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Ten Monash students accompanied by Dr Glenn Auld were welcomed Indigenous style when they arrived for a three-week placement experience to Maningrida, a remote Indigenous Australian community in Arnhem Land (where is it?). The students are an eclectic group drawn from Secondary, Primary and Early childhood courses and are all placed at Maningrida Community Education Centre which provides education from preschool to Year 12.
Exploring the land of Maningrida
The students have been invited to a variety of places around Maningrida by the traditional owners of the land, including catching and cooking fish and crabs on the open fire on a deserted beach accompanied by the custodians of the land, and visiting a floodplain where they went into the mangroves to find mud mussels. Although these places were just less than 20 kilometres apart they represented country from two different language groups who live in Maningrida. These trips also provided the students with a sense of pedagogical context in which they were operating at the school.
About the school placement experience
Most of the Monash students have been placed in pairs in classrooms to develop collaborative teaching practices and to support each other in the challenging educational contexts. Maningrida CEC is a two-way learning school so the children learn to read and write in either Burarra or Ndjebbana before they learn to do the same in English. An integral part of this placement experience for the Monash students in planning with Indigenous Australian Educational Workers who broker the children’s first language in the classroom.
Reflective journals
While on this placement the students are encouraged to keep a reflective journal along with developing their lesson plans and resource folders. Dr Auld is collaborating with Ms Rachel Thomas, a member of the Kunibidji community and an Indigenous Australian Education Worker to study these journals from this placement. Dr Auld and Ms Thomas are going to study these journals for the ‘taken for granted whiteness’ that is implicit in the students’ writings about this experience. The findings of this study will provide valuable information for future placement experiences to Maningrida by Monash students. The study will be important when Indigenous Australian studies becomes a core unit in teacher education programs in the future.
Relationships formed
While the ten students will take a variety of experiences from this placement, the supervising teachers in Maningrida have identified the enthusiasm and creativity that the students have brought to the classroom. Many students have formed close relationships with Indigenous Australian Education Workers having gained a respect for the pressures that are placed on them while performing this critical role in the children’s education. All of the students have commented on how accommodating the children have been to them on this placement. Considering most of the children speak English as a third or fourth language, the Monash students are getting a lesson in linguistic tolerance when English is used in and out of the classroom.
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