Farewell exchange teachers

Farewell to our Year 2014 visiting exchange teachers. We hope that your experience has been a rewarding one and that you take home many memories from your exchange experience so that others may benefit from your time here. Please try and become involved in your local exchange leagues. Those who attended exchange weekends, dinners and walks organised by the NSW ETL would realise how hard the regional reps and central committee work for the good of the exchange program.

Farewell to our outgoing Year 2015 exchange teachers. You are off to some exciting (yet cold) destinations: Alberta, Ontario, BC, Colorado, Chicago and England. You and your families will have a wonderful year. You will continue to receive the Union’s publications whilst on exchange to keep abreast with all the news!

We are now accepting applications for 2016 – for ALL provinces in Canada, the UK, Colorado and other states in the US by negotiation, and International schools in Europe.

For those of you who missed out on a match for next year, you will be our priority for the next round of matching, so please think seriously about reactivating your applications! Most who miss out the first time, do not miss out the second time!

So if you want to experience one or two winter festive seasons (you may also apply for a mid year exchange), Thanksgiving and Halloween celebrations, download an application from the IEU website (www.ieu.asn.au and click on teacher exchange); there is also an exchange video on the website (on the video section on the IEU’s homepage). You could also call Helen Gregory on 8202 8900 or 1800 467 943 or email a brief profile to helen@ieu.asn.au

This could be you in 2016:

Back in the swing of things for Semester 2 and really enjoying this semester at school, now that I know how everything operates and all the staff and students see me as a familiar face. Both students and staff have been so friendly and have been really interested in Australian stories and the whole exchange experience. We can't believe how quickly the past three months have gone by. We are trying to book in as much as possible over the next two months before we head back home.

We spent our summer holidays travelling in an RV through the Canadian Rocky Mountains from Calgary (Alberta) to Vancouver (in British Colombia). We then went on a 10 day sail through the Caribbean on a tall (pirate) ship and then spent the last week with some of our Canadian friends in the beautiful 'cottage country', in the Lakes District of Ontario.

Recently, we have enjoyed Thanksgiving with our new Canadian family, Halloween festivities with friends and look forward to our first ‘White Christmas’. The colours of autumn (fall) have been amazing, and now the weather has turned and the snow is starting to fall again.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. We have made some wonderful friends over here, both Canadians and fellow Australian exchange teachers, and it will be 'bitter sweet' saying goodbye to them all in the next few months.