Well, to begin with, I wasn’t accepted into teacher’s college because of the grades I scored in the Higher School Certificate. In point of fact, I failed this examination miserably. I’ve always had a great fear of examinations and as a result of this I’d usually do poorly.

Before I was accepted into teacher’s college, I had to write an essay on a topic of my choice. This in turn was followed by an interview at the college. I would not have graduated from college this year if I had not been supported by the Aboriginal Study Grant, because my family just couldn’t give me this financial support over the three years.

I’ve always had the ‘dream’ of becoming a school teacher. I come from a large family and have had children around me constantly. I love spending time with children because they’re so innocent. I enjoy watching them as they gradually take one step at a time and come to learn about life and what it’s all about.

When I was a child I would play ‘schools’. You couldn’t have guessed but I was always the school teacher and my sister and cousins would be the children in my class. I’d never really thought of pursuing any other career but a teacher’s.

I worked through my college years because I had no choice! I came to realise that if I was to succeed, I had to put a great deal of effort into these three years and it didn’t take me very long to reach this conclusion.

These schools are generally grouped together for practical and geographical purposes, although they cover a broad spectrum from remote Community Primary Schools with Secondary Departments catering for Years 8, 9, and 10, through Aboriginal/Islander Community High Schools to Secondary Departments or High Schools in relatively remote country areas with a significant proportion of Aboriginal or Islander students. Schools included are: Aurukun, Kowanyama, Doomadgee, Mornington Island, Yarrabah, Palm Island, Thursday Island, Bamaga, Weipa North and Normanton.

How can one describe him? Cheeky, shy, mischievous, intelligent. He is all of these. He also has a great sense of humour and great powers of observation and hearing. Sometimes I’ve found his sense of humour rather weird, but I’ve found it’s because he cannot express himself in words, so he laughs at things, even someone else’s misfortunes„

Since working with them I have found there is a difference between the urban child and the humpy child.

Urban children grow up in an ordinary urban situation like any other childo Their best friend could be the European kid next door and they can be welcome in each other’s homes at any time They are very much integrated and can be found with a mixed group of any nationality. Their ideas are much the same: to grow up and get a job – an apprenticeship if a boy, or a truck driver. The girls think teaching or typing would be nice. These children feel pretty secure, especially if they have parents who are either Christians or non-drinkers.

Both urban and humpy children have strong family ties and become terribly lonely if away from familiar surroundings. Little children are protected by other people even when deserted by their own mothers. I found, if I have them home to stay with me for a weekend, the children usually want to stay longer and when they return to the family they usually go up in the rest of the family’s estimation. They are very interested in all you do in the home – from cooking a meal to washing and cleaning. They want to know why you do this, that or the other, and they follow you around, watching. They like to help you do things and you can end up having quite a hilarious time in the kitchen.

During 1973 the outstation movement at Yirrkala was going in full force. Aboriginal people were moving from Yirrkala to start up their own communities consisting of numbers of their own clan. During that time Aboriginal people asked many questions about school. So in 1975 the outstation schools were established and were serviced by two visiting teachers from the central school.

The names of the communities and the clans that established their outstations in terms of houses and school are these:

In 1975 I was appointed to the infants section of a primary school in a Brisbane suburb with a population consisting mainly of:

With regard to the editorial in the October/November 1981 issue of The Aboriginal Child at School concerning successful approaches to the education of Aboriginal children, I thought it may be of some interest to readers of the journal (especially those teachers transferring to schools serving significant numbers of Aboriginal students) to read about The Home School’s approach to education. This approach does not cater for any special needs of Aboriginal (and Islander) students – indeed all of its students are treated and taught in the same way – but for some reason Aboriginal children appear to be happy at this school, want to continue their education there next year and/or in years to come, and are generally motivated enough to achieve at least a pass level in most of their subjects.

The Home School is a small, non-denominational, private, secondary boarding school and it has had fifteen students of Aboriginal descent enrolled as full boarders since 1978. They have mostly come from Aurukun, Laura and Mornington Island, and a grant from the Commonwealth Government covers their school fees. Eight of the 1981 Aboriginal students intend to return to this school in 1982, two of them to do Year 12 and four to do Year 11. All of these students are quite definite and enthusiastic about returning in 1982, which, in itself, is a success story, especially as many of them have been ‘cast-offs’ from the large state secondary schools in the local area. Either they had been truanting (in one case two girls had been at a local hostel for eight weeks before the hostel management found out that the girls had never attended the high school in which they had been enrolled) or they had been problem students and The Home School had been approached as a last chance for their successful education. (One boy who had been expelled from one of the local state secondary schools gave, a year later, The Home School’s major speech at the annual Speech Night, and a very impressive speech it is reported to have been.)

A new and highly successful initiative in education this year has been to introduce ethnobotany into the school’s Culture Program. We feel certain that this approach will be successful through all school grades and will promote oral and written discourse for Aboriginal children.

Much has been said and written by the reading specialists about the way children learn to read and how teachers should be facilitators in this natural process. Frank Smith says that phonics need not be taught in the classroom; in fact he says it makes the learning to read process more difficult for children (Smith 1973, p.185).

Phonics or grapho-phonics tells a reader and writer how spelling patterns relate to sound sequences (Reed 1977, p.393). Whether phonics is taught incidentally on a one-to-one basis or whether it is taught more formally, I believe phonics does have a place in the classroom today, particularly in the bilingual Aboriginal classroom. Teachers of Aboriginal children should feel free to teach phonics, despite what the specialists say.

Much that has been written relates to native English-speaking children, brought up in a literate society where newspapers and bedtime stories are the norm. In this paper I am concerned with non-English speaking tribal Aboriginal children, in a pre-literate society. They attend bilingual schools where they learn to read and write first in the vernacular and then in English. I will point out that what the reading specialists advocate in learning to read naturally, is not always sound advice for tribal Aboriginal children learning to read and write in the vernacular.

Most Aboriginal communities in Australia have been provided with government schools, built, staffed and organized by government departments. As with mission schools, the motivation for schooling has largely come from outside the community itself, though often with tacit community support. Although formal ‘Western’ schooling fits uncomfortably with the values of a hunter-gatherer society, in most cases schools have adapted very little to the special environment of an Aboriginal community. Not surprisingly, both achievement and attendance are often poor. Attempts to vary programs, as in bilingual education, and to augment the staff of these schools with Aboriginal teacher aides (teaching assistants), have not altered this situation greatly, though this does not negate the worth of these initiatives.

One of the many possible reasons for this predicament is the lack of community control over what happens in its school. In many cases this is almost absolute, duplicating the lack of control over land, law, health services and many other aspects of life. For this reason, schools have been seen by some authors as one of the more direct agents of cultural change, acting to assimilate Aboriginal people into white society with a community that functions as a ‘total’ institution. The natural resistance of Aboriginal people to this process is likely to have profound implications for Aboriginal community schools.

A Bilingual Early Childhood Conference held in the Northern Territory at Batchelor Education Village in August 1980, provided the content and emphasis of this paper. In attendance at the conference were Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members of teaching teams from bilingual schools of Central Australia and the Top End of the Northern Territory.

The conference aimed at providing an opportunity for dialogue to occur between team members, to assist them in further understanding the importance of two-way communication, and to raise their conscious level of thinking towards understanding the roles each should play within a bilingual classroom setting.

The team-teaching approach demands co-operation and a close working relationship between both team members. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal teachers plan together for each day of teaching and share class materials and ideas. Each teacher must be willing to be a leader at times and a follower at other times, and there must be constant discussion about the aims of their programs and their subsequent implementation. Groups of children normally rotate between the members of the team for different lessons, which are presented in the mother tongue language of the teacher in ‘face to face’ contact with the children.

Following co-ordinated effort on the part of teachers and Aboriginal school assistants from three Port Augusta schools and an Aboriginal Education and Aboriginal Studies adviser throughout 1980, courses have been developed for an Aboriginal Studies program at Year 8 and 9 levels.

All Year 8 students at Port Augusta High School, Augusta Park High School and Caritas Catholic School currently participate in the one term course. Each of the three secondary schools has committed both teacher time and available facilities to the successful development and implementation of the course. They continue to co-ordinate their activities and resources through the management of an Inter-school Aboriginal Studies Faculty which meets fortnightly.

The initiation of these developments came from the felt need of the schools to cater more for the cultural requirements of the Aboriginal students and to provide all students with an insight into local Aboriginal cultures.

Each of the people involved in developing the course had previously made efforts to incorporate elements of Aboriginal Studies in other subject areas like Social Studies, History, English and Science but felt that the topics were not being developed to their full extent. Also, whether or not Aboriginal Studies topics were taught tended to depend upon the individual interest of the teachers. By developing a course outline that could eventually be taught at each year level and accepted as a part of the curriculum of the course, writers believed that the future of the course could be ensured.

A child picks up all words by listening to somebody at home (relatives) or a teacher in school. Children first learn from their parents. Mother teaches children by saying words bit by bit until the children really can understand their own tongue and the meanings of these words. In the same way teachers write words on the blackboard, say them and then explain to the children while the children listen.

This listening/hearing is the most important thing for the children. When teachers give a lesson they must first explain which part of the habitat they will talk about. Let the children listen to you carefully and give them a good explanation about these habitats around them. Prepare all the materials that you are going to use such as charts, pictures, slides, library books, if you are staying in the classroom. Prepare for an excursion if that is your lesson plan. Show these things, explain what you are talking about to give the children a better understanding, so they will remember this information.

The other important thing for the children to do, apart from listening, is for them to talk. There is only one way for the teacher to know if the children understand the lesson. The teacher must ask questions to see if the children know the answers. The teacher must ask the children to talk about the topic to see if they can memorize the information and use the science skills (see Skills section).

Yirara College, for the past five years, has given students in their final two years (Years 10 and 11) the opportunity to prepare themselves for entry into employment or further education. This is called our Pre-Employment Course.

Papunya settlement is located some 250km west of Alice Springs on the Haasts Bluff Aboriginal Reserve. Originally commenced in 1958 as an alternative for the growing numbers of people living at the old Finke River Mission ration depot of Haasts Bluff, it became the centre of the Luritja language group. These people were traditionally Mayutjara, Ngalia or Pintupi. There are some other languages spoken at Papunya but this is almost exclusively by adults who have married into the Luritja group. A large number of traditional Pintupi people who have lived at or near Papunya are now located on what are known as the Western Outstations.

When I first moved to Coffs Harbour in 1972, I quickly became aware of the problems facing Aboriginal children in the school and community. Now, ten years later, seems a good time to review the position.

Statistically there have been changes. The Aboriginal population in Coffs Harbour Shire is 1.6% of the total population, namely: males 200, females 194, total 394.

The new Tyalla Primary which opened next to Orara High in 1978 has 29 Aboriginal pupils, while the Aboriginal population of Orara High itself has increased from 10 to 31 students (2 being in Year 11) in keeping with this school’s growth from only Years 7 – 9 in 1973, to a full secondary school by 1976.

It appears that attitudes among teachers and white children have polarised. There are the ‘hawks’ and the ‘doves’. When these terms were invented during the Eisenhower years in the U.S.A., it was easy to tell a ‘hawk’ from a ‘dove’. The ‘hawks’ were those who favoured warlike measures and confrontation, while the ‘doves’ were those who wanted peace talks and mutual disarmament. These days it has become difficult to differentiate in the military aviary but in this educational issue there seems to be a marked line of division. On the one hand there are those who condemn as ‘racist’ any special programs of financial aid to assist Aboriginal children, ‘the hawks’, and on the other those who blame a white-dominated society for the problems Aboriginal children face, ‘the doves’.

As the classification implies, Special Aboriginal Schools necessitate special skills, methodology, philosophy, curricula and above all, special personnel. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons not all of the personnel who have trained for these positions take up appointments in these schools. Quite often it is the ordinary classroom teacher or principal who must review his or her own makeup, and adjust to the new set of circumstances and special needs which they face.

Personal adjustments to the new environment and the planning of educational goals and programs require time. No two situations are exactly alike and no single formula can guarantee success. It is up to the individual to search and to determine, largely through trial and error, a recipe for success.

The degree and meaning of success is inherent in the quality of goals set, rather than the quantity of output. If the incumbents in Special Aboriginal Schools expect high levels of success, they can achieve high levels of success. If they choose only to serve their time, success will not be an outcome. It is the expectations held by the school staff, not what is expected of the school staff, which will promote success and equal educational opportunity. Expectation levels are believed to be critical for both personal survival and educational development within the school.

Education systems are devised by the members of a society to perpetuate the values, customs and beliefs of that culture. Therefore, in a multicultural society, any child from a minority cultural group who is educated in the educational system of the majority cultural group as, for example, most Aboriginal students, must be at a disadvantage.

Despite the fact that unless they work in traditional or semi-traditional areas, large numbers of teachers will not perceive any cultural differences, Aboriginal students do feel different. They do perceive differing value patterns between their own and the wider ‘white’ society and at times they feel alienated and alone, swamped by a sea of white faces and white ideals.

Traditionally, teachers have felt that it was important to treat all students exactly the same: that any variation from this ideal would savour of injustice and that anathema to all good teachers – favouritism! Surely, the aim to provide equal opportunity for all implies equal treatment for all – or does it? What of the child who is disadvantaged before entering the classroom, simply because he belongs to a minority culture? How is it possible to erase the inequalities engendered by this situation so that in fact all students ave given equal opportunities? Why not try “Positive discrimination”?

“Positive discrimination” implies treating a student differently in order to assist that student in the acquisition of positive reinforcement regarding his sense of self worth, aims and achievements. This is a sensitive issue so teachers who are unsure of methods of approach or who feel uncomfortable with the idea should not attempt to use it. However, for the caring sensitive teacher who also has plenty of experience, the good news is that positive discrimination works! In order to make it work there are some salient points worth noting:

“Woolah” means “Hurray – Well done” in the language of the Aboriginal people of the south-west of Western Australia and is the title of the magazine published by the Aboriginal students at the Kewdale Senior High School and of the program that focuses on the magazine’s production.

The aptness of this title has been demonstrated by the students in their latest endeavour, a study tour to Bali, planned and financed by the group. It all started this way :-

In third term 1980, at the conclusion of their Social Studies program and study of various cultures around the world, student discussion centred on how much they would like to travel and see the world for themselves. Their thinking was wishful, centring on the fact that such trips were far out of their reach, in fact impossible to attain.

These were “fightin’ words” to the teachers and after much discussion we all made a commitment to travel to South-East Asia in 1981. This commitment had three thrusts –

Every Wednesday we have a training program for Aboriginal educators in Swan Hill, which is situated on the New South Wales and Victorian border near the Murray River. The Aboriginal educators involved in this program are: Jon Kirby, Caroline Steel, Lynette Bugeja and myself. This program is co-ordinated by our resource teacher – Jill Pattenden.

In 1981 we covered such subjects as reading and writing skills, communication, teaching techniques, lesson planning, Aboriginal history, child psychology, counselling, lessons in organising, oral history, community and alcohol, public speaking, submission drafting, study of Aboriginal spirituality.

All these subjects were studied with the help of people in the community, both Aboriginal and European. These resource people included local elders, field officers, counsellors, psychologists, an alcohol counsellor, teachers, and people with tribal experience.

As part of the program we did activity days at local primary schools. These days are called Jemauraji days (which means “today’s dreaming”). They consisted of different activities such as ground drawing, damper making, corroborée, totems and fire making. Everybody in each school was involved in these activities.