Spring 2006

Wellbeing and connectedness

We are family

Kanat Wano shares the wealth of experience gained from his personal journey in education as he elaborates his views on cultural and linguistic diversity and how this can limit student connectedness.

It seemed like a simple enough request. Our grade two teacher wanted us to draw our families. I started getting worried when everyone else finished before me. Then, I was confused by how few people were in everyone else’s drawings. Finally, when the teacher got to my drawing, the class erupted. My peer group was laughing at the sight of my five dads, four mums and 40-plus brothers and sisters.

Thirty-five years later, this incident remains a turning point in my life. Our families provide safety, connectedness and identity which transforms into healthy self-worth, respect and dignity. I am a descendant of the Meriam Nation of the Torres Strait Islands. Having my classroom peers challenge my Torres Strait Islander culture’s formative concept of family caused a sense of disconnection for me in a classroom that had been very inclusive up to that point.

My teacher set about repairing the damage by suggesting that I join her at ‘Little Lunch’ to discuss my ‘family’. The time she spent reassured me that my concept of a healthy, loving and caring family was valid. My family concept, captured in the drawing that my peers found so amusing, translated across to this other culture as ‘extended family’. It was a formative lesson for this seven-year-old.

I share my personal stories with people who attend the professional development workshops I conduct for ‘MindMatters’ in New South Wales, Queensland and Canberra. This story illustrates how cultural and linguistic diversity can impact on and limit student connectedness to their teachers, peers and school. I take the opportunity to contribute my stories in sessions related to the planning resource booklet CommunityMatters, which enables secondary schools to cater for diversity in their school community. This resource provides coverage for students who may be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, from non-English speaking backgrounds, same-sex attracted, disabled, or from rural and remote communities.

During my second MindMatters professional development workshop, part of my training in the MindMatters framework and process, I found myself reflecting on my years at both primary and secondary school. The theory and practices articulated in the session became relevant to me as they identified the personal experiences and processes I had travelled in a short but enlightened journey.

Opportunities and challenges for schools to provide an environment that offers social and emotional wellbeing to culturally diverse students, families and their communities are constantly on the landscape of school ethos. Those from diverse backgrounds are possibly at higher risk of disconnection and alienation—from their school, family and community—due to having to learn to connect with and survive in a cross-cultural world.

Schools have a significant influence on young people’s outlooks and can alter their frames of reference to the world. This is pertinent to all students, but has added bearing for young people from diverse cultures who attend schools operating on a system based on the dominant culture—a culture which, at times, conflicts with their formative culture and world-view.

From my own experience, even before these students can develop learning outcomes, they need to participate in and learn the dominant social norms of their school environment. They have to develop relationships with teachers, peers, administrators, bus drivers, canteen workers and other members of the extended school community. As my ‘family’ story taught me, just one word in my culture could translate so differently to this other place where I was expected to fit in and start my education.

On reflection, I didn’t commence my education until about year 3. It had taken me those years to learn how to speak English well enough to be understood, and to appreciate that at birthday parties I was expected to bring a present for the birthday boys and girls, not show up empty-handed and eat all the party food as my present to them and their families. I also needed to come to terms with how my mother’s ilun scorn, made with love and care for my lunch, became the subject of laughter as my friends thought I was eating a rock.

To fully participate in an educational setting, culturally and linguistically diverse students face challenges to cope and to understand the implicit and explicit belief systems and norms of another culture. My experience tells that there is another aspect to the complex lives of these young people that schools often overlook. I had parents who had a limited knowledge of how schools operate. From a young age, I found myself being a translator and conduit between my school community and family.

Having to translate the school’s requirements of me and my parents, I also, in turn, passed on some acquired knowledge of the ‘white man’s’ culture to my families. There were added complexities due to my parents’ Torres Strait Islander heritage. They were both under the so-called ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protection Act’ that remained in place in Queensland until the 1980s. This Act determined that my mother was not, by law, able to attend school and that my father was only allowed to go to year 4. So, while I worked hard to get my parents involved in my schooling, there was an understandable sense of mistrust and fear of the Government school system that dictated and bullied them under the oppressive Queensland Act at the time.

Similar pieces of legislation controlled Indigenous populations throughout Australia. The legacy of this legislation still impacts of the relationships between Indigenous people and schools today. At times, I felt sadness for my parents when they attended my primary school, a Government institution that made them uncomfortable and by which they felt intimidated. Their difficulty understanding English further compounded matters.

Young people today have added influences, pressure and determination. There is a sense of hope about how we can engage and support young people from diverse cultures to participate fully in our education systems. My sense of optimism stems from the fact that there is a greater appreciation and awareness of cultural diversity in Australian society. From this awareness, schools can develop systems, policies and practices to provide safe and healthy entry points for culturally diverse communities. Community does matter when the educational setting is striving to engage diverse students, their families and communities.

My Torres Strait Islander heritage and my experiences within the Aboriginal community have shown me that educational outcomes for Indigenous students are not limited to the individual student within the school. Schools need to engage Indigenous communities into their educational setting and frameworks.

Flying the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags at the school, inviting community elders to functions and events, acknowledging the land custodianship of traditional owners and their ancestors, all these things contribute to building connectedness and enhancing the resilience of Indigenous students. School staff and leaders who invest in these processes will connect with Indigenous students beyond their own direct interpersonal interaction. Relationships between students and teachers will blossom when the school creates a broader association with community.

Kanat Wano is project officer for MindMatters in New South Wales.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au