Teaching

You can anticipate trauma reactions and disclosures from students of refugee backgrounds to present in a variety of ways.

It is vital that students know they can safely talk to teachers; and, if they do share, it is important to allow them to control their level of disclosure. Teachers who supportively respond to trauma reactions and disclosures from students are meeting Standard 4 of the Australian Professional  Standards for Teachers.

It is helpful for you to consider the educational starting points of newly arrived students of refugee backgrounds.

Suraya had only been at school for six months, but already they’d booked her in for a cognitive assessment. She’d previously had three terms of the ELS. She was from a refugee camp in Thailand, had been born there, no previous schooling. The school couldn’t make sense of how she just doesn’t seem to understand instructions.

There were so many factors that were impacting on this student.

Exposure to multiple traumatic events, combined with disrupted schooling and settlement challenges, have far-reaching impacts upon children’s functioning – which affects their learning, behaviour and emotional wellbeing .

What you can do

• Consider: students are likely to need extra effort in academic skills acquisition.
• Remember: students will not necessarily have academic language proficiency in their first language, and it is not uncommon for children to speak multiple languages but have academic proficiency in none.
• Interpret: students’ learning and behavioural difficulties initially through a trauma lens.

Accurate and thorough assessments require a trusting relationship between the student, family, school and health professionals.

Challenges may present within the classroom and school in terms of a student’s learning and behaviour. It is important that students with apparent developmental delays, language delays and intellectual disabilities are referred early in order to promptly access appropriate supports.

School–family engagement will help identify the possible influence of other factors on the child’s development, including:

• Past exposure to traumatic events.
• English language proficiency.
• Language/s spoken at stages of the child’s development.
• Literacy.
• Family functioning.
• Prior school experiences.
• Undiagnosed medical conditions.

There is a need for appropriate professional learning for school staff and health professionals around engaging families of refugee backgrounds, and the impacts of refugee experiences upon children’s learning and development. This training is provided through Foundation House on request.

You can also learn more about developmental assessments with children of refugee backgrounds from the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.

Trauma recovery almost always involves students experiencing supportive relationships with their teachers.

When asked why they prefer particular subjects, students typically state ‘the teacher’ as the most important factor for their success and enjoyment.

• A healthy relationship has elements of feeling comforted, seeking the proximity of the teacher, and trusting the teacher.
• In the aftermath of refugee experiences, secure attachments with teachers are vital to restoring a sense of inner security.
• The relational qualities of warmth, genuineness and positive regard are the mechanisms for recovery.

Engagement in an inclusive classroom is a vital protective factor for students recovering from refugee experiences.

Teachers with an appreciation of students’ pre-arrival experiences, settlement challenges and learning needs can create classrooms in which students thrive.

Effective strategies take into account students’ need to:

• Adjust to a different education style (e.g. problem-solving rather than didactic or rote learning).
• Organise themselves (e.g. diaries, bringing correct materials, and equipment use).
• Manage their time (e.g. school routines).
• Adjust to classroom expectations.

Students of refugee backgrounds often require additional support while adapting to your classroom learning.

By applying personal learning approaches (PLAs) you can prioritise students’ strengths, interests, learning and wellbeing needs. PLAs also support trauma recovery by restoring safety and control, dignity and value.

What you can do

• Know students’ readiness, current skills, interests and learning profile to plan appropriate support and classroom strategies.
• Plan together with students and other staff how to better support their engagement and achievement by collaboratively developing an individual learning plan.
• Differentiate your teaching by varying goals, assessment strategies and the pace of learning for each student. This supports you to maintain high challenge while providing high levels of support.
• Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of your classroom approaches in relation to students’ progress and goals.

Helpful PLA links:

• Victorian DET’s Personalised Learning and Support: Inclusive Classrooms for Students with Additional Needs
• NSW DET’s Supporting Refugee Students – Personalised Learning

You can greatly support students of refugee backgrounds by adapting the high-impact teaching strategies you are currently practising.

The Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) provides schools with the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) Excellence in teaching and learning resource.

Teachers at each professional career stage (Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead), are required to demonstrate a deepening level of proficiency in all seven Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. To assist teachers with their performance and development plans (PDPs), three of the standards are linked closely to their work with students of refugee backgrounds.

With regard to learning behaviour in the classroom, it is helpful to consider the individual student’s educational starting point and respond to their capacity. It also helps to link wellbeing with positive behaviour.

Students of refugee backgrounds may exhibit behavioural difficulties, which – before considering other explanations – you should initially interpret through the three lenses for understanding refugee experiences.

What sorts of behaviour might present?

• Reactive, defensive, angry patterns of interacting in the classroom (with themselves and others)
• Inability to tolerate frustration
• Withdrawal and disengagement, not learning, and unable to attend in class
• An apparent inability to form relationships with other children
• Unable to be calmed, to self-regulate or co-regulate with a known teacher
• Sensitivity to perceived injustice.

Things to consider

• Students are likely to have experienced severe disruptions to their schooling, and in some instances no schooling at all, before arriving in Australia.
• Some students may be unfamiliar with class rules/structures, including the need to pay attention, follow instructions, complete assessments and work quietly.
• Students may need support to build the social and emotional skills needed to make positive choices in the classroom.

What you can do

• Get to know your student/s and what may trigger inappropriate behaviours
• Explicitly acknowledge appropriate behaviour
• Use a calm voice and validating language
• Don’t overreact and avoid power struggles
• Take a collaborative approach by working with the student, other teachers, Multicultural Education Aides (MEAs), and your wellbeing team to build the student’s capacity to support positive learning behaviours
• Consistently reflect with colleagues on your own teaching and handling of behaviour (appropriate and inappropriate).

In most instances, EAL specialists in schools are the first point of call when supporting teachers with strategies to scaffold and modify learning support for students.

What you can do

• Offer a range of support options to your teaching colleagues, including co-planning and resource development, learning area workshops, whole staff workshops and collegial conversations.
• Collaborate with subject teachers to identify skills in different learning areas that can be developed in the EAL program as well as in subject classes.
• Develop a repository of resources that have proven successful in the past, so that teachers can access and adapt these to their students’ needs.

All students benefit from EAL practices/strategies that promote ongoing learning and hold academic expectations equitable for all.

Strength-based EAL practices/strategies that support learning area specific skills:

• Health and PE: Students develop expertise through diverse experiences. Find out what students can do and support them to demonstrate, teach and compare their skills.
• Languages: Multilingual students have extensive linguistic, sociolinguistic, intercultural and analytical skills that can enhance the Languages classroom, no matter which language.
• English: Students often have experience translating and interpreting. Creative and purposeful translation of proverbs, poetry and literature supports many skills in English.
• Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS): Create opportunities for students to share, compare and analyse their diverse life experience, intercultural skills and family traditions, to enrich the HASS curriculum.
• The Arts: Arts classrooms are ideal sites to demonstrate, celebrate and develop diverse visual, musical, dance and dramatic practices from students’ families and communities.
• Maths: Many students use their home language for mathematical thinking. Ask students how they use their languages, and plan group work or activities to capitalise on this.
• Science: The experiential learning, connected ideas and structured texts in Science provide excellent opportunities to teach content and literacy together, working with EAL/D teachers.

Reducing shame and restoring dignity

Classroom teacher: ‘Can I help you with this task?’

Student: ‘But I don’t need help!’

Students do not like to feel singled-out in the classroom, and it is important to respect their feelings.

To reduce feelings of shame and promote their dignity and value, consider different forms of support.

What you can do

• Display resources in the classroom for all students to access.
• Rotate through the class to work one on one with every student.
• Offer out-of-class support to small groups or through homework clubs.
• Be available so students can ask questions or check work with some privacy.
• Co-plan with an EAL/D specialist to enhance both your own and the EAL/D program.
• Team teach with an EAL/D specialist.

• Victorian Curriculum Foundation-10 EAL webpage  includes draft EAL Curriculum (including current), Diagnostic Interview & EAL Profile (this will be updated Term 1 2020).
• DET’s VicTESOL webpage provides support and services to mainstream teachers and EAL (ESL) specialist teachers.
• Classrooms of Possibility by Hammond and Miller (2015).
• Lexis Education’s Professional development on teaching ESL students in mainstream classrooms.