Teaching and Learning in Focus at Yalata Community School

Extract

This article seeks to formalise and link my perception of the Yalata Aboriginal community’s expressed values and objectives with their relationship to practice at Yalata Aboriginal School.

The values expressed here are those outlined by the Aboriginal community; they reflect the community’s felt needs. The process of establishing such needs is open-ended and dynamic, not static. Those needs are expressed through opinions based on experience and resulting legitimate emotion. The community consciousness is now grounded in an emotional strength of purpose that demands the skill to survive well, built on years of frustration and degradation.

The stipulated values can be translated into realisable objectives achievable through appropriate teaching/learning practices.

This article seeks to identify those expressed community values (principles of worth), as related to the Yalata Community School, develop them as a series of attainable objectives, and discuss ways those objectives may be met. Further, it asks the questions, “What are the values/felt needs of the community” and “How does the school try to reflect these values?”