on sports with rackets. They were not limited by sports within Australia, but through the course would explore all sports around the world and be able to try them out themselves, at least which ones were possible. When I thought about my classes, I realized they were not as globally aware, except for The Global Seminar, my Judaism, Christianity, and Islam class, and language classes. Especially particularly with my history classes, which were most entered around the United States. It seemed to me that the class had focused on Australia in connection to the rest of the world, not simply Australia alone. Today, I still wonder what classes are like around other areas of the world, and having that experience made me see education differently and change my view on learning within the United States.
On the environment
I spent my time in Queensland, briefly traveled to Bryon Bay in New South Wales, and despite not traveling to the iconic Great Barrier Reef, I found a great appreciation for the environment. During my time with Bella, she took me to visit some of the Australian zoos, where I got to see and feed my first kangaroo and hold a koala. It was interesting to see the kinds of animals that you could find in comparison to zoos in the United States. Such as lemurs, emus, wombats, dingos, and the tasmanian devil. Living within a city, especially New York City, the environment is completely different, and growing up I was not as into the natural environment because I was not surrounded by it. This has made me see how growing up in certain environments can completely change your appreciation and understanding of the natural environment that surrounds you, especially if it has been altered to some extent. When we think about global issues, such as climate change, everyone can have a different perspective of it and be impacted by it in several different ways. My exchange helped make that more clear to me.
