Teaching can take you to exotic locations, but few match Jen Wenlock’s late-night African elephant encounter.
That evening, Wenlock and her colleagues at an international school in Tanzania were camping under baobab trees in the African wilderness. With the sound of lions roaring in the distance, they woke to find three peckish pachyderms fossicking in their campsite.
One ended up outside her tent but Wenlock, who had already seen lions, rhinos and leopards in the wild, kept her cool as the elephants scrounged around before wandering off.
“There was the nylon of my tent between me and where this huge elephant was standing,” she says.
The hair-raising experience was one of many highlights of 12 years’ teaching in Turkey, Tanzania and China. From 1998, Wenlock spent three years at the British International School Istanbul, then three years at the International School of Tanganyika in Dar es Salaam and four years at the Western Academy of Beijing.
As well as avoiding elephants, Wenlock, now teaching English at St Michael’s Grammar School, took year 7 students on camp to Gallipoli, explored Istanbul’s historic bustling streets and spent weekends in a small village near crumbling sections of China’s Great Wall.
Everyday experiences left the biggest impression. Among them was sitting in central Istanbul’s historic area, the Hippodrome, during the Muslim call to prayer. Thousands of locals would head for the nearest mosque to pray, a sight not witnessed in Western countries.
A year 7 camp on the Gallipoli peninsula outside the busy Anzac Day period was also incredible.
“[We were] very aware you were on hallowed turf and that momentous things had happened,” Wenlock says. “The area was both peaceful and ghost-like.”
Wenlock had dreamed of such adventures from a young age, inspired by parents who travelled in the 1950s. As she grew up in Altona with older brother Ian, now a freight company chief financial officer, their parents, Maureen and Kevin, encouraged her adventurous spirit with stories about their exploits.
Maureen was on her second trip to Britain when she met Kevin on the boat. They lived and worked in London before returning to start their family. Maureen then stayed at home, volunteering on school committees, while Kevin worked in the petrochemical industry. Both encouraged their children to explore the world figuratively and literally.
The family spent holidays travelling in Australia, sleeping on houseboats, taking buses and trains to the Gold Coast and exploring cities and country towns.
“The world was opened up to us quite early,” Wenlock says.
Kevin captivated his daughter with stories about growing up in the laneways of Albert Park in the 1940s, where SP bookies plied their trade and teachers sent students to run messages at the local shops.
“Mum’s reading and dad’s stories, and both of their travelling experiences, have clearly brought me to where I am today and the things I enjoy both personally and professionally,” she says.
Wenlock attended St Leo the Great Primary School and Mount St Joseph Girls’ College, where she was a genuine all-rounder and enjoyed netball, debating and the performing arts. She was drawn to teaching from a young age.
“The joy and growth I experienced at both those schools made education a natural career move for me,” she says.
“It must have been just the love of school, the love of learning … wanting to make a difference I guess. I’ve found school settings to be energetic, creative and fulfilling, where so much is possible.”
Wenlock completed a bachelor of education at Melbourne College, now part of the University of Melbourne, majoring in English and history. She then spent nine years teaching English at Westbourne Grammar School, learning from terrific mentors, attending school camps and directing eight school musicals including
The King and I, Oklahoma and Sweet Charity.
During that stint Wenlock took six months off to travel, which she has done several times and highly recommends personally and professionally.
“Taking six months out … has allowed me to stay positive and fresh and to see things that I can bring back to the classroom,” she says.
By 1997, Wenlock was ready for a new challenge and took a calculated risk. She resigned and travelled to London, where international schools from around the globe recruited teachers. Applicants could literally work anywhere.
Wenlock ended up teaching English and the International Baccalaureate senior diploma and middle years programs in Turkey, Tanzania and China. She was able to go to Marrakesh, Nice, New York and Houston for IB professional development.
As well as teaching students from a range of backgrounds, each posting offered unique experiences such as co-ordinating camps in Tanzania, Turkey, China and Inner Mongolia. While Wenlock was planning a camp along a Tanzanian riverbank, a local masai guide discovered what he thought were crocodile tracks. “Needless to say, our subsequent orienteering course did not go down to the river’s edge,” she says.
In China, students stayed in yurts on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia: “A morning visit to see a nearby farm saw 100 of us surprising the farmer and his family before they were up, and the only experience offered to the students [all 100 of them] was taking turns to milk the one cow.”
Back home for the second half of 2002, Wenlock taught English at St Michael’s for six months and was impressed by the collegiality and integrity of the staff. After returning permanently in 2009, she accepted a full-time job as an English teacher there.
The time was right to spend more time with her parents and nephew, Matthew, now 17, and niece Karla, 14. It was also an exciting time to return to St Michael’s and apply what she had learnt overseas.
The school is revamping its middle years program and recently started a $20 million commons redevelopment, which will house modern shared facilities for all students from pre-school to year 12. It is due to open in early 2016.
On her Chinese post, Wenlock worked exclusively in the middle school, gaining valuable experience working with students in grade 6 to year 8. With 1200 students, the school was a similar size to St Michael’s.
Wenlock, 47, is excited by the potential young adolescents display as leaders, with a strong identity and social conscience.
The students in China embraced difference and led their own projects, which her students at St Michael’s are also capable of doing.
“Young adolescents are highly capable and creative. They can be leaders and mentors in junior school by the time they get to grade 6. We’re trying to find ways of better supporting the transition from junior to senior school.”
Wenlock is now senior school English teacher, years 7 and 8 English co-ordinator, year 7 tutor and grade 6 English teacher. She helped to review the school’s year 7 and 8 curricula for English against the Australian Curriculum and from that she and her colleagues have developed new curriculum initiatives.
“St Michael’s has been moving towards an explicit focus on the needs of children in the middle years … and I’ve been part of that process over the past three or so years,” Wenlock says.
“This year, I’m the first senior school English teacher to be teaching a year 6 English class and I’m part of the year 6/7 team that is paving the way for new opportunities to share teacher understanding and experiences of working with students in years 6 and 7.”
As well as the cultural richness, teaching overseas was about Wenlock’s professional development.
“Teaching the IB diploma program in Tanzania, in particular, enabled me to teach the literature of several notable African novelists, playwright and poets: South Africa’s Athol Fugard, J.M. Coetzee and Dennis Brutus, Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, and Egypt’s feminist writer, Nawal El Saadawi,” she says.
Meeting so many wonderful people was an added bonus and nothing illustrated this more than a trip to Rome last July when Wenlock was sitting in a neighbourhood street, well away from the tourist centre, catching up with an Argentinian student she had taught in Istanbul.
“Four former Western Academy of Beijing students – two from Australia, one from Italy and one from the US, just happened to walk past as they were in Rome celebrating their graduation,” she says.
“You never know where you’ll bump into students, but being open to those possibilities and celebrating the connections you form with students, despite them being from far and wide, is one of the things I enjoy most about my overseas years.”
■ Alumni Judith Whitworth, Patrick Hughes, Samantha Lane and Brodie Summers,
page 20.
