Aboriginal Teacher Aides Research Articles

Developing Aboriginal Community Involvement in Education

Most Aboriginal communities in Australia have been provided with government schools, built, staffed and organized by government departments. As with mission schools, the motivation for schooling has largely come from outside the community itself, though often with tacit community support. Although formal ‘Western’ schooling fits uncomfortably with the values of a hunter-gatherer society, in most cases schools have adapted very little to the special environment of an Aboriginal community. Not surprisingly, both achievement and attendance are often poor. Attempts to vary programs, as in bilingual education, and to augment the staff of these schools with Aboriginal teacher aides (teaching assistants), have not altered this situation greatly, though this does not negate the worth of these initiatives.One of the many possible reasons for this predicament is the lack of community control over what happens in its school. In many cases this is almost absolute, duplicating the lack of control over land, law, health services and many other aspects of life. For this reason, schools have been seen by some authors as one of the more direct agents of cultural change, acting to assimilate Aboriginal people into white society with a community that functions as a ‘total’ institution. The natural resistance of Aboriginal people to this process is likely to have profound implications for Aboriginal community schools.

Working as Teacher Aides at Mount Isa

We would like to share with others our role as Aboriginal teacher aides at Healy State School, Mount Isa.The administrative staff of the school has encouraged us to keep our roles and timetables very flexible. Our timetable changes as the needs of the Aboriginal children change within the school.The Aboriginal population at school is 16%. Half of these children come under the heading of ‘assimilated Aboriginals’.The suburb of Healy was built by the Mount Isa mining company for sale to mine employees. The Aboriginal children from these homes have equal housing and their parents have no trouble ‘fitting in’. They are accepted on their own worth along with children from first and second generation migrant families. These children could be called success stories but we see them as the result of equal opportunities.Close to our school we have the ‘camping area’. These are the children we mainly work with in Reading and Maths. Within this area we have found two distinct groups. Families who say ‘I never had much schooling, so I always send the kids’, and families who see no benefit in schooling. From the first group children come on a regular basis and we are able to help individual members of the family to catch up and return to ordinary classroom activities, or keep them learning at a different level. The other group from this area do not see the benefits of school and have heavy social problems. Consequently we have a truancy problem with their children.

Working as Teacher Aides at Murgon State High

Cherbourg is situated on the Barambah Creek, about 300 km north west of Brisbane. The area of the reserve is approximately 4,000 hectares, adjoining 11,000 hectares of state forest. Cherbourg is 5 km from the township of Murgon and is the third largest Aboriginal settlement in Queensland.Since 1973 Aboriginal teacher aides have been employed at Murgon High School in a variety of roles. Our jobs have included supervision in various classes and playground, helping small groups of students, resource work (cutting, stapling, cataloguing various materials for teachers), but our most important job is working on behalf of the Aboriginal students, with parents, council, principal and staff. This is part of our liaison work. This year there are about 100 Aboriginal students attending the high school in Murgon.During 1979, with the help of some staff teachers, we worked on producing two booklets for teachers new to Murgon High. The first booklet, Cherbourg, looks at early history, facilities, industries and employment, as well as entertainment, places to visit and some of the local foods. We gathered information from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, as well as from interviewing people at home and at work. We also discussed a lot of ideas at our meetings, held three times a week. Bevan learned to use the S.LR camera, as well as to develop the photos, so he could look after the photographic aspect of the booklets. Students contributed written ideas and sketches.

Report First National Aboriginal Teacher Aide Workshop – Recommendations

The first national Aboriginal Teacher Aide Workshop, organized by Alan Randell, Margaret Valadian and Art More and hosted by the Queensland Department of Education, was held in Brisbane, 19–22 June, 1978. It was attended by Aboriginal teacher aides from all states who, during the three day workshop, identified common areas of concern about the education of Aborigines and proposed acceptable strategies to achieve stated goals. We present below the recommendations from the report of the workshop.

Aboriginal Education & Innovation

All of us in the broad field of Aboriginal education – teachers, aides, administrators – are innovators. For the first time there is an effort being made to modify the school system to cater for the needs and interests of Aboriginal students and parents – individualized treatment, bilingual teaching, meaningful consultation with the Aboriginal community, new studies in Aboriginal culture and Australian history. Seminars and teacher training, consultation on books and curriculum in preparation, provision of special resource teachers and Aboriginal teacher aides and a number of initiatives begun at individual schools by resource teachers and teacher aides themselves, are the means of change.Innovation brings difficulties for the innovators, whatever field it is in. It is rare for new ideas to go into practice smoothly, because new ideas generally replace old ideas and old, established ideas have their followers. Quite often there will be a vested interest involved. Vested interests in education do not often involve money or profits but they do involve time and effort, and sometimes reputations. People don’t like hearing that some practices or beliefs they have spent great effort in developing, or learning, are now regarded as obsolete. So they resist. They resist change. To be able to handle such people is just one of the extra demands made on innovators. It calls for patience, the ability to remain firm in your own beliefs while trying to win people over. It calls for flexibility in your own plans where discussion reveals shortcomings.Innovation also means an increased workload. Explaining to teachers, principals, students, parents and curriculum developers takes time. Preparing submissions takes time. Drawing up detailed action plans for any education program takes time. As education is funded by government and as innovations create interest among colleagues, report writing becomes part of the job – far more than when well-known practices are being followed. Finding solutions to problems which arise along the way takes more time than usual because there are no precedents to follow.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

A three day seminar for Aboriginal secondary students was held in early April. This was the first time that such a program has been attempted by the Education Department. Valuable assistance was given by a number of other government departments.All Aboriginal students in years 9 to 12 who attend Adelaide metropolitan high schools were invited to attend. A few representatives from selected country schools were also invited. Between 180 and 200 students attended each day. They were supervised in groups of eight to ten by Aboriginal teacher aides and other volunteers from the Aboriginal community.

Pupil Power

Teachers of Aboriginal children have very special responsibilities. You and I know that Aborigines are the poorest, worst housed, least healthy group of people in Australia. More to the point, they are the least educated group of people in the Australian community. Our challenge is to rectify that situation.We will not get very far if we delude ourselves into thinking that we are working for the Aborigines. We have gone past that stage. You and I work with Aborigines. That is why we are so committed to the employment of Aboriginal teacher aides; why we have pushed Aboriginal Teacher Training; why we employ Aboriginal home/school co-ordinators; why we have Aboriginal school councils, and why we are forming a State Aboriginal Education Consultative Commi ttee.

Graduation Address: Aboriginal Teacher Aides, Sydney University, 1977

(Mrs Yvonne Bolton was appointed in 1977 to the position of Aboriginal liaison teacher, State Department of Education, New South Wales. Among Mrs Bolton’s responsibilities are – planning and helping teachers to implement programs that will be of benefit to Aboriginal pupils; liaising with Aboriginal communities.Mrs Bolton did her own teacher training in Sydney, 1957-59, and during her period as a classroom teacher taught infants’ classes and moderately mentally retarded children.She is a member of the Adult Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee.)

Para-Professionals at the Early Learning Centre, Athlone

The important roles played by the Aboriginal Teacher-aides in our schools have been discussed in previous issues by Wayne Dyer. In the following article, Ann Short writes about the involvement of para-professionals in three separate programs at the Early Learning Center, Athlone, South Africa.

Aboriginal Teacher Aides: Benefits and Utilization

There are many benefits gained by employing Aboriginal Teacher Aides. These include:1. (a) The employment of such people as Yvonne Walker at this school, to undertake work of an experimental nature, in teaching untried courses in language to Aboriginal children.(b) The self-respect gained by Aboriginal people in working with teachers in responsible organizations.(c) The decreased reliance on Social Services and consequent upsurge in desire to obtain responsible positions. (One Aboriginal person recently asked me if the Police Department have aides).(d) The efforts made by employed aides to attempt to standardize their social interaction through accepting norms in dress and general conduct.

Bilingual Language Teaching

Since Amata Aboriginal school commenced late in 1968 we have followed a policy of respecting the wishes of the parents. One such wish was that their children learn to read and write their own language as well as learn to speak, read and write English: Hence, the policy regarding language teaching at Amata school stands: “to teach literacy in both languages.”Basically, the means by which we attempt to meet the demands of this policy consist of beginning all instruction in and about Pitjantnatjara. Then, once a level of proficiency has been attained, (mainly a sound phonetical grasp of Pitjantjatjara) the particular child is moved to a class where instruction is almost entirely in and about English.Thus, the infant grades’ language lessons are mainly Pitjantjatjara. We have been fortunate in the past to have a European teacher who could, before two years in the area, speak Pitjantjatjara fluently. She could, thereby, teach the infant children about Pitjantjatjara.Now we have Aboriginal teacher aides who are doing the same job, with a European teacher as part of the teaching team.Once a child is proficient in Pitjantjatjara the next move is into grade 3 where European teachers, with the assistance of an aide, take over the child’s instruction. In fact, by this stage, the child has attained a few phrases of English speech and can write some basic words.Presently, the grade 3’s (for want of a better title) range in age from nine to sixteen years, and are divided into a class for boys and a separate class for girls, this being the expressed desire of the boys. It is mainly the grade 3 boys’ class which will be discussed here. However, most of what is mentioned is also applicable to the class of girls.