With the Torres Strait Islander children here, I think allowing them to express themselves
both, culturally and personally, to continually reinforce the things that their substantial
learnings that they bring from home, is really important. Allowing them to speak their language
and to express to those things, and to be involved as an outsider, as someone who's
not a culture bearer, to actually be involved in their world and to show respect and - more
than respect, I think it's like that you build their curriculum around where they come from
and who they are, and I think that's how they build confidence, that's how they build resilience.
This is a society that, or community that seems to place a lot of emphasis on relationships.
I think it's that interwoven relationships that are here, that everyone has a context,
everyone has a place, everyone has a respect for each other, and more about who you are
than what you do or what you are. Painting then you come tell Ms May your story.
All right. Yeah.
Sixty- six
Sixty-six, ah, All right. Okay, Didong, okay tell me your painting. Come sit on here.
When… When…
Me pla..me pla
{UNCLEAR}
Thank you Didong.
We are isolated geographically up here. The children are - often their experience is just
this island. More often than not we're focusing more on their place here, and the way they
are connected to family and community here, so they can have a really strong sense of
belonging here, so that when they do go outside of this community, that they - that that follows
on from there.
Look here. Look here.
What are them?
{UNCLEAR}
We also need to be able to provide these experiences and activities for the children to - for them
to become strong people. To come - for them to be able to express their feelings in a
way that's going to be acceptable later on down the track. So, learning how to share,
respecting your teachers, respecting your fellow students in the room, being confident
enough to go to the toilet, being confident enough to ask for help when they can't pull
their trousers up. You know, and for us to provide an area where they can do that without
being ridiculed, without being put down.
Always tell the pre-prep [children] when we
sit together and talk and, I tell them that in the long run you must teach like, try very
hard to - to reach your goal. You must become like Miss May, as a teacher, or as a doctor, or
nurses, or anything. I say to them, but first you must complete all your goals, all
activities, everything, until you reach to that. So I - I hope that they will become
a teacher one day, that teaches my grandson's son, or daughter.