Pam Robinson:
We are Lyndale Secondary College. We're situated in Dandenong North. We have approximately 900 students, very diverse background, 52 to 54 different ethnicities.
Michelle Lewis:
We have over 170 students who either have a refugee or refugee-like experience, and our community are genuinely a community that knows how to come together, and that's something that's a real strength of our school. The education and the professional learning that was provided to staff has really impacted the way staff relate to families in parent meetings, making sure that we've got cultural representation in parent meetings. We've got things translated into multiple languages. Even just knowing that we have now 33 different languages spoken in our staff and actually having a database of staff who are willing to act as interpreters or support culturally as well. So it's been really positive across the board.
Sam Crotty:
At the beginning of our RESP journey, we had a fairly comprehensive checklist that just helped us think about different aspects of the school processes and even the physical environment and staff cohort, and just help us think about how things might be going to support refugee background students.
Caz Bates:
So just learning about the different cultures, the different experiences of students and staff within those cultures and how to implement that in my classroom from a teaching standpoint, that's what I've really enjoyed and really taken out of this process so far.
Orla Maher:
I've really loved learning the difference of how to support students through things that someone who hasn't come from a refugee or CALD background might see as just their day-to-day normal experiences, but someone coming from a refugee background might not have ever experienced that before.
Sam Crotty:
The focus in the professional learning on trauma-informed practice has also been really quality. And I think for a lot of schools, that's probably a really important piece. Just an awareness of the services, the programs, the resources that are available through the Department of Education, but also more broadly, just a lot of the community organizations and stakeholders that are supporting families from a refugee background.
Orla Maher:
And I've really enjoyed the learning aspect of being able to communicate with other schools and learn what they've been doing and take their advice and bounce off of each other with the ways that we can support the families and the school that we're in.
Pam Robinson:
Some of the benefits that we've seen in our school community, the overall way that our students and staff are connecting with each other, the respectful conversations, relationships that we are having with our students, the way staff responds to different situations, the way they engage with the students learning.
Orla Maher:
I think for me, one of the biggest benefits I've seen is that community that our parents have been able to build. Even just this morning was a really good example of how closely connected a lot of our families are now.
Michelle Lewis:
One of the key activities has obviously been the workshops that were facilitated by the RESP team over the two-year period. And those staff that attended those workshops anecdotally really changed their practice in terms of how they were working with young people, how they related to families in parent-teacher interviews. And anecdotally, those sessions have been really powerful.
Sam Crotty:
A couple of the changes in policy and practice that we've, I guess, achieved through the project is we reviewed our enrollment processes just to tidy up the way that we collect data when a student enrolls at the school, making sure that we're not missing needs or a likely experience of refugee trauma that might be relevant to engaging and supporting a student here at school. And with that, some of the administration processes have changed to better align with supporting our refugee background families. Another area is making our anti-racism policy more visible to the school community. That was a really key step.
Caz Bates:
Another policy that we've implemented here is adding another colored role flag to the class list. So as teachers mark their role, they're able to see a lavender dot underneath the student's name, which will indicate to that staff member that that student is likely from a refugee background. At minimum, they know then to implement some of that trauma-informed teaching practice for that student within the classroom.
Sam Crotty:
I think just being able to stop and really take your breath and think critically about how what we do is actually affecting a really, can be at times a really vulnerable cohort.
Orla Maher:
I think one key thing for me that I'm going to bring forward is probably just that importance of really honing in on the student's voice or the family's voice and really collaborating with them and bringing them to the forefront with how we plan things. I think it's so important, obviously, that we are servicing the community in how they need us to help them. I think the advice that I would probably give would be to take absolutely every opportunity that comes with RESP. I don't think there's a single part of RESP that I haven't felt has been really valuable for us and our school and the way that we function even just as individual people working within schools.
Sam Crotty:
Make sure your action team has a real cross-section of staff members. It's not just a wellbeing thing. It's not just a teaching thing. You need a whole school approach, which means you're going to get the most out of the project if you have representation from all your departments across the school being exposed to the professional learning particularly, and contributing to the changes that you want to make.
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