Music Narrator: Most refugee students have a background of traumatic and stressful experiences. Many have experienced war. They have lived for long periods in refugee camps. Some have lost friends and family members. Music Narrator: Enrolling in a primary school in Australia is for many refugee students their first experience of schooling. These students need intensive support so that they develop the skills and understandings to engage successfully in schooling in Australia. Music Man: Mount Druitt Public has a very diverse community. We have five hundred and ninety kids here at the moment. We have eighty per cent of our families are from a non-English speaking background. Teacher: Remember how we have different ways of saying good morning. Bonjour Wilson. Narrator: Mount Druitt Public School has been enrolling students from migrant and refugee backgrounds for many years. However, five years ago they noticed that the refugee children they were enrolling had more complex needs than those they had previously encountered. Man: Often there w no English language skills at all. We had trouble filling in the enrolment forms. Narrator: Many of these children had grown up in refugee camps. They and their families had experienced significant depravation and trauma. Man: As we got more and more of these kids in we started to learn more and more about the difficulties they’d been through and the very hard I suppose lives that they’d lived in the refugee camps. Teacher: As you know we’re going to start off with our counting and our alphabet song. Music Narrator: Many teachers were challenged by some of the behaviours they were seeing in class and in the playground.
Music Narrator: Most refugee students have a background of traumatic and stressful experiences. Many have experienced war. They have lived for long periods in refugee camps. Some have lost friends and family members. Music Narrator: Enrolling in a primary school in Australia is for many refugee students their first experience of schooling. These students need intensive support so that they develop the skills and understandings to engage successfully in schooling in Australia. Music Man: Mount Druitt Public has a very diverse community. We have five hundred and ninety kids here at the moment. We have eighty per cent of our families are from a non-English speaking background. Teacher: Remember how we have different ways of saying good morning. Bonjour Wilson. Narrator: Mount Druitt Public School has been enrolling students from migrant and refugee backgrounds for many years. However, five years ago they noticed that the refugee children they were enrolling had more complex needs than those they had previously encountered. Man: Often there w no English language skills at all. We had trouble filling in the enrolment forms. Narrator: Many of these children had grown up in refugee camps. They and their families had experienced significant depravation and trauma. Man: As we got more and more of these kids in we started to learn more and more about the difficulties they’d been through and the very hard I suppose lives that they’d lived in the refugee camps. Teacher: As you know we’re going to start off with our counting and our alphabet song. Music Narrator: Many teachers were challenged by some of the behaviours they were seeing in class and in the playground.
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