Our Year 5/6 students have been exploring the Civics and Citizenship topic, ‘Cultural capabilities’ and have been learning about migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Students have been hearing personal stories about people and the reasons that they may want or need to move to Australia. Classroom discussions about refugees have taken place about positive and negative cultural stereotypes, the legalities of refugees, the misguided assumption that these people are often ‘boat people’ and our obligations as global citizens. To help contextualize this even more, we invited Kate Palmer and Hayley McCosh from the Settlement, Engagement and Transition Support Program (SETS) from South West Healthcare (SWHC) into the classroom to describe the human side of the often faceless masses of people we see in the media. Their role with SWHC involves meeting migrants and refugees and helping them gain access to the necessary services, schools, banking, employment, accommodation, translation services and support that they need. We explored the diversity of cultures and backgrounds in our classes and the cultural iceberg with only 10% of cultural differences readily apparent. Students were invited to meet refugees with a friendly smile, ask them to become involved in community activities and not to take anything for granted as they may have had difficult or different experiences before arriving in Australia. Thanks for helping us become better global citizens Kate and Hayley. Comments are closed.
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April 2024
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