PPCE – Reflection – Ethan Sais

Preservice Teacher Details:

Name: Ethan Sais Pre-service 17974628
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My experiences during my professional practice and community engagement unit have provided me

with an extremely important and useful insight into the experiences and struggles faced by Refugee

students learning to adjust to Australian society and the Australian education system.

I have seen how the trauma experienced by these students influences how they perform and how

they feel and integrate as part of the school’s community. This is because the community

engagement program I have been involved with is the Refugee action support program at Bossley

Park High school. This program is set up as a once a week program run every Thursday afternoon for

ten consecutive weeks. The system at Bossley Park Highschool has pre-service teachers act as tutors

to refugee students from both years 7 and 8 assisting them with homework and assignments. During

these sessions students are provided with advice and scaffolds to guide their learning and help them

understand and meet the standards and demands of the Australian education system. While still

learning the English language, dealing with the outfall from a disrupted education and the trauma

they’ve experienced (Block et.al., 2014).

During this time, I was working with up to 3 students a session from both year 7 and year 8. Helping

them with a myriad of subjects including Math, English, history and science and at times just helping

them develop specific literacy skills including reading and writing (Frey et.al., 2016). This program

also included 1 period a week where each tutor would enter into a class with refugee students to aid
in helping students engage with and complete classroom tasks. During these periods I worked with

the same students every week, it was very rewarding to see them excel in tasks that they at first

struggled to complete. Being involved with this program for the past few months has be extremely

rewarding because I have had the opportunity to build a rapport with my students and develop an

understanding of the school community and how these students fit into it. It was also rewarding to

be a part of this program at the time because some of these students were gearing up to undertake

their NAPLAN examinations.

It troubled me seeing the fear and apprehension of these students in undertaking a test they did not

feel prepared or confident to take. It is evident that the NAPLAN test is geared towards students

who have a contextual and cultural understanding of Australia and this in and of itself creates an

extremely unfair situation for these students. Even though the NAPLAN examination is only used as a

diagnostic tool to identify student needs and to focus school initiatives and programs, I fear that this

could have a major impact by asserting a power dynamic that positions these students in a lower

social class (Creagh, 2013, Wu and Hornsby, 2012).

The RAS program is extremely helpful to combat this and provide students with a fair and even

playing field. The benefits of this program to my own teaching practice have been beyond

astronomical. This is because I have been able to work with a group of students in a context and

situation that allowed me to develop not only a rapport, but also where I can develop a greater

insight into their learning needs and challenges and see how schools differentiate to accommodate

these students. This experience has provided me with a set of experiences that will impact on how I

as a classroom teacher will set out my activities to engage and benefit the learning of these

students.
References
Block, K., Cross, S., Riggs, E., & Gibbs, L. (2014). Supporting schools to create an inclusive
environment for refugee students. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 18(12), 1337-
1355. doi:10.1080/13603116.2014.899636

Creagh, S. (2013). A critical analysis of problems with the LBOTE category on the NAPLaN test. The
Australian Association for Research in Education, 41(1), 1-23. doi:10.1007/s13384-013-0095-
y

Frey, N., Fisher, D., & Hattie, J.,. (2016). Surface, Deep, and Transfer? Considering the Role of
Content Literacy Instructional Strategies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(5), 567-
575. doi:10.1002/jaal.576

Wu, M. &. (2012, October). Inappropriate uses of NAPLAN results. Practically Primary, 17, 16-17.
Retrieved March 2017