Attending Norman State High School for one week as a student teacher has exposed me to some of the issues and requirements of teachers within schools. Norman State High School is now seventeen years old, having being opened in 1980, and has a current enrolment of eight hundred and fifty students from grades eight up to twelve. The school is situated in a middle to lower class suburb. Students with professional-classed parents, who can afford the higher private education fees, send their children to one of two large private high schools in the surrounding suburbs. Being a public school it has a wide variety of students from both above and below the poverty line. The majority of the eight hundred and fifty students have chosen Norman State High School because of its affordability and closeness to home.
             My assigned teacher, Mr Coolbee, is a senior science and chemistry teacher at Norman State High School. Mr Coolbee's education career was sparked while tutoring science students at University. "I'd done some tutoring before and enjoyed that, so I got into teaching." (Loader, 2000, p. 1) In 1988 after completing a one-year postgraduate he was offered his first teaching position in Tully. The Education Department posted him in two rural schools, three years each, before he moved to Cairns and continued teaching in the science field at Norman State High School. This is Mr Coolbee's seventh year of teaching at Norman State High School and he is well respected among the other teachers as one who has good advice. He teaches all high school grades in both multi-strand and core science subjects.
             The interview took place in Mr Coolbee's separate office, off the science department staff room. We discussed many issues that teachers face including classroom management, funding, student diversity, technology and bullying, but as these topics arose he quickly passed over them. His most significant point of interest was in discussing the...