WYP: Creating effective relationships with families

A question from LB in Brisbane: Do you have any tips or ideas on how best form and nurture 'effective relationships' with Indigenous students and their family?

 Thanks for your question LB. I can only speak from personal experience, but for me, the key to forming and nurturing effective relationships with Indigenous students and their families, is the same for all students with some subtle differences.

What is an effective relationship?
No doubt an academic definition of an “effective relationship‘ exists but a commonsense definition would be a relationship that works. Have you ever heard people say “I don’t need to like you, but we do have to work together”? Well for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, it may be the same thing. At the minimum, I really am not interested if you like my children or me, but you do have to create an environment where my children’s learning needs are met.

Some facets of an effective relationship in a school context include:

Good Communication: 
Be a good communicator, and be available to be a good communicator. The day-to-day to-and-fro of school & home life, is not easy. As an educator take different opportunities to provide incidental as well as intentional communication.

• Incidental communication are those opportunities for communication that are not planned. A wave or a smile as you’re walking to and from school or across the carpark, or at the local shops. When parents are dropping their children at school. This is particularly relevant for the “be available to be a good communicator” principle. If you’re walking along with your head down, a scowl or a frown on your face, there will not be many parents, except the most insistent ones, who approach you.
• Intentional communication is where you set out to communicate a specific message to your students and their families. You’ll need to consider the different modes of communication available to you. Some parents will prefer a paper newsletter, an email newsletter, a pre-arranged interview time, etc.

Your core job as a teacher is communication. Just as your students require different modes of communication based on their diverse needs, so too do their parents. Some specific strategies might be:

• Depending on your school community, perhaps brainstorm with your school leaders, families and community about different communication opportunities. 
• As a school you may decide to make your weekly assembly a major event with lots of extended family attending - with notices being read out as well as other updates for families. 
• Create visually attractive newsletter templates that can be easily and quickly reproduced for families.
• Create a visually attractive yearly calendar so that families know what events are coming up.
• Encourage families to attend the P&C/School council events. Make them welcome when they do turn up. 
• As a school community develop appropriate social media spaces for your school. 

Good listening
Another key aspect of being able to nurture an effective relationship is good listening. A part of good listening is opening your mind to what another person is saying.  A few points to remember:

• Remember that some people “say things” by actually not saying anything. It can be frustrating, but no feedback can be feedback. 
• Don’t assume that you know what your families are talking about. Carefully re-phrase statements to check that you have heard correctly. 
• Take time to learn about the history of the community, the school and families. 

Being thoughtful
Think before you speak. Don’t self-censor yourself, but you do need to have a handle on your language and how it impacts on others. Don’t use terms that you know will offend people, for example, “full-blood”, “half-caste” etc.

Remember:

• You can’t know everything. You’re not a mind-reader. And if you’re new to a school, then you need time and space to find out what you should know. 
• Allow yourself to make mistakes. 
• Acknowledge people for their contributions to your learning. 
• Treat people respectfully and they’ll respect you back. 
• Treat community educators as your peers. They may not have a teaching degree, but they have the same degree of knowledge in their fields of expertise and there’s a good chance they’ve been “studying” it longer than the 4 or 5 years it took you to get your degree.Really think about how much time you've invested in getting to know about your school.

Other hints and tips: 

• Don’t assume that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will want to be your cultural educator. Some will offer to lend a hand, but make sure you’re putting in effort to find information yourself. 
• Say sorry when you need to - say it as soon as you realise you’ve messed up. If people know you’re genuine, they’ll move past. 
• Give people time to get to know you. And give yourself time to get to know others. 
• Follow the work of Dr Chris Sarra and understand and know what your expectations are. 
• Think about the link between your relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and their families and what you're teaching in your classroom. Is your curriculum respectful and acknowledging? 

Effective relationships are not rocket science, it takes patience, time, and plenty of respect building.

"You can't have a partnership without a relationship, and you can't have a relationship without a conversation" What Works

What other aspects of effective relationships are there? Are their any other specific things that we can do to foster positive relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and their families?

I look forward to your feedback.


Some online resources:

• Working with Aboriginal people and communities
• What works

You have no customers in your Cafe? Do you blame them for not coming or do work harder to make your Cafe better?

This is the analogy that Ian Mackie from the Department of Education in Queensland raised today at the Dare to Lead’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Conference. His paper raised a number of questions: Can we continue to blame parents and communities who are unable to support our industrial education system? Is that the best solution? Or is it just the simplest?

The theme for the conference was '2025 Building Strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students for their Future' and for me Ian Mackiés presentation best summed up my concerns about the direction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education and how we need to come up with new solutions that really do listen to community.

The conference began with a Welcome to Country by Aunty Agnes Shea accompanied by Mr Duncan Smith and his two sons who entertained participants with three songs. The sound of language, Didj, boomerangs and clapsticks echoed through the large meeting room. It was then followed by an award ceremony with awards for Excellence in Leadership in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education for 2011 presented by the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, the Honourable Peter Garrett.

I was able to attend a number of sessions. The first keynote "Yes you do make a difference!", Associate Professor Robert Somerville from Western Australia, outlined a practical research-based approach of the work of Vic Zbar (2009). His work, "Punching above their weight", presented a very useful discussion about the preconditions for success which he argued are:

1. Strong Leadership - stable, skilled at resource allocation and can draw out staff expertise 
2. High Expectations - of students and high efficacy between teachers and students
3. Orderly Environment - consistent message not petty rules but consequences
4. Focus on core priorities - no more than 5 

He also argues that there should not be a focus on achieving regular attendance rates above 90 per cent, rather about increasing “average” attendance.

As I mentioned above, I also attended the keynote “From Attendance Crisis to Participation Crisis:  Reframing the Indigenous Attendance Problem” by Ian Mackie, the Assistant Director-General Indigenous Education and Training Futures - Education Queensland and it really got me thinking.

He argued that poor attendance at schools can be attributed to three reasons:

1. Poor or hostile parental and carer attitudes towards school. From his experience, we continue to blame the victim. But taking the cafe analogy, parents and students are our customers. If we were running a cafe for example and people were not coming would we blame the customers or the chef for serving bad food.  Do we go to those customers and say you should eat this food because it is good for you?  Of course, it sounds ridiculous, but we continue to do this to our students. 
2. Poor societal support or insufficient valuing of education. Here he argued that we need to be careful that we don’t continue to say “attend school, do well and you will get a good job”. Because this is not an accurate picture of how various job markets work in the new century. 
3. Poor teaching and inconsistent attitudes and policies towards attendance. He proposed that instead of saying to a child that is late “why are you late? get to the office”, why not say “we’re glad to see you at school today”. Most schools will send students who arrived late to the office where they are confronted with an old cranky (usually) lady, stand around for 10 minutes fill in a form why late, then walk to class, making them even later, missed instruction, struggle, and sit through stuff it didn’t want to be here anyway. 

I also listened to Rory O’Connor’s presentation. I’m afraid I took very few notes at his session, as I was too busy watching the slideshow of Rory’s images. He and I are from the same country - Yugambeh - and his images featured many of my family. Oops. I’ll have to make a point of getting along to another of his sessions so that I can stay on the key messages.

Overall, an excellent day in Canberra, and I look forward to attending more in the future.

Yours in Unity, Lisa M Buxton.

Teaching digital learners

I really want to explore this more. I know I do a bit of this now, but I know that there is so much more out there. I love the work of Gadj & Jodi from Sharing Culture Online.

Essential Reading

Here is another selection for the other resource for the non-institutionally-affiliated-student or Life-Long Learner.

The Australian Critical Race & Whiteness Studies Association examines Whiteness in an Australian context, exploring the racialised nature of our country.

They hold regular conferences with a regular journal published that you can access from the website.

10 Incredibly inspiring self-taught learners

Amber from Online Universities Weblog sent this link to 10 Incredibly Inspiring Self Taught Scholars this afternoon.

It made me think about how we as adult learners/teachers fail to engage with what we're learning/teaching and we underestimate the role of self-teaching. I gave a guest lecture yesterday at QUT for pre-service teachers. It was in one of those gigantic lecture theatres (you know the ones that are kind-of cost-effective because they fit all your first years, but don't really allow you to really connect?).

What I noticed though, is that the majority of the students were sitting up the back of the theatre and there were many not even present. What I wondered today as I was reflecting on yesterday, is "what kind of teachers will these learner make?"

If you're learning something because you "have to", because the university is "making you do it", then that's one heck of an uninspiring place to engage.

I've been guilty in the past of prefacing an upcoming lecture with a 'you just have to learn this because the course outline says you have to' statement. Thinking about that today, I can't believe that I would say something like that. How dare I influence another person's engagement with a topic simply because I've not bothered or had the energy to find a point of engagement.

I think that's the task - find a POINT OF ENGAGEMENT. A place where you can connect with the subject.
When I was teaching Indigenous Art, Protocols and Practices at Queensland College of Art, I would have many international students in my class struggling to understand concepts of appropriation of Aboriginal iconography and cultural knowledge. But I tried to relate it to their own culture. Many of the "Asian" students could understand cultural appropriation because they could see it in every second Hollywood blockbuster - where every leading man is a martial arts expert who had appropriated the surface of the art, removed it from its context and altered it.

This, relating the learning to your context is a POINT OF ENGAGEMENT. The students, many of whom would return to their countries and more than likely never engage with Indigenous Australians again, were able to connect with the course.

We can take a lesson from the inspiring self-taught scholars - find a POINT OF ENGAGEMENT. Something that draws you in to a subject and allows you to develop an intrinsic motivation to learn.
That's the kind of learner-teacher I'm trying to be.

Knowledge & World Views in the Critical Classroom: A journey of on-going inquiry

These notes are to accompany a lecture given on 31st August, 2009 for pre-service education students enrolled in EDB007 Culture Studies: Indigenous Education (mid-semester) at Queensland University of Technology. This post can be conjunction with the slides on slideshare.net/leesawatego

So far in this semester, students have explored concepts such as standpoint, epistemologies, the power & privelege of knowledge.

In this lecture we expand these concepts, but also include the idea of the critical classroom & inquiry to highlight the importance understanding & incorporating different knowledges and world views into your practice.

In the past I've regularly used a quote by Gale about the impact of book on Indigenous readers. She states:

"books can be dangerous to Indigenous readers if they

• do not reinforce our values, actions, customs, culture and identity;
• when they tell us only about others they are saying that we do not exist;
• they may be writing about us but are writing things which are untrue; &
• they are writing about us but saying negative and insensitive things which tell us we are not good."

Re-reading this quote this morning, I've realised that above is most certainly true, but less true in a critical classroom. In a critical classroom, you're not just interested in "what the knowledge says" but "how did we get that knowledge in the first place".

A critical classroom expects a constant tenor of inquiry that questions and reflects on what is written/said, who wrote/said it and why.

Many parents of Indigenous children in Australian clasrooms do not see this idea of the critical classroom in practice. For many parents, the singing of the national anthem & the flag is problematic. In addition, many schools in Australia still only have a single flagpole (for the Australian flag).

What impact (for better & for worse) does our world view have on our education practice? How can we "alter" our practice to make it more effective?

Two examples in the key learning areas of art/SOSE and science show that it is possible to incorporate different ways of seeing into the everyday classroom, not just at NAIDOC week.

Some links for your PLN

(Originally published on InquiryBites blog on August 31, 2009)

Children See Children Do

7 Reasons I like critical theory

As a free-range scholar & educator, I tend to go off course a bit occasionally (well - maybe more than occasionally). I've recently re-discovered Critical Theory when preparing a guest lecture for Bianca Beetson's Indigenous Art, Protocols and Practice unit at Queensalnd College of Art - Griffith University.

7 Reasons to Like Critical Theory
1) It challenges accepted truths & norms, it asks you to dig beneath the surface.
2) It criqitues privilege & power, especially hidden power (like that which is racialised & gendered)
3) At its core is the concept of liberation & democratisation.
4) It assumes that there are no single truths and no absolutes.
5) Critical theory asks/demands that you become aware of yourself as knower/viewer.
6) Encourages you to get into action - don't just sit & watch the world - seek change & transformation - it gives you a framework to "be in the world.
7) It can form a framework for your practice regardless of what your field is - art, education, research, mathematics, science.

Wanna know more - check out these writers (in alphabetical order NOT importance)*
Sara Ahmed
Richard Cary
Marylin Frankenstein
Paola Freire
Henry Giroux
Ghassan Hage
bell hooks
Martin Nakata
Karen Martin
Aileen Moreton-Robinson
proppaNOW
Edward Said
bell hooks
* These are the author's I've read - have you got anymore you could share? We'd love to here from you & aslo from examples of educators using critical theory in the classroom.

(Originally posted on criticalclassroom on TypePad on 09/03/2010

Every Queensland school to teach Indigenous culture

Last month an article was published discussing a new policy to incorporate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture into all Queensland schools. The article received some minor coverage and prompted a few comments from readers of the Courier Mail - the comments were for me disappointing but really not surprising. I'd like to contribute some discussion

Firstly, the teaching of Aborignal & Torres Strait Islander perspectives into classrooms will not by itselt "close the gap" of student educational outcomes.

A number of schools have already worked hard to ensure that cultural perspectives have been embedded across their curriculums. For the bulk of schools however, this challenge will require quite an investment.

However, in thinking more about this issue - I would challenge teachers to NOT consider embedding Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander perspectives as a burden.

If you only consider this as something that "I have to do", then you will probably not teach it effectively. Rather, approach the embedding of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander perspectives that will provide you with a much more well-rounded knowledge of Australia.

(Originally posted in Critical Classroom on TypePad on 09/02/2010)

50 ways to use wikis for a more collaborative classroom

It may seem bizzare that a blog devoted to talking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives should have this post as its second one - yes, true - but perhaps we won't do things in an expected way.

Do you have a PLN? No, you don't have a Personal Learning Network you say?

Well, I'm a firm believer that social media and a full range of technologies can only help to support teachers in developing their critical classrooms.

In the future, we hope to run a few e-learning sessions & pds - so be prepared :)

I found thisarticle on smartteaching.org via Gerald Weber on Twitter.

50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom

(Originally posted in criticalclassrom on TypePad on 9th January 2009)