The bell rings signaling the end of class, and many juniors race up the stairs to get to their US History class. Several of them enter Ray Fowler’s classroom, sit down, and turn to face the board; however, instead of a regular lesson, they instead learned about the Australian efforts in World War II from Carmel Stolarchuk, visiting teacher from our sister school St. Stephen’s College in Queensland, Australia.

Stolarchuk, has been involved in education for most of her adult life. With the exception of a ten-year break to parent her children, she devoted herself to teaching others and became focused on historical subjects.

“I look at my life as being influenced by global events, like what happens in the world,” Stolarchuk said. “I [even] went to a lot of the places that I’d taught about. As a history teacher, it gives you a lot more credibility.”

During her stay here, Stolarchuk has observed and guest-taught in several world history classes from an Australian standpoint. When she was not teaching history, she studied the methods of her American colleagues and shared her own educating experiences.

“It’s been wonderful to observe really excellent teachers, and your students have very high standards and are very academic, so it’s given me lots of ideas to use,” said.

While Stolarchuk sees upper school students as largely similar to the ones in her classes back in Australia, she has noted a few major differences. She found the smaller class sizes and the allocation of different buildings for different subjects particularly appealing features of the campus.

“The wonderful advantage here is that each teacher has their own room. In Australia, the teachers move,” she said. “[In my case,] I am mostly the only teacher in my room, but other teachers, like a math teacher, could teach in there; so I would love us to have a building just for us.”

She also admired the cultural diversity that pervades our student body, and said that she hoped to see more of that reflected at St. Stephen’s.

Overall, Stolarchuk was impressed with the history department and its curriculum, as well as the academic prowess she had observed.

“Students here are very informed about the world, I think more than [in] Australia,” she said. “People say, ‘Americans only know their own history,’ but I don’t agree with that, not at Harker anyways.”

Stolarchuk returns to Australia tonight and says she hopes to implement some of the ideas she has gained.