This one is for all those teachers who have ever even remotely considered going remote!

Hakea joins me to shine a light on the realities of teaching away from metro areas, and shares actionable tips for making sure you’re well prepared for your new adventure.

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Show Notes

Hakea is one half of The Remote Teacher – a one-stop-shop for information, advice, courses, and support with teaching in remote/rural areas. You can find their Facebook page here, and through the website you can find their blog, podcast, and courses. And if you’re after a truly collaborative space to discuss all things remote/rural, join the Teachers in Remote Communities (Past, Present, and Future) group on Facebook.

Transcript

Emily: Hello everybody. I have such an awesome episode for you today. if you have ever considered teaching in a remote, rural, or regional, I guess community. I know this is a topic that comes up quite often. A lot of the state education departments have a quote unquote requirement that you do do some regional or remote time, and I know that that brings a lot of apprehension for a lot of people.

There seems to be a lot of questions asked in this space and not a whole lot of answers. So I reached out to Hakea who is, One of the admins of the teachers in remote communities, past, present, and future Facebook group. I’ve been a member of there for a while and looking at the group right now, they have 7,100 members, so that is 7,000 people in this Facebook group who are willing to help answer these questions for you.

And I reached out to Hakea in the hope that she could come and give us some insight through this podcast. So if you’ve ever been even remotely interested in remote teaching, haha, I really hope you’ll get a lot out of this episode. We aren’t sugarcoating anything. I will give you a content warning. There is a mention of, students suicide about halfway through this episode, and we do give another trigger warning just before we start talking about that. So when that comes up, if you would rather skip that section, I would skip forward a minute or two. But as I said, we don’t sugarcoat anything. Hakea does talk about the benefits and also the challenges of teaching away from the metropolitan areas, and she also gives some fantastic recommendations to resources for further learning. So without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Welcome Hakea. How are you today?

Hakea: Great. Thank you for having me on.

Emily: Excellent. I guess the story from the staff room with this one is that a lot of teachers are very curious about what it’s like to work rural, go rural, but there doesn’t seem to be many people who are actually willing to give those sorts of answers, if that makes sense.

Like obviously there are thousands of teachers that are working rurally, but the conversations, at least in the the online groups like your Facebook group, is one of the only few that I’ve seen that actually really discusses this. And I think. It’s like a huge disservice because so many people are interested but they can’t seem to get the information.

Hakea: Which is exactly how I felt. Yes, I understand.

When I first went remote, I looked everywhere. I, I, you know, read every little scare of information I could find on the internet. I like read books. I was so ready to soak up as much as I could and learn as much as I could before I went rural and remote.

And I couldn’t find anything, which is why Carl, Lynette and I started the teachers in remote communities. Past, present, and future, Facebook group. We, we just saw that gap.

Emily: Awesome. So do you wanna gimme a bit of your background? So you’ve worked metro before going rural.

or

Hakea: Yes. So, before I begin chatting about that, I just acknowledged the traditional custodians of the Bundjalung country where I’m talking to you from and pay respects to the elders past, present, and emerging, and also like to pay my respects to your First Nations listeners. So, I was born on Wathaurong country down in Geelong, and I was raised down there on the surf coast and Bundjalung Country up Northern Rivers.

And when I was doing university at Victoria University in Melbourne, I never thought that I would go anywhere else. I was so happy in Geelong. I pictured my future and my career there, but I had the opportunity to do story writing in remote locations, the swell program through Laurie Man at Victoria University and through that in 2006, 2007 and 2008, I got to go to Areyonga and Papunya in the Northern Territory during my middle year break and do volunteer work, making stories with Young First Nations people there. So that was amazing. And I know at the moment there are other programs, not, not like that, but other programs that get an opportunity to go rural and remote.

I think it’s called Over the Range up in Queensland maybe, or in WA, there are definitely opportunities for people who are studying teaching to like test the waters and go and experience it. And, and that’s what I did. So after that I was like, wow, there’s this whole other world out there that I hadn’t experienced in Geelong at the time.

And I’d never really been immersed in any other culture. So it was amazing. And after I did swirl and then university, I got a scholarship to work in a hard to staff rural school over in Pinjarra, in WA in 2009. So that was my first really big time away from home. Huge move, a small rural school, about half an hour from Mandra, so an hour and a half from Perth. Which was amazing. And then I went back home because my sister had my nephew, my first nephew, and I wasn’t able to be there to his arrival due to being rural, which is one of the hard things that I’ll talk about later. After that, I went for an adventure with my friend Alana to Halls Creek up in the heart of the Kimberley and Wa and then I taught in Ardyaloon, One Arm Point, and Broome.

So I’ve kind of had a little bit. Movement around regional and rural and remote Australia as well. And now I’m back in Northern Rivers, New South Wales for the time being. So that’s. The big gist of it. And then Carl and I and Lynette noticed this, this lack of information, this lack of discussion that you were talking about before for rural and remote educators.

So we started the Facebook group and then we wrote stories and books about regional and remote, life with Carl. And we started creating resources to help rural and remote teachers as well. So that’s kind of my background in a nutshell.

Emily: Wow. So you’ve been all over the place. That’s so cool. I guess one of the, the sort of two questions that people tend to ask is, what are the benefits of going out Bush and how difficult is it gonna be.

Hakea: Sure. Yes. So benefit wise, Carl and I blog about this a lot on our website, theremoteteacher.com.Au. We, we talk a lot about the benefits and, and why people should go remote cause we’re super passionate about it. Carla’s a First Nations Jaru and Gija man from up in the Kimberley. So he has our son, nieces, nephews, cousins, everything across the top end that we want the best teachers for. So we really love talking about the best of the best of remote teaching.

Emily: So you’ve sort of got that, that

Hakea: we

Emily: link as well. Like you see the kids and you know the kids and you want the best for them.

Hakea: Yes. And we’ve seen the best and the worst of remote teaching and rural teachers that go out and, you know, might spend one day there, like literally one day because it’s, it can be that much of a shock and others that spend, you know, years and years and years and just love it like we do.

So, The benefit is that you get to learn through immersion in culture and language. You, you land in this different, this culture and you get to suck it all up. You get to make lifelong friends that are forged in fire. So it is, it is a challenge and it is different, but you’re all there perhaps new and get to support each other and learn together and you really form these strong bonds.

You get to fast track your professional development. So there is great pd, you learn on the job and you get opportunities for leadership roles. So, things like Kagan teaching was something that I got to do. Team teach was another thing that I got to do. There’s just so many amazing professional development opportunities and I got to be, head of learning while I was remote.

I got to teach in different learning areas, so I’m English and humanities and now special education trained. I got to work as, the IT coordinator. I got to teach health maths engagement classes. So I got to get all this knowledge and experiences that helped me later on. And it was also a base to then adventure out from.

So when I was based in Halls Creek, I could explore all the places around there. When I was based in Ardyaloon, I could go out on the boat with the Bardi friends that we had and go swimming in these places that many people have never been. We got to do culture day at Ardyaloon with turtles cooked fresh on a fire.

We got to look out over the Ardyaloon pass from Jump Rock, which is higher and look down on two whales and their babies going through the pass. At Ardyaloon oh, it was like breathtaking. The most amazing thing ever. We had a donkey that would stop me going to school in Ardyaloon, so it was just like, Blocking the road every morning, and I had to figure out ways to get around it.

The joy of like students running out for the first rain of the big wet. Like you can’t con in those situations. Good luck keeping your students in class. Cause there’s just this joy and this exuberant energy when the first rain comes. I remember times. Like a student I had called Scotty came into class with a tartar lizard, hanging off his ear as an earring, and he just kept the, the lizard on his ear for the whole lesson.

They, they have like a lock jaw, they’ll just stay. Um, so strange, uh, coming into school and seeing a thorny devil on the reception desk, like that’s just normal.

Emily: That’s normal.

Hakea: It totally is when you’re out remote and you see things that the majority of Australia will never get the chance to experience or see. So whether that’s just the, you know, the normal tourist experiences such as Wolf Creek, which, you know, half of Australia would never even adventure out to.

But, but also those, those really special places. Like we got taken to places where, our friend TJ. Mother birthed him like the waterhole where he was birthed. So, you know, these beautiful places that other people won’t get to experience and see. And that’s just a taster of the huge benefits and amazing things.

Like I could talk about the financial incentives and those kind of things, but, but that pales in comparison to all these other, beautiful career and personal experiences that you’ll have. So there’s so much out there if you keep an open mind and, and are willing to experience and, and see these things.

Emily: Yeah, just when you said that open mind. What I’m hearing you say is really, you have to have an open mind and you have to be flexible to find success and happiness away from the cities. If you’ve been born and raised in the city and you’re not willing to be immersive and flexible and learn the differences, then it’s just not gonna work. Is it?

Hakea: Totally. And you see that so clearly with the people that, succeed and, and don’t have that success when they go remote. And you see it as well in the stories and the narrative that’s created when they come back to their main city, when they talk with their colleagues and teacher friends, when they talk in, you know, Facebook groups or other spaces that, Sometimes it can have this really focus on the negatives and the struggles and the challenges because that’s what they were able to experience and feel.

But with an open mind, the willingness to seek help, the willingness to make those connections, the willingness to look at things from a different angle and perspective, it kind of opens up your mind and you learn new things and your, your experience and time, there will be so much better for it. So, I think one of the big things is not to go out there thinking you know it all, or that it has to be done a certain way and just being willing to be led by culture students, your First Nations colleagues, and, and be open-minded, exactly like you said, when you first arrive as well.

But it’s not all good that there are struggles and challenges as well. And that’s something we talk a lot about on that Facebook group that we mentioned and over on our website and blog. Because we wanted to help teachers like know that they’re there, know what you’re about to face, and then give them strategies to overcome it.

So we also run a Thrive PD for new teachers. So we are doing it with the Catholic Ed Kimberley, new recruits this year to help them kind of get some strategies to overcome things like, my first day I was four years into teaching at my previous school in Geelong, I’d taken on leadership roles. Like I thought I was a good teacher, and my first day at Halls Creek I had a child climb out the window and my first week a child threw a pencil tin at me.

It was just like, whoa. And the diversity and the differentiation that I needed to in that classroom was, very, like the gap between, learning was very big between the students. So I had this moment where I just was in the deep end and I had this culture shock. Cause I didn’t, while I’d done my swirl time, so I’d worked in remote communities before. This was a different remote community and it’s important to remember the diversity of First Nations peoples and, and cultures that we have around Australia. So you can’t necessarily always just apply your knowledge between different groups and different schools.

Emily: Really gotta adapt.

Hakea: you totally do. And again, be open-minded to adapt and to learn. Then there was home sickness that people sometimes experience when first moving, especially since remote teachers and rural teachers are often younger, you know, new grads or early career teachers, that a lot of our connections are back home.

Although social media has made that so much better, I can’t even imagine teaching in the early days where you had to like pay by the minute for phones and that was all you had, or

I can’t

Emily: really just be uprooting and going, whereas now it’s more like, You, you just like a FaceTime away or Messenger or something? Yeah.

Hakea: Totally. And it’s important that you schedule that time so you are still connected back home. Then you’ve got fomo, fear of missing out. So when you’re remote or rural, you, you do, the reality is that you do miss, miss out on births like my nephew. Deaths, weddings, big birthdays, those kind of things.

So that is a struggle too. Access to medical can be another challenge. So, often you’ve got beautiful, little clinics in some communities, but not always staffed with the doctor. Sometimes it’s just a nurse. Sometimes they, you know, it’s a, Royal flying doctor trip to get to the hospital. So that can be a challenge for remote teachers as well.

Another thing that I personally, A big struggle was unable to support my family. So family that, you know, are living through floods. My granddad got dementia while I was away, unable to help my grandparents move house. And there was one time where my dad got really sick, he had a lump in his belly or something and the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was and they kind of called me and said, you better come back cause he’s going to die.

He didn’t die . And he’s fine. But moments like that, that was during covid, so I couldn’t, I literally couldn’t just pick. and go to get back to dad. Like it was a huge, you know, saga and application and all those kind of things. So that’s huge. Crime can be a challenge. We talk about that over on our blog.

and things like learning how to support students with E S L D, how to deal with extreme behaviors, the learning needs such as trauma, otitis media, fasd, which I didn’t even know about before going remote my first time. Like that was not even discussed or raised ever anywhere.

Emily: And that that’s fetal alcohol syndrome, isn’t it, that you’re talking about there?

Hakea: yes.

Yep.

Emily: So those sorts of things are probably more prevalent, would you say, or just more impactful perhaps.

Hakea: prevalence. So there’s research that has been done. The little one strategy, I think from Fitzroy Crossing has a study on prevalence and prevention from Fitzroy Crossing up in the Kimberleys, which shows the prevalence of FASD is. Is on paper. Higher in First Nations communities in Australia, the highest in the world, but.

There is also the recognition that FASD is often misdiagnosed in mainstream community as, O D D or, other kind of defiance or attention disorders. So that’s not saying that it’s a First Nations thing at all, but the prevalence in the Kimberleys and some remotes is pretty high. Otitis media is, an ear scarring and ear issues due to infections in the ear.

which impacts students’ ability to hear and therefore pay attention in your classroom and, and get things, especially for E S L D learners who, you know, are learning this new language, often orally and they can’t hear. So making, adjustments for students that are hard, hard of hearing is really important in remote schools.

So even things like, rheumatic heart disease, which has a really horribly tragic, prevalence up in remote communities. Like it’s, it’s not a thing that you hear of in mainstreams, but that’s a heart condition, which is like tragic. It’s terrible. So you’re gonna face some of these things if you choose to go rural or remote.

And just having an awareness of them before you go will make the move a lot easier and your time in the classroom a lot easier.

Emily: Did you find with, things like that, were you able to get support to learn about how to handle those or did you have to seek out that support yourself?

Hakea: So it came through pd, but it didn’t come through PD at the beginning. So I was first year confused and wondering and unaware of what I didn’t know. But then it slowly trickled through with pd. So now we’re trying to make awareness in that Facebook group and on our blog and all those other places to make sure people know first, because it’s kind of like foundation stuff for when you’re working remote.

It’s, and it impacts student learning so much, and with the high turnover and retention of staff in remote communities when we’ve got these staff that are learning on the job, which is fine, but. Our students are missing out on this, this time and support in the early days. So we wanna upskill and make people aware early on, so that, you know, they hit the ground running and give our students the best.

Emily: So ideally if, if someone’s considering going, Rural or remote, they might wanna look into that sort of pd, even if they can’t access the pd, but do as much reading and as much exposure as they can.

Hakea: Totally and cuz supporting students with those things, while challenging isn’t that hard, if that makes sense. So students with those needs are, yeah. So you can find adjustments and supports and scaffolds and ways to like structure your classroom to support these students too. So

Emily: And I think that’s something a lot of people need to remember too. Like in the big cities, you might have one kid in the whole grade that has hearing problems and it seems like such a big deal to implement support for them because it’s only one kid. But the support that you implement for them is gonna be beneficial to everybody.

Hakea: Totally a hundred percent. And I think the other thing that you forget in, in mainstream is that you often have like a learning support teacher, or you might even have like a special needs hub or you might have like head office that can come and do visits to support you. You don’t have that often sometimes, but you don’t have it often when you’re remote.

So yes, those kind of things. Even if a student’s not diagnosed, it will support the whole class Exactly like you said. . Yeah.

Emily: So, what other sort of challenges do you find with teaching there? Besides supporting the students? What, cuz I imagine the entire school structure would be different. You don’t have a huge team of teachers and definite hierarchies and.

Hakea: totally. So staffing issues is an issue in regards to that hierarchy. Often you’ll have amazing remote teachers and remote leaders. There are brilliant first Nations colleagues, aboriginal education officers or whatever acronym they go by. There might be amazing people out there. But the reality also is that you’ll have staffing issues with a high turnover and that means that sometimes you have leaders that are new to the role and they haven’t had a lot of experience leading groups of people. You might have issues with connection and lack of understanding or understanding of how to work together between a teacher and an Aboriginal education officer. And they might have new person fatigue, like they’ve supported a hundred teachers before you and, and figuring out how to make that relationship work. And also internal relief can be, especially at the moment. So Covid has had a huge impact on. Teaching and remote staffing and on the ability to get the flying teacher squad or you know, external relief to come up and, and support. So in small schools you are it, and that’s a challenge. You are also, like it all, so when I was in Halls Creek, we had a visiting psychologist once a fortnight, once a month, and we had trigger warning mention of suicide.

We had. Like, I’ve had five plus students commit suicide now. The youngest was 12, and we were it . And so for the first student that I lost, we had, the regional psychologist come for three days or the week to do like this crisis intervention, which is nice, but those students don’t know you and us teachers need more support and more help so that, The mental health support, the trauma around that is, is huge and suicide is the highest rate in the Kimberleys, in WA, in the world.

So it’s impacted everyone. So that’s a huge thing in regards to that structure that you’re talking about. And also that at structure in remote schools is that. Because of the high turnover, there’s constantly new staff and for students that takes time for them to form attachment to learn, new teacher ways to give energy and trust.

So that impacts their learning as well. That is this a teacher that I’m safe with? Should I come to school? Can they hook me into school? Those kind of things. So that’s, that is one of the challenges. And in regards to general life in, in rural and remote communities, there are a few other challenges like cost of living. So the cost of flights, food, and healthy food and fuel. You do sometimes get incentives which help offset that, which is great for us as workers, but it’s something to acknowledge for our first nation and rural students of every ethnicity, but they’re living without the incentives that we get. So, Really challenging, our young people coming to school hungry perhaps cuz it’s, you know, too expensive to feed your family out remote with healthy food, for example.

And I am vegan, and I was vegetarian when I was there. So dietary needs or like if you, are diabetic for example, or other dietary considerations, that can be a challenge in remote. So some remote stores or shops can order special food in for you, some can’t, and you have to like do a big shop when you go to the nearest main town. And the last thing, perhaps I might mention, last two, if that’s okay.

Animals was a challenge for me. I, you know, would see dogs with the eyes sticking out or a broken leg or mange. And because there’s a lack of access to general services, there is a lack of access to vets. And so the visiting vet might come and desex dogs, for example, or put down animals, but that’s intermittent.

And the other thing that I know a lot of, uh, teachers at the moment are dealing with is being stuck in or out of community due to covid, flooding, road access, limited flights or cyclones, for example. So they’re some of the challenges. We talk about them over in the group. We, we are talking about them here.

So raising awareness through this podcast and, and through other ways is really important because when you know, you can prepare, whether it’s mindset or strategies or you know, services, like making sure you stay in contact with your counselor back home, those kind of things to help you make it work.

Emily: Yeah. Well, circling back to the indigenous communities, cuz I imagine that that could be one aspect that makes a lot of teachers nervous if they haven’t had, you know, I’m, I’m in Brisbane and for me to have contact with my local indigenous community, it’s, it’s non-existent unless I go in, you know, purposefully seek it out and take the time.

And not a lot of people are gonna do that.

If people were nervous about that aspect and how, you know, indigenous communities, this is gonna come across racist, but they can seem very, very foreign and very, very different by the way that they’re portrayed by the media and all of that sort of thing. How could a teacher sort of prepare themselves to be more open-minded and accepting and learning about what they’re going to experience in that?

Hakea: So two things before I talk about that. As you know, not all rural, regional and remote communities are first Nations themselves. So it could be a mining town station, farming kind of community. So making sure you know what type of community you’re going into.

Secondly, Foreign makes so much sense. It does feel like you are arriving in a whole new culture. So, your listeners might be able to think about a time they went to Asia or, you know, India or somewhere that’s a completely different culture and that, that feeling that they had there, that’s a similar feeling you’re gonna get when you go remote or rural in a, you know, a First Nations, majority town.

So in regards to prepping for that and getting your mindset and seeking to be culturally aware, there’s actually a lot that you can do right now, which is great. There are some really wonderful Facebook pages and websites that you can go do to start learning. Off the top of my head. For example, Ms. Gibbs pops into my mind. So she’s a blogger that talks about First Nations books and provides like resource packs. Learning to Naga, I think is one. Corey curriculum is another. So they all talk about, ways to incorporate First Nations perspectives into your everyday teaching now no matter where you are.

So they’re great to do. We also have a recommended reading list and a recommended viewing list over on the remote teacher.com au. So teachers can start just in their everyday pleasure time, watching films, autobiographies, documentaries about First Nations, peoples and Cultures, so you can raise your awareness that way.

And books. So we’ve authored three books. My Deadly Boots, Tracks, the Missing and Black Cockatoo. Carl and I illustrated by First Nations illustrators as well that kind of give an insight into what life in remote communities is like, and the challenges and the biases that our characters face for their ways that you can do it.

There’s also lots of great online cultural awareness, professional development, reconciliation Australia, and a few others have some great ones that you can do, but I can’t quite remember them all off my head. But our website. Lots of lists of pd. So doing it that way is another way. And also in your local community, you spoke about going in, like purposely connecting.

There’s also ways to purposely collect if you go to the Aboriginal organization or the local First Nations museum or cultural center. But you can do it also by doing things like, volunteering in different spaces. So that. Local youth hub or places where young people might be of diverse ethnicities in general.

So those are kind of ways that you can start learning and thinking and, and joining our space. Sorry, I’m doing lots of plugs for that Facebook group by accident,

but.

Emily: no, no, no. It’s perfect.

Hakea: We, um, we do talk about, you know, the challenges. We ask people for advice. We share resources and links and websites and all that over on there.

So, you know, if you wanna learn more about culture or the specific community you’re going to or those kind of things you can ask on there.

Emily: and there’s a good chance that there’s someone that is living there currently or has lived there before.

Hakea: totally yes. And, . And I think before you go remote, it’s one thing to learn about, you know, general First Nations culture, another to learn about the diversity of it, and then like narrow it down to specific things you’re interested in. But, but before you go remote, it’s also important that you do things like, you know, like that special needs we were talking about before, like learning what E S L D is because very, very shamefully, this Bachelor of Education English major, who had four years experience before going remote, didn’t really know or understand about, English as a second language teaching. So learning about E S L D and how that, how you might get, that two-way learning. And also kind of thinking about, you might just do a basic course in Auslan cuz you’ve got those students that will be deaf.

You might do trauma informed teaching, you might do like even full wheel drive training and first aid training, all these little kind.

Emily: Practical day to.

Hakea: Totally. And it’s not like, don’t use them as a barrier. Don’t, don’t think that because I don’t know this yet, I shouldn’t go rural or remote and don’t think like I’m not prepared enough.

We need teachers out there that are open-minded and willing to learn. So do as much general learning as you can through those reading and viewing lists and simple courses. Like, go take a leap. It’s, it’s just because you don’t quite know yet. As long as you’re willing to learn and willing to be flexible, remote is still for you?

Emily: Awesome. So we’re almost outta time so I guess something else we didn’t talk about is those people that already have families and the challenges that are around that.

Hakea: So, really quickly, we just wrote a blog post ongoing remote with families. We know that the majority of people go remote when they’re younger. It’s an adventure. You get to see new things. You get to boost your career. We get that like on our website, we talk about the benefits and if it’s the right time for you to go.

We investigate that and we’ve got a couple of blog posts on it, but. But if you’re an older, more experienced teacher with all that value and, and knowledge that you can bring, that is amazing. And you are so welcome and so worth coming to remote communities too. It will be a challenge with your young families and there are some communities that are suited to your young families and some that are not.

Some that have better, medical care for your children. Schools that go p to 12, cuz often they don’t. Our students have to go schooling at a boarding school. So some of these will work for your families, some won’t. Some will have a, a local community pool, some will have afterschool activities and some won’t.

So being aware of what they are. Fine tuning what you need and finding the right community for you. There’s an amazing recruitment service called Footprint Placements and Georgie and Ben nicu, no remote communities, and they know the ones that’ll work for, you know, young, vibrant teachers and ones that’ll work for families and they can help tailor a remote placement for you.

So there’s, there’s so much opportunity. We highly recommend at least looking into remote teaching and rural teaching and, you know, expanding your horizons. And when you come back, you’ll be a better teacher for it. You’ll be more hands on. You’ll do building brain breaks. You’ll scaffold learning better.

You’ll put in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives more efficiently. You’ll you know, be culturally aware in the way you are delivering mainstream lessons in wherever your hometown or community or city is. It would just make you a better person and a better teacher. We couldn’t speak more highly of it.

Emily: Oh, perfect. You’ve almost sold me

Hakea: get out there with your two young kids. My challenge, was that we wanted a different style of teaching. So for our daughter, We came back to Northern Rivers to give her the specific start to education and then we’ll go back and teach in, some of the remotes that we love and know to give her that, cultural immersion once she’s had that, foundation of schooling at the type of school that we wanted.

So for people who are, eager to get out there, and if that’s you, Emily , there’s times and places that can work for our, our little.

Emily: Perfect. All right. So do you have one last parting message for, for the listeners?

Hakea: No, but be an open learner, open mind, explore. And even if you never go remote, the learning that you’ll do now and the, the exploration of remote teaching or First Nations cultures will benefit you across the board. So even if you don’t end up remote, thank you for listening and, you know, connect anytime

Emily: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. I think we are going to have convinced at least a few people. It’s, it’s, you know, worth, worth the risk and worth the jump and worth the learning experience.

Hakea: Yeah, he’s hoping. Thank you, Emily.

Emily: All right, thank you!