Rachel Griffiths:
I first heard about the RESP program at my previous school, and could see the benefits straightaway of what was taking place there. After you're accepted into the program, you do an audit tool, which looks at whole of school practices, and you really take a very fine grain look at what are the areas you need to improve in. Anything from teaching and learning to transitions, to how you support and engage families. And that tool helps you to think about what areas you might like to focus on.
Jessica Duncan:
And just the audit really shows... It showed us how much work we could be doing to support our families, our refugee families, and just all families, really. Because when we're supporting our refugee families, we're supporting all of our EAL families and everyone. So, that was really helpful.
Aaron Simons:
We're able to examine the cross-sections of the communities, and the cultures of the students and where they're from, EAL students, and also those from refugee backgrounds. From that starting point, we're able to... I guess with the help of the RESP team and other community entities, we're able to really have that as a platform to where we wanted to go and how we wanted to work with those communities.
Rachel Griffiths:
Over the two years, you do a series of professional learning sessions where the action team, and the action team goes along and learns about each one of those modules. In your group, that you meet those four times each year, you have the same schools coming each time. It's a mixture of secondary schools, primary schools. And so really different contexts, lots of similarities between schools that you can work on on the same things, and lots of differences. That it's like, "Oh, that's not going to work in our context," but great to hear the ways that different people are doing it. And combined with that, we have, back at school, the whole of staff participating in whole professional learning sessions that relate to some of that content.
Jessica Duncan:
With the whole staff PL, I think it was really good for building empathy for our teachers, and thinking about all the trauma-informed teaching practices. It really helps them to think. When they're hearing these stories of people and their experiences, and then connecting that to the students who are sitting in front of them every day, and thinking, "Okay. What can I do to help?" They're more likely to put in that extra effort when they've got that empathy and they're thinking about that.
Rachel Griffiths:
And I think as part of those professional learning sessions, there's so many people that come along, lots of different services. We've had Whittlesea Community Connections, but also so many other. 100 Story Building, they come along and they talk about the projects they're doing with different schools. And whilst you might not engage that service, you have an understanding of exactly what's available, and the ways that you can tailor that to your school community.
Jessica Duncan:
We had a student voice group where we spoke to a lot of the students from the school that have a refugee background, and we asked them about their experiences transitioning into the school. What it felt like for them when they did start attending here, and what are some of the things that we can improve for them. Things like, when they came to the school, it was really large. They didn't know where to go. They didn't know the map. They didn't know who the teachers were. So, we co-created this passport with students. So now, whenever we have a new student, regardless of whether they're a refugee background or not, they've got this little passport. They can go around to different people and get stamps. We built that with the kids. And so that's a really fun little activity for them, which it feels pretty simple, but we just didn't realize it without talking to the students.
And then on top of that, even just pairing a new student with a student who is already here from a similar language background. So, just having someone that they can talk to in Arabic or in any language that they have to help them navigate a new school. So, that was another thing that really helped that came out of that group.
Rachel Griffiths:
I think something pretty integral that we started doing was having an interpreter at every enrolment meeting, and really get to know the family and the student. You've got the student starting, but the family need a lot of support too.
Maria Mora:
The staff is getting more confident to be addressing the needs of the refugee students and their families, and being more engaging, more involved in what they need as well. So, you will be finding more families coming to the assembly, attending the community hub and asking about their kids, learning progression as well with more confidence.
Aaron Simons:
I think the main change is that we all have an idea of who the kids are, and we have a very clear idea about their needs and how we can respond to them, their sensitivities. There was the RESP program that really gave us an insight into that. All of the teachers that attended, and the staff, were just really able to use that to connect with students in the program.
Rachel Griffiths:
So, the advice I'd give to other schools is to just really be careful about the assumptions you might make, because we definitely made those. There's some unconscious bias that we needed to unpack through the professional learning. And also, just use the room. You are with a whole heap of other schools that have great projects and you can really learn from them. So, I would dive in. And don't forget about the resource that you have around you as well as the community services.
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