Nagoya College: Brisbane Childcare Experiences

We talked to two of the students from our sister school, Nagoya College, about their experiences as they begin their childcare courses with Imagine Education in Brisbane:

My Childcare Theory Class at the Brisbane Campus Name:  Ayana Fujita

We’ve begun studying Childcare at Imagine Education. At first I couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying because she speaks faster than teachers of General English course, but recently I’ve got used to listening to the teacher.

We’ve learnt about “Ethics and Laws of Childcare” and “Quality of Care in the Learning Environment”. These two units have been difficult because we need to read and understand whole sentences in English. In addition to this, we also need to come up with our own opinions in some cases and do assessments for our classes. It is hard, but I’m sure that it’s really helping to improve of our English skills.

I must say we do have some activities that are not only hard, but also fun and interesting! For example, when we had a class for the first time, we went to the City Hall, and got to view a museum of Aboriginal culture as an excursion. It was a good experience and really helped us to understand differences between cultures.

The other day, we had a class where we learnt about a lot of craft activities. We had different craft activities which were: making a hair band, doing children’s yoga, painting a boomerang, and making a lump of clay out of natural ingredients like flour. We enjoyed doing these activities and learnt how to teach them to children.

As I said at first, our classes are difficult, but I think that we will get results with them! We’re going to keep up our efforts!

Practical Childcare Classes at the Brisbane Campus Name:  Juri Nomura

My practical Childcare course placement started three weeks ago. I’d visited the childcare centre where I have this practical in advance, accompanied by my teacher from Imagine. At first I felt a little bit nervous because it was my first time and I was the only student from Imagine to do a placement there. Everyone else was placed with at least one classmate except me, however now I think this has been a good opportunity for me and I’m very glad to do a placement there.

At the centre I am surrounded by great teachers and very adorable children. The teachers are very kind and friendly. My supervisor said, “ You can do whatever you want to do and learn about childcare.” Every morning the teachers ask me, “Which class do you want to join today?”  This is great as I can go to different classes and it is very interesting to see different aged classes and observe how they grow and learn. It is still difficult for me to communicate with the children in English, but I try to interact with them according to their ages and growth.

I can learn so much about how to support and play with children from the teachers and the children, but it is up to myself whether or not I can study and learn well through the training at the centre.

In the next precious five months, I’d like to become a reliable and loving educator!

To find out more about our Faculty of Early Childhood Education, click here