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Assignment 2

Warrawong High School (WHS) is a government state school located in the Illawarra region
of NSW, approximately 8km from the Wollongong CBD. The Illawarra region was originally
inhabited by Dharawal people who remain traditional custodians of the land, with smaller
‘Wodiwodi’ subgroups inhabiting the region around Lake Illawarra, including Warrawong
(Wollongong City Council, 2020). WHS is an influential member of the Warrawong
community of schools and receives enrolments from students within its catchment from
Cringila, Kemblawarra, Lake Heights, Port Kembla and Warrawong public schools (NSW
Dept. of Education, 2020). Warrawong is a low socio-economic area with WHS students
having an Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) value of 887, well
below the 1000 average, with 72% of students being in the bottom quartile (ACARA, 2020).
Warrawong has a strong multicultural and diverse school community that reflects the
cultural diversity of modern Australia. The school has approximately 600 students with 13%
identifying as Indigenous Australian (NSW Dept. of Education, 2020). Of the whole school
population, 56% were from non-English speaking backgrounds from 39 different
nationalities (NSW Dept. of Education, 2020) (ACARA, 2020).
Warrawong has a strong immigrant community with 2016 census data showing that in the
suburb of Warrawong, 48.3% of families had both parents born overseas as opposed to
32.1% of both parents being born in Australia (ABS, 2017). Many students at WHS are first
generation Australians with 89.1% of 12-17 years old in Warrawong being born in Australia
and 7.2% were born overseas in countries such as New Zealand, Syria, Thailand, Philippines,
Iraq, South Africa and Vietnam (.id community, 2017). Macedonian was the most common
language spoken at home for all of Warrawong residents (8.6%) followed by Italian (6.8%),
Portuguese (4.5%), Arabic (2.2%) and Turkish (1.7%). Other languages spoken included
Spanish, Vietnamese, Filipino/Tagalog, Maltese, Croatian, Serbian, Greek, Mandarin,
Tongan, Swahili and Thai. However, for high school aged children aged 12-17 in Warrawong,
Arabic was the most common, non- English language spoken at home (1.7%) followed by
Macedonian (1.3%), Serbian (0.6%), Vietnamese (0.5%) and Greek (0.5%). This reflects the
recent arrivals of many refugee families from the Middle East such as Syria and Iraq into the
Warrawong community within the last 10-year period (ABS, 2017) (.id community, 2017)
(Wollongong City Council, 2020a). The percentages may seem small, but 2016 census data
show that in this age bracket, 39 different languages were spoken at home which spreads
the data across a range of languages as well as truly reflect the vast multicultural and
linguistic diversity of the Warrawong community (Wollongong City Council, 2020a).
Warrawong has had a strong history of migration and the settlement of refugees from war
torn nations from the various European communities that arrived after World War 2, to
Vietnamese refugees in the 70s and Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian communities migrating in
the 90’s. Most recent refugees arriving into the Warrawong community are from the Middle
East such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan as well as a vast array of African nations such as the
Congo, Eritrea, Burundi and Ethiopia (Wollongong City Council, 2020a).

Due to Warrawong’s history of immigration and refugee settlement, there is a strong

network of services and facilities available to help and support these diverse communities
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(Wollongong City Council, 2020a). An important resource that is available at WHS for
students from non-English speaking or linguistically diverse backgrounds is the Warrawong
Intensive English Centre (IEC). Funded by the Commonwealth and State government’s as
part of their cultural diversity strategy, the IEC was set up in 1979 to provide English
instruction and support to newly arrived children from culturally and linguistically diverse
backgrounds (CALD) within the local area. It is the only is the only centre of its kind within
NSW for high school aged students outside of the Sydney Metropolitan area. The students
that attend the IEC come from non-English speaking migrant families, refugees or have
temporary resident status with very little or no ability to communicate using the English
language. The centre provides students with English instruction across all subject areas
and the opportunity to practice their English-speaking skills by engaging in a specialised
curriculum for 3 to 4 school terms prior to transferring into mainstream classes at WHS or
another high school of their choice (NSW Department of Education, 2020).

Another important resource available to WHS students, especially to the 13% Indigenous
students, is the Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation (CUAC) which is located 2km
from WHS. As stated on its website, the CUAC is “dedicated to raising the esteem, pride
and dignity of young Aboriginal people in their Aboriginal culture and heritage”
(Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation, 2020). The CUAC uses a local artist
cooperative approach to engage young Indigenous members of the local community to
share stories and help them learn and understand their culture. The centre runs many local
programs and community workshops that create cultural awareness and share local
Aboriginal culture and traditions into the community as well as break down barriers and
help non-indigenous Australians better understand local indigenous culture and traditions
(Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation,2020).

The Illawarra Multicultural Services (IMS) also has a community hub at Warrawong Public
School of which provides services of support and assistance to new migrant families in the
community from CALD backgrounds. The IMS hub provides a range of drop in services that
provide assistance, support and advocacy for such families as well as organise capacity
building activities that help integrate new migrant families into the community generating
‘pathways to employment, language acquisition and education’ (Illawarra Multicultural
Services, 2021).

Similar to the IMS, SCARF is another volunteer organisation within the Warrawong area that
organise many services and programs that aim to support new migrants and refugees adjust
to their new lives within the Illawarra. Specifically for WHS students, SCARF can provide
assistance and support from volunteers for education and training with one on one tutoring,
homework clubs, access to computers and internet services. There is also a SCARF youth
program which organises a range of social and recreational initiatives that foster friendship
connections and help build confidence in young people from refugee backgrounds as well as
provide job training and work skill development (SCARF Refugee support, 2020).

Warrawong library is a council run facility that organises activities and programs for WHS
students and other local youth outside of school hours. Besides providing a learning space
with resources such as books, textbooks, computers and printing access, the library runs a
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program called TeenzConnect which runs many fun and engaging after-school activities for
local kids organised by Wollongong City Council youth workers (Wollongong City Council,
2021).

With Warrawong being a low SES area, Barnardos Australia has an office in Warrawong to
work with the local children, young people and families “to break the cycle of
disadvantage, creating safe, nurturing and stable homes, connected to family and
community” (Barnardos Australia, 2020). Barnardos is one of Australia’s leading child
protection charities that work with vulnerable children and young people to provide a range
of child-focused programs and services that help care for children exposed to abuse, neglect
or homelessness (Barnardos Australia, 2020).

Using the community resources previously mentioned, two potential classroom activities
utilising these resources available will be discussed. Making use of the local indigenous
artists involved in the Coomaditchie Artist Cooperative, an Indigenous painting workshop is
one suggestion for a classroom activity to help WHS students learn and develop an
intercultural understanding of local Dharawal and Wodiwodi indigenous culture. Using local
Coomaditchie artists as well as the Coomaditchie’s publication ‘Coomaditchie: Symbols and
their meaning’, the painting workshop will focus on traditional art practices that incorporate
the shapes and patterns of such artwork of which Coomaditchie artists are well known for
(Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation, 2020). The workshop will take place in a Year
8 Science class during the Biological Science topic where students learn about the content
descriptor ‘Cells are the basic units of living things’ (ACSSU149) (ACARA, 2017). The shapes
and patterns of the Indigenous art will be related back to the topic of cells to demonstrate
the organisational structure and tessellating pattern of cells that make up multicellular
tissue and organs. Below are examples of Indigenous artwork and microscopes slides of cells
highlighting the similarities of the two as well as showing examples of the intention of the
classroom activity with the Coomaditchie art cooperative.
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Images source: (Wepf, 2018)

Another classroom activity involves using the Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation’s
publication ‘Murni Dhungang Jirrar: Living in the Illawarra’ to help identify local animals and
plants (biota) in the Warrawong/Lake Illawarra area. ‘Murni Dhungang Jirrar’ is a book that
identifies and describes plants and animals in the local Illawarra area using the Dharawal
local language as well as explore the different environments and ecosystems of the Illawarra
region and their importance to the local Indigenous people (Coomaditchie United Aboriginal
Corporation, 2020). This will be very useful in Year 9 Science during the Biological Sciences
topic ‘Ecosystems consist of communities of interdependent organisms and abiotic
components of the environment; matter and energy flow through these systems’
(ACSSU176) (ACARA, 2017). Students will use this resource to study the local landscape and
identify biotic and abiotic factors present in the local Lake Illawarra ecosystem using the
traditional Dharawal names from Murni Dhungang Jirrar.

Due to the large multicultural and ethnically diverse student population of WHS, a whole
school strategy that would foster intercultural understanding between the school and the
wider community would be to hold an ‘International Culture Night’ at the school which
would be open to students, parents and the wider Warrawong community. The premise of
the night would involve groups of students from the same ethnic background or culture
setting up stalls expressing and celebrating their traditional culture through food, clothing,
cultural practices and dance etc. The aim is for the wider Warrawong community to attend
and learn about different cultures by engaging in dialogue, activities, Q&A and
demonstrations at each stall. With WHS having such a large and diverse student population,
the event has the potential to be a success in creating awareness and exposing the wider
school community to a range of different cultures that exist around the world and help them
learn and understand the different intercultural practices of students at WHS.

Another strategy to create intercultural awareness with the wider school community would
be to liaise with the Illawarra Aboriginal Corporation to coordinate ‘Welcome to Country’
and ‘Smoking Ceremonies’ by local traditional elders and custodians of the land (Dhawaral
and Wodi Wodi people) prior to large school events such as assemblies, presentations,
sporting events etc. This strategy aims to celebrate the local Indigenous culture in a
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respectable way as well as acknowledge their importance and role as custodians of the land.
The Illawarra Aboriginal Corporation have a team that go out and perform these cultural
traditions on request and would be of great value for the WHS school community to help
raise awareness and hopefully foster intercultural understanding of the local Indigenous
culture, especially for the new migrant and refugee students (Illawarra Aboriginal
Corporation, 2020).

There are a range of different ways to support teachers through professional development
and help them develop skills in intercultural understanding. As previously mentioned, WHS
is in a low SES, culturally diverse area with its own unique challenges and needs. It is
important for teachers to understand the local area and the context of which their students
come from so that they can better empathise with them in the classroom and meet their
academic, social and emotional needs. Many students at WHS come from troubled
backgrounds and have history of trauma or high stress, from here in Australia and abroad,
of which requires empathy and compassion by teachers when working with their specific
individual needs. A ‘new teacher’ induction program is a strategy to support new teachers at
WHS and help them learn about the local area so that they can better understand their
students and the challenges they face outside of school. As part of the new teacher
induction and program, teachers will be given an orientation tour around the surrounding
community so that new teachers can observe important student landmarks in the area e.g.
Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation centre, Macedonian church and culture centre,
Imam Rida As Mosque, Portuguese club, local primary schools etc. as well as observe the
challenging places a lot of WHS students live e.g. Illawong gardens and Kemblawarra
housing complexes. This aims to help new teachers better understand the different social
and cultural backgrounds of their students, which is reflected in the Australian Professional
Standards of Teaching (APST) focus point 1.3 ‘Students with diverse linguistic, cultural,
religious and socioeconomic backgrounds’ as well as 1.4 ‘Strategies for teaching Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander students’ (AITSL, 2017). Kane & Francis’s (2013) paper highlights
the success of new teacher induction programs that include effective orientation strategies
like the one discussed in helping in the socialisation of new teachers into the school and
help them understand the context of their student’s lives. This aims to support them in
empathising and building connections with their new students (Kane & Francis 2013).
Professional development is important for not only new teachers, but for all teaching staff
and school staff. To support teachers developing skills in intercultural understanding,
multiple and continual professional workshops are a good approach to help teacher engage
with resources and strategies that foster intercultural understanding in the classroom.
Multiple workshops over a specified time period is a better model to follow as previous
research shows short term or one-off workshops aren’t adequate enough for teachers in
developing competency in working with culturally diverse students (MacNaughton &
Hughes, 2007). Short term workshops were shown to be effective in increasing teacher’s
knowledge and intercultural understanding of students from diverse backgrounds but didn’t
necessarily result in positive and respectful behaviours from teachers or a competency to
work with students from culturally diverse backgrounds. Professional development and
positive changes in attitudes and behaviours in this area were found to be more effective
over a prolonged period where teachers are given more of an opportunity to build capacity
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in their cultural knowledge and awareness of their students (Watson et al., 2013)
(MacNaughton & Hughes, 2007). Also, another effective approach that resulted in teacher’s
developing professional intercultural capabilities towards their students occurred when
teachers made personal connections with students from different cultural backgrounds in a
positive environment. Strong personal relationship between teachers and students is
important for better teaching and learning practices towards there students, especially in
the context of building intercultural understanding within the classroom between teachers
and students (Watson et al. 2013).
The Teaching English Language Learners (TELL) professional learning program is an effective
resource and program to implement into school’s professional development for teachers
who work with EAL/D students, WHS especially. The TELL program has an extended,
interactive and collaborative approach to professional development that occurs over 6
workshops and aims to help teachers develop skills and pedagogies to support and meet the
specific learning needs of EAL/D students in their classroom. Implementing such a program
into professional learning at WHS will help staff develop intercultural understanding and
skills to successfully work at a culturally diverse school like WHS (NSW Dept of Education,
2015).
Another professional development resource that would be effective for teachers at WHS is
the ‘Berry Street Education Model’, which aims to enable teachers with the research
informed strategies and tools to engage with trauma-awareness teaching and positive well-
being practices for students (Berry Street, 2020). Many students at WHS, especially the new
migrant and refugee students have history of trauma or high stressful which can affect their
engagement and learning in the classroom (Brunzell et al. 2015). The Berry Street Education
model is all about structuring lessons to support students with a history of trauma by
incorporating strategies such as mindfulness and brain breaks into lessons to prevent
triggers or high stress conditions for these students so that they can fully engage and thrive
in the classroom. This model when implemented into teacher’s professional development
has been shown to be effective in both short term and long term outcomes in improving
student self-esteem and social/emotion well-being, improved academic outcomes and
school attendance, a decrease in incidents and anti-social student behaviour as well as an
increase in teacher’s self-reported confidence and capacity to work with students with a
history of trauma (Berry Street, 2020). Brunzell et al. (2015) paper supports the important
role of the classroom as a posttraumatic place of healing for students with a history of
trauma and highlights the need for such strategies to allow these students to engage in a
positive, trauma sensitive learning environment (Brunzell et al. 2015).
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