With partners:
Teacher Snapshot 1
Experienced teachers offer the following tips for engaging the Arabic-speaking community in the education process: develop personal relationships and make parents feel welcome through providing information in Arabic in newsletters and workshops, and also involve relevant community groups such as VASS (Victorian Arabic Social Services), Australian Lebanese Welfare and CMYI (Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues).TEACHER: We’ve done afternoon teas and morning teas for Arabic parents. We’ve done all kinds of things to get them in and they’ll come in if they feel they’re welcome. But many of them don’t think they’re welcome and what I’ve done is gone around and had meetings with them. I go to their homes because part of Turkish and Arabic society is sharing a cup of coffee and talking about the weather because you’ve got to go through a whole social process before you talk about things that are personal. We’re strangers and so you’ve got to build a relationship up first…
Teacher Snapshot 2
TEACHER: What they see is that school and them are separate and that we have very little parent involvement because for parents, it’s not culturally their place to be involved with school, because where they come from school is a separate institution and many of them… have had no experience of schools. So it’s not like Aussie parents or long-term parents here who realise that parents get involved in their education. Where you and I would be ringing up the school, a few parents do but they’re probably more the Australian parents, not the late arrivals…. they don’t see where they can be involved, culturally they don’t have that confidence…that they are able to have a say in their child’s education.