IT'S not the differences that have struck Anthony Le Couteur while working in schools in the UK, Sydney's suburbs and the Central West.
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Rather, it's the similarities.
"Kids are kids," the new director of boarding at Scots All Saints College said this week.
"Navigating adolescence is not an easy time, whether you are a UK student, growing up in the outer western suburbs of Sydney or growing up in the Central West.
"There are some differences, but they are kids going through a difficult time and it's our job as educators and boarding staff to help them navigate that time.
"They will want to explore independence and freedom and to make choices for themselves and one of our greatest challenges is to help them make positive choices."
Mr Le Couteur, who joined Scots All Saints College this year, has spent his working life in schools, but it took a trip overseas as a young man to help him realise that's where his interest lay.
"When I was at school I wasn't overly sure that I wanted to be an educator," he said.
"But then in my gap year [when he worked in England in boarding schools] I sort of went 'this is definitely what I want to do' and I found my vocation and love of teaching."
A love of the "pastoral care" side of teaching led Mr Le Couteur to boarding.
"I have done extensive boarding stints in the UK mainly and back here in the Central West," he said.
"By being involved in pastoral care it gives you a wonderful opportunity and a privilege to be involved in a young person's life and to make a difference in their life.
"I'm passionate about boarding: providing an environment where kids can come and live and the responsibility that that encompasses as well.
"Parents are dropping their kids off to us and saying here they are, their most prized possession, so the responsibility of being involved in boarding is quite high, but within that comes a real reward, too.
"When you work with a student all the way through boarding and you essentially will be living in the same environment as them, the relationships are really strong."
Boarders learn skills that stand them in good stead when they leave school, he said.
"That ability to get along with others and to live with other people is something we can't put a price on for later on," he said.
"A lot of the students will go off to uni, some will live in shared houses of different types. People who have done boarding understand how to get on with people.
"I think boarders develop a greater degree of emotional intelligence because of the environment in which they grow up."
Which is not to say it's easy for those who are starting boarding - or their parents.
"To watch the parents drive away in tears, that is really hard," he said.
"We often say to parents 'don't cry until you've left the school gates, because that will make it harder for them' [the students], but more often than not that's not possible because of the emotion.
"And that's where that responsibility comes in."
Mr Le Couteur, who did his master's in leadership through Monash University in 2017-18, said one of the reasons he wanted to join Scots All Saints College was to work with John Weeks, who became the head of college last year.
"His wealth of experience at boarding schools, the most recent at Knox, meant he was someone I really wanted to work for," Mr Le Couteur said.
"He's really quite innovative and gets boarding and understands the Central West, having started his career at Young. He understands rural and regional families."
And on the subject of rural and regional families, Mr Le Couteur said he had been inspired by seeing how the college's rural students were dealing with the drought that has ravaged the inland.
"Their resilience, perseverance and ability to support family and things is quite incredible," he said.
Mr Le Couteur has seen and heard about the drought's effects during a recent Scots All Saints College regional tour to meet with students' families as far west as Bourke.
"There was one family who told the story about when they opened an umbrella - this was probably not so recently - and one of the kids said 'what's that?'.
"It was a younger student and they just hadn't experienced it."