It takes a special person to work with Aboriginal students, one who understands that the most important concern of families is a child’s wellbeing and that the three most important things in a child’s life are family, family and family. MARK DOECKE explains.

When Aboriginal people from remote communities in the Northern Territory send their students to school – either locally or to distant boarding school – the most pressing question in their minds is this: will my child be happy? While they’re interested in their children’s learning and they want their children to learn skills that will give them access to mainstream society, their most urgent queries are really about the welfare of their children.

The choices Indigenous people make regarding education are based first and foremost on relationships and how effectively pastoral care operates within the school. In particular, Indigenous families want to know how well the school is able to deal effectively with things like teasing and bullying. As educators, if we want to engage Indigenous students in our schools, we need to listen to what the families are telling us and showing us about how we deal with them and their children. I suspect this applies as much to Indigenous Australians in cities and country towns as it does to those living in isolated communities.

Initiatives to keep and support Indige­nous students at Yirara College, Alice Springs, in recent years have included looking out for students at risk of substance abuse and responding to the educational needs of students who cannot sustain any more than a few weeks at boarding school by providing onsite education in remote communities.

Students at risk

A few years ago, Yirara College decided to take on a group of students at high risk due to petrol sniffing, and re-establish their schooling. As part of its corporate citizenship program, BP Australia wanted to do something positive for youth caught up in substance abuse in central Australia, and approached us about working with them to address the educational needs of a group of boys and young men – all from one particularly dysfunctional community. For some time Yirara College had been grappling with the question of how to assist these young people to return to school. An enthusiastic and hard-working committee was formed that met almost weekly to learn more about the issue and come up with a program that would assist these at-risk students to stay at school, as well as support them at home.

The journey of assisting students at risk of petrol sniffing has taken many different turns since. We have organised camps and holiday diversion programs. One of our houseparents has regularly spent his own holiday time in communities providing food and recreational activities for these students. They are most at risk during holidays, when they’re bored at home without school or other activities to occupy them. Another staff member took some at-risk students on a holiday to North Queensland during the mid-year break.

The development of non-sniffable Opal fuel by BP has all but eliminated sniffing in many communities and this has changed the focus of the group. Our Students At Risk Diversionary Committee continues to meet, however, because many of our students remain at risk for a range of reasons: dropping out of school early; never learning to read and write; and physical and emotional neglect. Some will suicide at a young age. A high percentage of our students have special needs. We continue to examine other ways to support these students and keep them at school for as long as possible. These include counselling, sand-play therapy, which we’ve found to be particularly helpful for the students to express their feelings in a non-verbal way, one-on-one support in the classroom and visits away from the school on weekends. We have staff who support teachers and houseparents through the implementation of effective behaviour modification strategies.

Few schools in Australia are like Yirara, but the lessons we keep learning apply to many Indigenous students in this country. If you want to be involved in their education you take on far more in their lives than what happens in the classroom, whether yours is a day or boarding school. If you have Indigenous students you will need to consider some of their basic needs: where they live, whether or not they are receiving regular, healthy meals, and their family dynamics. Indigenous families often experience significant and frequent grief and anger, and their emotional as well as physical needs can be great. Sensitivity, compassion and openness to understanding a different set of cultural norms are all required.

Remote campuses

The single most important reason why Australian Indigenous kids from remote communities are so far behind their non-Indigenous peers in literacy and numeracy is because they simply don’t attend school often enough or consistently enough. Govern­ments, communities and schools with predominantly Aboriginal kids – schools like Yirara College – have been struggling with this for decades.

One solution is to set up new schools in remote communities for Aboriginal students, with new models of operation. Several years ago Yirara set up a remote campus at Walungurru, 520 kilometres west of Alice Springs. Students from Walungurru found it too hard to stay in a boarding school for more than a few weeks. Their families also missed their children when they left for boarding school – to the extent that they would drive to Yirara soon after their children had left for school, on planes, and drive them home again! After considerable discussion over the years they asked us to provide secondary education onsite.

Another alternate model is Nyangatjatjara College, a non-government Indigenous secondary school in the south-west of the NT. Nyangatjatjara College began in the late 1990s by setting up a main campus, including boarding facilities, at Yulara near Uluru, and operating three small one-teacher schools at the Pitjantjatjara-speaking communities of Imanpa 180 kilometres east of Uluru, Mutitjulu at the base of Uluru, and Docker River 230 kilometres west of Uluru.

For a range of reasons Nyangatjatjara College has struggled. A poor governance structure, inexperienced management, high staff turnover, low student and staff morale, and poor student attendance have all dogged the college for much of its life, so much so that in 2006 the Nyangatjatjara Corporation, which owns the school, was put under administration. The college, however, has potential and governments have put considerable money into it. Pitjantjatjara families like the idea of having their own college. The prospects for students to gain work experience and training that leads to real jobs at Yulara – in hospitality, the national park, mechanics and so on – are enormous.

In mid-2007, Yirara College was invited to manage Nyangatjatjara College for a ‘period of time,’ to stabilise the operation and give local communities a chance to talk about how to get the college functioning properly again, and to think about how they want the college run. In effect, the relationship is a partnership where Yirara is assisting what is a small and fragile school.

There are probably two main reasons why Yirara was invited to help. Most Indigenous people in this area of the NT are Lutheran and identify closely with the Lutheran Church. At recent meetings and consultations they’ve clearly said they want Nyangatjatjara College to be ‘like Yirara’ with Christian staff, devotions and Christian perspectives in the curriculum. Yirara College is regarded by governments and many Indigenous families as being a leader in Aboriginal education. For a long time now, Yirara College has been undertaking the challenging work of educating secondary-aged Indigenous teenagers with very low English literacy levels. Most important for families, some of the key staff have stayed a long time, and families feel they know and can trust Yirara College staff.

One of the biggest challenges in managing schools like Nyangatjatjara, or providing onsite education in communities like Walungurru, is staffing. It’s difficult to find teachers and administration staff willing to work in remote communities. Student achievement is often low. Living conditions can be challenging. It can be lonely. Students come to school spasmodically. It takes a special person to work in a remote Aboriginal community. To really make a difference you need to be prepared to stay for a couple of years, and to put time and effort into developing relationships with the local people. ‘White fellas’ come and go frequently in these places and this is very hard on the local people.

If you enrol Indigenous students, whether from the city, country or remote communities, consider the three most important things in their lives: family, family and family! Often students won’t return to school after a break. Schools and their staff usually blame themselves for this, but the reality is that something more important – usually related to family – is happening in the lives of your student. Expect attendance at school to be dominated by issues to do with wellbeing, rather than academic progress. You may assume that a strong sporting program will ensure the students return. As much as Indigenous kids like sport, especially the male students, even that’s not always strong enough to overrule other issues at play.

Indigenous students need support in the classroom and outside of the formal curriculum. It’s best if families can always deal with the same person, or group of people, because relationships are important, and it takes time to build up trust and rapport. In my experience, once you’ve been involved with Indigenous families for many years and they know you’re in it because you really want to help their children, they will become very loyal and supportive friends. A lot of the trust in Yirara as a school is because key staff have stayed many years.

Indigenous education is about relationships – whole sets of relationships, between families and schools, students and staff, and students and students. It’s about pastoral care and wellbeing. It’s about giving to those who cannot give back. It’s about being Jesus’ ‘salt and light’ in the world. And it’s incarnational – daring to seek out and serve those that many have forgotten.

Between managing Nyangatjatjara Col­lege, with its three remote campuses, and the Yirara College campus at Walungurru, we will always be looking for resilient, enthusiastic, adventurous teachers and support staff in years to come. And of course, there’s always a requirement for teachers and boarding assistants at the main Yirara campus in Alice Springs.

Mark Doecke is the principal of Yirara College, Alice Springs.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in School Link, the periodical of Lutheran Education Australia jointly published by the national and district offices. Reproduced with kind permission.

LINKS: www.lea.org.au

More thank just teaching

You can never know for sure just how great an impact you’ve had on Indigenous students in the classroom, but first you have to get them there, as TONY QUALISCHEFSKI explains.

As I approach the roundabout, half a dozen young children play happily in its centre, using a recently bent over sign that once welcomed visitors to Walungurru, alternately as a make-shift see-saw and slippery dip. Behind this scene, I notice a familiar figure, making her way slowly but determinedly across the way and towards the community store.

‘Hello Lavina.’

‘Hello,’ she replies, smiling broadly.

‘I haven’t seen you in school lately,’ I say, raising the inevitable subject of attendance. ‘We like it when you come to school.’

‘I like to come too,’ she rejoins.

‘Maybe we’ll see you later on then, hey? After breakfast?’

She smiles once more before continuing on her way.

It was on a troopie run early on in the 12 months that my wife, Rebecca Qualischefski, and I spent at Kintore Walungurru that Lavina, a 19-year-old mother with a voracious appetite for learning, first approached our vehicle and asked if she too could come to school. At that stage we were averaging around 15 students a day, ranging anywhere from 12 to 20 years of age, not including the babies that some of the young mothers brought with them.

After a troopie run to pick up students we started the school day with morning devotion, which was the most popular part of the school day for some. For others it was the only part. English would always come next. If we didn’t get everyone back after smoko at least they would’ve had a good hour and a half of literacy. For us there was nothing more rewarding than seeing young faces light up when they discovered that they could read and use the words before them. Numeracy was next. Our early focus on money paid off with a perceived relevance in matters monetary provoking the keen interest of most, although this would soon wane as lessons became increasingly abstract. After lunch was the time for either life skills, with a focus on health, or something more hands-on such as art. Fridays were special. This was cooking day and, not surprisingly, usually the best attended.

Lavinia did come to school a few days later, for a couple of sessions at least, although we never saw her in class after that. Throughout the year we saw over 65 dif­ferent students, some almost weekly, others for just a day. But like teaching anywhere, you never truly know the impact that you’ve had on those before you in the classroom. We only pray that our 12 months in Walungurru in some way made an impression on some of those 65 students. They certainly made an impression on us.

Tony Qualischefski and Rebecca Qualischefski were teachers at the Walungurru campus of Yirara College in 2006.