Aboriginal Educators’ Training Program 1981-82

Extract

Every Wednesday we have a training program for Aboriginal educators in Swan Hill, which is situated on the New South Wales and Victorian border near the Murray River. The Aboriginal educators involved in this program are: Jon Kirby, Caroline Steel, Lynette Bugeja and myself. This program is co-ordinated by our resource teacher – Jill Pattenden.

In 1981 we covered such subjects as reading and writing skills, communication, teaching techniques, lesson planning, Aboriginal history, child psychology, counselling, lessons in organising, oral history, community and alcohol, public speaking, submission drafting, study of Aboriginal spirituality.

All these subjects were studied with the help of people in the community, both Aboriginal and European. These resource people included local elders, field officers, counsellors, psychologists, an alcohol counsellor, teachers, and people with tribal experience.

As part of the program we did activity days at local primary schools. These days are called Jemauraji days (which means “today’s dreaming”). They consisted of different activities such as ground drawing, damper making, corroborée, totems and fire making. Everybody in each school was involved in these activities.