Building Community Connections

[On-screen text: Building Community Connections ]

[On-screen text: Zack Haddock, Yorta Yorta, Executive Director, Koorie Outcomes Division, DE]

Zack Haddock: We as a community, we have a great understanding of what our needs are. We just need the opportunity and maybe the confidence and the courage and the invitation to come to that table and have a conversation with people and to be listened to and to have that beginning of a relationship start to develop, something that's really quite trusting has changed the way that we're interacting, interacting as a community with our school.

Opening up the school gates and allowing us to come in as Community and contribute to the conversations, it allows the schools to really share some of those wicked problems that we're trying to achieve, in trying to theoretically close the gap and accelerate Aboriginal excellence in education for as long as I can remember. And I've been doing this for 20 years and I don't think we're going to do it until we recognise that us as Community need to be a part of that conversation and we need to own part of the solutions to it.

So this was a great opportunity for us to finally get not only a place at the table, but a place with a microphone at the table and have our views, our aspirations and our ideas for how we can achieve this, put forward. If our voices aren't at the table, then people aren't listening to us, and then we're not going to have that progress that we need. The knowledge and the wisdom, the advice, the lessons that we've learned through our generation, the generation before and our Elders past and past and past and past is incredibly important.

You don't survive 65,000 years as a continuous culture if there's something wrong. The society needs to, our society, our collective society really needs to start listening to that. If our voice isn't at the table, then we're invisible. And if we're invisible, then that's not self-determination. That's doing to us, instead of doing with us.

[On-screen text: Merle Miller, Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri, Victorian Aboriginal Education Association Inc]

Merle Miller: It's not just about, you know, getting information from someone, it's giving information, it's developing relationships. And none of the schools, a lot of, the schools around across, not just in Victoria but around the country, have not had that proper conversation with Community.

One of the biggest priorities and we've been saying this for years and years and years, in Community and in working in the education department, that the biggest thing for our, one of the steps that needs to be done for our kids to succeed at school is for schools to engage with parents.

You can't keep conversation, you can't get honesty, you can't get relationships unless you connect. You've got to connect, and if you don't connect, it's not going to work.

Find out who the local mob is. You might not have a Koori child in your school but I still think it's essential that schools with, even if they've got no Aboriginal kids, Koori, Torres Strait Islander kids, the hold campfire conversation, to reach out to the community that are out there. Because there is a community out there that can come in and be part of that conversation.

Because you never know, our community is so dispersed right across the country, but, but in Victoria, more so, that you might come across a Koori, one Koori kid in your school. You might have none, but at some time you're going to, you'll get one because it's growing and we're moving further and further. So if you can get it right by bringing local mob in, you’re on a path already before those kids get in there because you can connect them to local Community.

And when I say local Community, like, within, might be an hour or so, distance away from your school but, there are LAECG’s which are Local Aboriginal Education Consultative Groups that you can reach out to. There are KESOs, that have got a link to every school within the state, right. Even though there might not be Koori kids there, they're linked to those schools.

It's up to the school to reach out and say, I want to do this, can you help me? They don’t have to do it on their own. Like the LACG will help, the KESOs will help, parents in the neighborhood or schools that have already done it, reach out to them as well. But if you're still not sure, you can always reach out to VAEAI I said VAEAI because we can help you, You've got, the you know, people here in the department that are really concentrating on self-determination and education reforms, that they will also help you. You can’t, not, do nothing. There are people available and they are willing and wanting to help.

[On-screen text: Chris Bush, Head of Student Voice and Leadership, University High School]

Chris Bush: For our school, it was incredibly important to bring members of the community together for these important conversations because I think often as settler educators, we think we might know what changes are needed and what could best suit the needs of our Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students. But that's not always the case, and it's really important that we actually listen and seek the opinions of those students and families who our decisions ultimately impact.

So it builds those bonds, builds that connection, and it allows us to reconnect as the journey continues with these really important stakeholders so that we can make sure that the steps we take, are the steps in the right direction.

[On-screen text: Stephanie Raike, Head of Wellbeing and Support, Elisabeth Murdoch College]

Stephanie Raike: With the campfire conversation that Elisabeth Murdoch College was invited to host, something that was really important about that campfire and for us particularly was about pausing to think about, it being authentic and genuine and not just transactional, given it's about self-determined education.

And as non-Indigenous people who were going to host the campfire, how can we make sure that we really reflecting that and not being a another thing that's done to Indigenous community rather than with and making sure that there was a loop. So we really wanted to make sure that that was in place.

And so some things that were really important about the campfire for us in leading it was that there was student voice and there were some parts that the students led that it was with the Indigenous community connected to EMC. So we made sure that we had a Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony with the Bunurong Land Council, and that we tried really hard to connect with all layers of the community for Elisabeth Murdoch College, so it wasn't just our students and their families. There was primary school students, there was the Tafe involved, there was the Koori Engagement Support Officers involved in also helping us understand how we could best run the campfire.

We were really interested in building trust with community as well, and I think it's something that has actually done that so the, the trust within the community, I think has grown since the campfire conversation the communication level in engagement with families, even families that are starting to come to EMC, so our grade six families, that has increased from the campfire and I think as well it's gotten out in Community that EMC, for example, and I think it would probably be reflective of all the schools that we're involved in the campfires are listening and it's something that the students now have been quite vocal about, in saying I have a voice at EMC, because from the campfire we listened, we purposely created space to listen, and then we provided that feedback to the Department of Education.

Campfires for schools involved in what it means to them, I think was a real chance to build a sense of trust, a sense of connection to Community and to really be open hearted and open minded to Community and ask for feedback and ask to be invited in, likewise and connected to Community. So for schools, it meant that, there was an opportunity to say, Hey, what do you think? And what's going well? What's not going well? And what does self-determination mean to you and get all that feedback and do something different.

It meant that there was direct feedback from students, from families, from communities, telling schools, this is what we want, this is what we need, this is what support would look like for Koori education engagement in schools. And it gave, drive, It gave opportunity, gave direction for where to go if you want to see those things improved in your schools.

And I think schools do want to see those things do better. But schools don't always have the answers and they shouldn't have the answers because unless it's a completely Indigenous operated, run driven school, you don't have the answers for Indigenous education. So you've got to go out to Community and that's what this was, it meant an opportunity to hear directly from communities about what good practice would look like.

[On-screen text: Colleen Garner, Mara, Koorie Education Coordinator, Outer East, DE]

Colleen Garner: It was empowering for the schools to be more proactive and not to be tokenistic. And I think what we also saw was it built teacher capacity quite often they can feel a little bit nervous or hesitant with how they engage with our community.

So to see that confidence and build their capacity was, yeah, really worthwhile. And also for them to understand that they have a lot of local knowledge and how they could now maybe tap into that and work with their own local Community.

Schools can no longer say, I don't know how to do this or I can't do this. We've got a Koorie education workforce throughout the whole of the state that are there to support schools and they can lean on us and ask for advice but equally from these campfires, hopefully they've made those local connections and they can also lean into those people for advice, to give them the confidence to teach.

So from the stories that we've heard at the campfire, what we do want to see our schools do is also action. What was said around that campfire. And I think when I talk to schools, when we deliver any training, I always say to them, it's around doing it in baby steps. We can't make big changes. The system, hasn't, been set up well to make sure that this happens, so we've got to make sure that we're doing baby steps to embed it and that it just doesn't rely on one person in the school, that it's the whole school, and that anybody can pick it up at any time. So that's the real action that we've got to take away from what we've heard around the campfire.

Maybe that’s what the campfire gave them. Campfire gave them the confidence to go, we're actually heading down the right path.We are making those right steps.

[On-screen text: To hear more about what was shared, access the full report: www.vic.gov.au/marrung]

[End transcript]