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April 23, 2024 15 mins

This episode is part of a series dedicated to amplifying excellence in WA VET through award winner stories. In this instalment, we are speaking with Anthony Georgeff, finalist for the Australian Excellence in Language, Literacy and Numeracy Practice Award at the Australian Training Awards.

Anthony shares his experiences engaging students and encourages listeners to consider literacy and language skills beyond immediate applications – highlighting the wider community issues that may impact student learning.

This episode may serve as a valuable resource for RTOs seeking further information on language literacy and numeracy support and student wellbeing.

More information on Read Write Now is available at https://www.read-write-now.org.au/.

Published 24/4/24

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Episode Transcript

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(00:00):
Music.

(00:06):
My name is Mel Hartley from the Training Accreditation Council or TAC and before
we start I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are
recording on, the Whadjuk people,
who wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution
they make to the life of this city and this region.
Today's episode is part of a

(00:26):
series where we amplify excellence in WA Vet through award winner stories.
Today, I'm talking to Anthony Georgeff, finalist for the Australian Excellence
in Language, Literacy and Numeracy Practice Award.
Anthony is an advanced skills lecturer in English as a second language and in

(00:49):
the course in Applied Vocational Study Skills, working with both migrants and
vocational students at North Metro TAFE.
Anthony, you've had a fascinating career path, from teaching English in Tokyo
to working with at-risk youth in Perth, and now a finalist for the Australian
Excellence in Language, Literacy and Numeracy Practice Award. Congratulations.

(01:12):
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Um, okay, cool. I guess there's like 30 years of English teaching.
It's a long time. It's a long story, but I was just actually chatting to a student,
part of my CAVs that I do literacy support in classes, and I'm currently doing,
helping with a screenwriting class.
And I'm kind of like the extra lecturer there. I'm there to help out.

(01:34):
So there's sort of a sense of like, well, what do you do?
And one of the students actually asked me, well, what do you do?
I guess what I do is, also from a linguistics background, I know how language works.
So really all I do is I'm skilled in taking language
apart and because I'm also a lecturer
once I've worked out how language works in you

(01:55):
know for different environments and different courses and different
documents can teach that to the students and yeah that's I think that's really
where my English teaching comes into and I think literacy is where you go okay
well why isn't that link happening between you know what the text or whatever
it is that's demanding the student and why can't they get there and finding out that problem.

(02:17):
I work in Cavs, which is this important different departments like cookery,
I like music, I like business.
I've also had different student cohorts, such as women's groups,
refugee women and migrants, specially tailored courses for that.
I'm also qualified pastry chef because I thought if I'm teaching at TAFE,
I should actually do a qualification.

(02:38):
So I just wanted to do a passion course and, yeah, Yeah, it's Earth 3 and patisserie,
so I could get a background to students, and here I am, literacy ESL,
and I luckily got to go to the awards last year as a nominee,
which was a great privilege.
I have to say, out of all of the qualifications that you could have chosen to
pick up, patisserie is a fantastic one to have in your back pocket.

(03:01):
Everybody loves that. It's like, you know, you say I've got a postgrad appointment
by linguistics and tests, and they're like, oh, that's nice,
and you go like, oh, I'm a qualified pastry chef, and you can see their ears pick up.
But it's great. I, you know, love the experience and I got a first-hand experience
on what it's like to be a TAFE student, so...
That's fantastic. And something that has been emerging for quite some time now

(03:22):
alongside LLN is digital literacy.
And I understand that one of your many achievements is developing an e-learning course.
So just wondering if you could talk to us a little about that,
how you created it and how it's helped your learners and your colleagues?
Yeah, sure. I think about the early 2000s when we started getting,

(03:43):
you know, computer labs in talia found we started teaching students
i realized that if students didn't
have digital literacy they weren't
literate and that was still fairly early days and
it's just become more and more reinforced now and
then in esl i still get students who have never used
a computer before or can't use a computer and it still kind

(04:05):
of surprises me but it's really really holding
in the back i you know very ironically and very
meta is i developed developed a course online
you know doing it online to teach online and
i think that was a really great step because there
are very different teaching methodologies so that
course got started it was great had a lot of learning there i think reflecting

(04:29):
back on that i think especially after post-covid where we are teaching online
i think it is a different teaching environment but again we've got to keep our
There are key teaching skills in there. So we've still got to think about student needs.
We've got to think about, you know, how we're going to present our materials
and especially levels of student engagement.
How can we keep, you know, people just talking online on microphones,

(04:52):
not really knowing each other, engaged and feeling part of a community?
And I think, ironically, I sort of, once we tried it online.
I sort of thought, well, okay, we also need to bring that back into the classroom.
So I think also sometimes that lacking in classroom practices is getting people
engaged with each other.
That's fantastic. And like you were saying, particularly since COVID,

(05:14):
everything has just gone online.
And it's really, really important to still be getting that connection,
being able to validate your students and still being able to engage everyone,
even though it's through online.
So I just want to go back to language, literacy and numeracy proficiency.
And it's always something that's been important
in the VET sector but the draft new RTO

(05:37):
standards have real emphasis on RTOs ensuring
that learners proficiencies in these areas are appropriate to the training product
and the fact that this is established prior to their enrolment so like Anthony
I just want to ask you you've witnessed firsthand the impact of choosing the
right training product for learners.

(05:57):
And do you have a story that you could share from your experiences where a thorough
pre-enrollment assessment has made significant difference for a student,
either by guiding them towards a better suited program or identifying additional support needs?
Yes, I'm just trying to think of a story right now. I think literacy,

(06:18):
when you get into the wider community, I think it's a much more complex problem.
I think, well, it might manifest itself in different ways.
And we have to kind of look at the whole student. so i
guess i want to start i guess one way of looking at it
is is if i can just draw an analogy if we're thinking
of like you know if we're giving us a running squad or something
going together i think you know we'd like to sort

(06:41):
of you know know if they can run and that's the case and
that's great but it might be for different reasons and you might
spot problems early and it's not going to be something like somebody can't run
which is what a lot of people imagine literacy they sort of imagine is
something like you know they just can't read or they can't write that's
not the case literacy problems are very tailored and they're very
specific so somebody for example might be
getting a knee injury and it's recurring and you go okay we need to look at

(07:05):
that or you might send an officer or a specialist so maybe that that might need
that might need to be you know fixed up by that specialist or it might not be
about the knee it might they need for example they might need you know better
shoes or something and i think that's the level of sophistication where literacy is at.
So I think we do need a kind of pre-admission testing because I think that can

(07:27):
tell us a lot about, you know, a lot about, you know, students' writing skills
that might need to be met.
But also we need to be kind of very sensitive of how these needs might happen in different ways.
So, for example, when I'm helping out in CAVs in mainstream classes.
Often things don't present as literacy problems.
They're not like, oh, you know, you're not good at verbs or,
you know, you're not using the right comma in that case.

(07:49):
It's more like something they have an anxiety problem or, you know,
they might have some other mental health problem or something going on in their
life, and that's manifesting as them being unable to answer questions or unable
to get their study patterns together.
And that's where you need much wider solutions and support, and it's much more of a teen solution.

(08:10):
So absolutely, I think, have screening before.
Make sure you get students' sight, you know, whether that's,
you know, they're not ready for a diploma level or even a Certificate 3 level,
but also just get ready for looking a little bit deeper into other things that
might affect not just literacy, but what's really important for us, their ability to study.

(08:30):
No, you're 100% correct there. And it's something that I think the standards
are trying to pick up on, that students are having issues and we don't want
them to fall between the gaps.
We want to pick them up. And can we do that earlier?
If you're not involved in the pre-enrolment process, when do students come to you then?

(08:52):
Is it they've already started a course and then it's realised,
oh, this person needs a bit more help? How do they get to you?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I am in the classroom as part of the CAVSS program.
Usually I just sort of go around and I have a bit of a look and I'm seeing how
you're going with your studying and, you know, I'm sort of looking for things.
Are they getting behind? What's causing that?
It's that, I mean, one of the biggest things that actually comes up is just

(09:15):
students are getting the answers wrong, they're getting the questions wrong.
And that very basic level of being able to understand the questions that are
being asked of them is actually one of the biggest hurdles for a lot of students.
Students and that can happen back in the test you
know test preparation time because you're taking you
know fairly complex training packages which are designed
at sort of a i guess it's at a high level they're almost sort of close to

(09:38):
legal documents and then you try and translate that into a student
experience so usually i'd start with something like how they're
going with the questions are they understanding what they're reading do they
have good study practices do they seem organized you
know and then you have to sort of get to the stage okay what's what's yeah
what's going on why aren't you doing what you
need to do and then you might get other answers it might be their

(09:59):
life at home it might be about their background they
might open up about you know the concerns or issues or mental
health issues they might have yeah so
what you're doing is you're looking at the well-being of the
student as a whole I think that's very much it
you know I I could solve people's you know I could go through someone's writing
and find out the grammar in a a second but you know i think we're part of that

(10:22):
whole sort of a larger student that has you know issues just beyond not just
spelling so and yeah i think in a way literacy is there too.
It's one of the sort of first alert things because often the things that we
attribute to literacy like not being able to you know finish tests or write
properly or understand things then that's sort of the a bit of an alarm bell

(10:44):
about other things that might be going their lives that that we can explore a bit more.
No, definitely. And just kind of keeping down that track, what kind of wellbeing
opportunities do you provide students?
I'm not trained, you know, psychology or anything. That's not my background.
We do have support services at TAFE, which is great. For me,

(11:04):
it's just like an acknowledgement.
So, you know, if a student says, you know, look, I have anxiety.
You can go, okay, all right, well, how is that affecting your work?
How would you like to talk about it? And I think even that sort of acknowledgement and,
you know, that acknowledgement that this is what's causing their problem and
they've got somebody who actually listens to that, But then you're on a path

(11:28):
of being able to sort of offer solutions which are more tailored.
And then I can sort of draw back into my area where I say, okay,
well, let's just have a look at your writing now and let's see if we can make it a bit easier for you.
Let's see what's making it hard for you to write something.
And, you know, so I'll look at it and I'll go, okay, well, you know,
it might be something like,

(11:48):
look, you're writing too much much or you're not
you know often you get a lack of
sort of confidence writing or sort of a self-doubt in
there so they're not writing clearly or they're not it's taking
much longer they need to and that's that's sort of
the help specifically I can offer
other than that I might be working to support people or you

(12:09):
know the support services that take yeah I
think it's really wonderful that your art here
as a whole is going all right these students are having difficulty it might
start off as displaying as literacy issues but hey look we can support you through
this or we can help you with this and these are some other areas that you can
go to get some help and and doing that well-being for the student I think that's really really great.

(12:35):
The support is just amazing yeah it's it's really TAFE has always been a way
of you know people being able to sort of take the step up you know step into
like education or step into or, you know, skilled career and that diversity and accessibility,
I think we're really hitting our stride on that and it really makes me pretty
proud, you know. As you should be. No, that's really great.

(12:57):
And I just was wondering if you have any resources or initiatives you recommend
to our listeners to assist them with students who wish to improve their literacy,
their language and numeracy skills? Sure.
Yeah, okay. Well, there's a great, especially for adults, there's a great organisation
called Read Right Now, which deals with adult literacy.
So I can just search for that and... Yeah, yeah, they're on there. They're really great.

(13:20):
They have dealt with a really wide range of literacy skills.
If you're looking to build a student up and get them in there,
that would probably be the first place I'd go to.
If migrant students do, obviously, I'd suggest,
of course, coming to an English course at TAFE as
well as doing their study to sort of help them them along you know again but
you know manage your expectation how much English they need but

(13:42):
if they do they can certainly go through there also there are a
lot more technological assistance out there for example even in word now
you have something called immersive reader and I was talking to a student yesterday
who wasn't great with blue light she her eyes got tired I said we can go into
this you click into Microsoft Word now you go to immersive reader it can read
it out for you it can make the font larger it can increase the spaces it can

(14:04):
isolate different parts of text Text and,
you know, from text, which can be dense and hard to read and distracting,
it turns it into a specifically tailored, you know, tailored experience.
So, yeah, there's a lot out there. And also, you know, support services on campus
will also be there to help.
And, oh, abs too. If you haven't got abs in your department,

(14:25):
ask for it because we're out there and we're here to help. That was a bit of a plug.
Sorry. Sorry. Anthony, your passion for empowering learners is really, truly inspiring.
And it's been fascinating to talk to you today about your diverse experiences
and witness your dedication to building bridges through language.

(14:45):
And your e-learning course and insights on student wellness does remind us that
every learner deserves a tailored path to success.
So thank you so much for speaking to us today. Really appreciate your time.
Thank you so much. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for, yeah, thanks for listening
to me. And yeah, thanks very much for listening to us.

(15:09):
That brings us to the end of another fantastic episode. Anthony talked a bit
about the Read Right Now website, so I'll put the link in the notes so that you can access that.
You've been listening to TAC Talks with your host, Mel Hartley,
and finalist, Anthony Georgeff.
Music.
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