Australian Christian College language teacher Geoff Brown is bringing an interactive approach to the classroom.
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Unlike some educators, Australian Christian College teacher Geoff Brown is encouraging monkey business in the classroom.
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Rudi, an orangutan puppet and teacher’s aide, is helping him to engage his students to learn languages.
“He came from the puppet shop here in Echuca, and he only speaks Indonesian and Chinese,” Mr Brown said.
“The very young children, they love Rudi. They want to see him all the time.”
Mr Brown’s approach to teaching has been informed by his 28 years of experience in education across regional Victoria and NSW.
He arrived in Echuca at the start of the year with a raft of immersive tools for teaching languages, including through music, drawing and craft.
A take-home Chinese booklet for primary school students created by Mr Brown.
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“Coming from a primary teaching background, I found that for language teaching, you have to use every trick in the book,” Mr Brown said.
One of the tricks is an actual book he illustrated and published last year through a teaching innovation fellowship from the Department of Education.
As one of 26 teachers selected for the fellowship statewide, Mr Brown said his project was aimed at developing bilingual readers using a format familiar to kids.
“(It) integrates Chinese and science so that you've got aliens who fly around the solar system, and they're talking about the planets and what's in space,” he said.
“Basically, it’s got Chinese at the top and English down below, so you can use one language to learn another.”
Mr Brown is teaching Chinese from Prep to Year 6, and Indonesian to Years 7 and 8 at the college.
For high school students, he has developed cartoons in Indonesian, which he said was an engaging way to break through rote learning.
An excerpt from Mr Brown's 'Biji-bijian' comic series, meaning 'seeds' in Indonesian.
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“A lot of the language learning material gets a little bit boring — there’s only so many times you can ask someone what time the bus leaves,” Mr Brown said.
“To have something a little bit different makes it a lot more fun and a lot more interesting for the students.”
Mr Brown said getting students excited about education increased their enjoyment, and boosted their confidence in being able to learn something new.
Within a few years, he is looking to develop both language classes at the college and begin offering them at a VCE level due to their regional significance in Australia.
“Indonesia is just next door, and China is a major trading partner. Also, we have a lot of interaction with people from China, either migrating here or coming for holidays or business,” Mr Brown said.
He also has personal aspirations to create a series of books for primary school students, and add more shows to his YouTube channel, which began during COVID-19 restrictions.
For now, Mr Brown is content blending his own brand of creativity and teaching at a local level.
“I’m very, very happy to be at Echuca, and I’m very, very happy doing what I’m doing,” he said.
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