ABORIGINAL students from St Mary’s School, Beaudesert, have been sharing their stories with the rest of the school community with help from a “homework club”.
St Mary’s has a small indigenous student population and the school liaises with the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community support group to provide social, cultural and educational assistance for students and their families.
Part of this collaboration is a homework club for the children.
Every Wednesday afternoon the children visit the community centre where they are given assistance with school homework.
They also participate in Aboriginal cultural studies.
The success of the homework club led to the children wanting to share their cultural learnings with the rest of the school community.
Local Aboriginal artist Douglas James offered to extend these cultural studies and the school organised for the children to have a four-week intensive program studying Aboriginal language, story and dance.
St Mary’s assistant principal for religious education Trish Dunn said the school’s adventure playground became a classroom for the four weeks while the Aboriginal children learnt about local tribes – the Yugambeh and Urgarapula.
“As a culminating activity, the children performed at a school assembly (where) they proudly shared with the whole community their story,” Ms Dunn said.
“It was a wonderful opportunity for them to be appreciated and valued for the cultural richness that they add to the life of our school,” she said.
