February 6, 2023 • 37 mins
Episode Overview:
In this episode experienced remote principal, Ann Adams, talks about supporting First Nations students from ESLD backgrounds.
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About The Remote Teacher Podcast
The Remote Teacher Podcast is a podcast ‘talking all things remote education’ to support remote outback teachers to be the best they can be… and in turn can help our students be the best they can be. We chat with remote outback teachers, leaders, First Nations educators and remote service providers about career, leadership, mental health, teaching strategies, culture, language, special needs, bucket lists for remote adventures and more.
Host: Hakea Hustler
Guest: Ann Adams
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Remote Teacher podcast. We're excited to have you here.
(00:09):
I'm Hake Hussler, an experienced regional rural and remote teacher, author of children's
middle and YA books and co-creator of the Facebook group, teaches in remote communities
past, present and future, along with Karl Merrison and Lynette Gordon, and the co-owner of
website, the remote teacher. The remote teacher, podcast and all our support platforms come
(00:32):
from a passion to improve the experience of remote teachers and in turn create positive
outcomes for our remote students and communities.
You can find out more about us on www.theremoteteacher.com.au, over on our Facebook group, teaches
in remote communities past, present and future, and of course by listening to this podcast.
(00:55):
I remember you can also download these podcasts so you don't need internet access and you
can listen to them wherever you need, including on your long drives out to your remote and
rural communities. Please remember to like us on Facebook, on Instagram and by signing up
to our email list. Before I introduce our guest for today, it's important to acknowledge
(01:16):
that the discussions that we have here are the opinion of the guest and myself alone and
do not represent anyone including Department of Education or any particular organisation
unless of course they've come on stating that they're representing that organisation.
It's also important to consider. First-ation peoples, communities, students and families
(01:38):
are all diverse and unique and what works for our guests and myself, they all may not work
for you, your students, your families, your communities and your schools. So take what
you need, leave what you don't, fit back and enjoy, let's begin.
Happy to welcome Anne Adams, but before we begin our discussion today, I'd like to acknowledge
the traditional custodians on the lands we meet, the Bungalong people of Northern Rivers
(02:02):
New South Wales and the Larrakeer people wear anis for her holidays and this interview
today. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that
respect to any first-nations peoples, listening along with our podcast today. Welcome Anne.
I pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging of the Iawaro language group,
(02:27):
the land on which I teach, live and whose children I work with and whose community I serve.
Wonderful, thank you. Do you want to share a little bit about your background prior to going
out to work remote? My background prior to going out to work remote is quite convoluted.
(02:48):
I started off with a psyched degree, I worked in alcohol and drug counselling, then I worked
as a youth worker to homeless youth in Melbourne. And then I went to Japan with my partner and
we ran out of money and I started teaching English and fell in love with it. Absolutely
(03:08):
fell in love with it. Of course we were teaching English as a foreign language and that means
that the people you're teaching are not immersed in a culture that speaks English. And I just
and I was teaching adults. So we came, we came, several years, we came back to Australia and
I started teaching and became the director of an English language college in Melbourne and
(03:32):
then life changes and I had a child and I became a single parent and I became, I got my
teaching degree because up to that stage I didn't have any teaching qualifications, got my teaching
degree and I moved into high school. And the next 25 years I spent teaching English, teaching
(03:53):
Japanese, teaching EALD and teaching history. And I wound up in a wonderful job in a senior
secondary college and I loved it. But things have changed again and my daughter, my daughter
was in London and I was sitting in a suburb of Melbourne and had been in the same house for
(04:17):
30 years and went, "What am I doing here? I could be anywhere in the world." So where do I want
to go? And after thinking about going overseas again, you know, teaching English in Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, China, I decided that I actually wanted to go remote. And it took about,
(04:40):
um, another 18 months before I managed to organize everything and went for a month and
about seven and a half years ago. What are wealth of experience and knowledge you were
before coming from remote? I imagine that your experience is working in psychology and youth
work have really served you well when you went out to a remote community as well.
(05:01):
Why I went into psychology and youth work is because I love kids and I'm passionate.
About them having confidence in themselves. And that's where I want to make a difference.
I want children and their families to actually have pride in who they are. And it doesn't matter
whether it's a child and a leafy suburb of Melbourne or it's a child on the streets or it's one
(05:27):
of my students. That's my passion. I want them to be feeling better about themselves
when they came in. But I'm about. You're background in AARLD and working in all those different
countries and teaching English as a foreign language then you transferred that knowledge into your
remote concept text. So I wonder what strengths do English as a second language or dialect students
(05:50):
bring to the table this idea of being multilingual? I want to actually go back a bit.
I want to go back to my first experience in remote. I came in, came in as a high school teacher
and they don't really exist in remote. I mean you have the classes from Kinder through to year 12
(06:12):
but in other remote schools it's rare to actually have a high school as I know it.
I'm still teaching primary so I had a lot to learn. I never taught reading before. I taught English as
a subject and AARLD but my kids could all read. So I had to go back and do a lot of learning
(06:33):
on how to teach reading, how to teach maths or sorts of stuff. But my first, my first
school, I was told that kids spoke, were learning English, they spoke English, they needed some help
and I started listening to them and they didn't, they weren't speaking English. They weren't
(06:55):
speaking standard-estraining English so there's not such languages English. It's an umbrella term
for all different dialects. And we as a person from Melbourne I speak standard-estraining English
but the kids were not speaking standard-estraining English. They were speaking something else and I
(07:16):
didn't know what else it was but I started listening and it was obvious that it was embedded in
an English that was a long time ago because they say things like 'Muracar' instead of 'kar'
and it had its own grammar rules, it had its own language, it had its own referencing and I
asked around people told me I was stupid, you know, that they speak, speak English, what are you talking
(07:40):
about? And I made some terrible mistakes with my ATs because I, you know, I just assumed that what
I was being told was correct that they were speaking English so I corrected some stuff and they were
horrified that they were making mistakes because they didn't know that they were speaking a different
language. And that's when you teach in remote, you're teaching children who are actually speaking
(08:05):
into from language to you. Some of the things sound alike but don't be too confident about it.
You know, things that you say and things that they say can have completely different meanings.
And I have troubles listening to my friends who speak Aboriginal English because they don't have
any markers for, they don't have many markers for time and they don't have many markers for who they,
(08:29):
who or what they're speaking about. English has a million markers. We are, we're used as a business
language because everybody's very clear about what they're, they're speaking about because we have
those time markers and those referencing markers but a lot of other languages don't and Aboriginal
English doesn't, that I know of, I don't know it well enough. So the first thing that they bring to
(08:53):
the table is that they're speaking, they come in wanting to learn, I think the greatest change is
all children want to learn. And if you come from that premise, then things start unfold and you start
understanding what's, what's stopping them from learning. All children want to learn, they come
and they may not be speaking the language or speaking. So everything you say, everything you do,
(09:19):
you need to actually preach. So it's not an assumption that they actually know, they, they're good at
guessing, they're good at working it out but they really need to be taught. One of the things that
we do, like if I hold up a picture of chair, a chair and listen to how I'm describing it at a chair,
(09:46):
if I hold up a picture of a chair, I get them to chorus chair, I mean, it's very simplistic but we
never use chair as a word, we always use our chair, your chair, my chair. It's always prefixed with
with one of those pronouns or counters or whatever. And we need to be teaching that from the very
so that we're modeling language but the other thing our students need to know is that they're
(10:12):
learning a different language. It's not the same language. So the very first thing I do when I'm
with kids is, all right, so you speak Aboriginal English, you might also speak another
and I speak standard Australian English. Let's have a look at some of the differences, you know? So if I
go to the shop, I, you know, bingo shop, you know, it's, I put on my, can you put your seatbelt on,
(10:41):
seatbelt, put them, you know? And we start seeing that there's differences and they start understanding
whether it's a different language. It's a good language. So we start moving between the languages,
so they know that they're actually learning a different language because what happens is kids come
in, you speak, they don't understand you, they don't, they think they're bad because they can't
(11:02):
understand you. They think that they, it's something to do with them and you have thoughts,
why can't they understand? And when you realize it's the filter that it's the same language,
you're putting everything in there, putting everything, but they're all speaking the same language
and it's untrue. So yeah, it is fascinating. And then the work you do on the code switch,
(11:27):
you once they understand that they are speaking Aboriginal English or Creole and you're speaking
standard Australian and the places that you can use both or, you know, switch between both. Yes, I
think it's really important. Creole at least has a name that is recognised and kids often know that
they speak Creole. But Aboriginal English is a, I mean, how do I survive until my 60s before I
(11:52):
even heard about that language? Yeah. But it's a miracle of a language. When you think about it,
it started as a language between non-indigenous and indigenous, but it's spread to a language between
different people from different countries, indigenous people from different countries. So people
(12:12):
in Perth can speak to people in, in Alice Springs, that never used to be the case. So it's actually a
remarkable language that has grown up in the past 100 years, but it's not recognised.
And there's a whole heap of, it's not just language comes with culture. So you can learn a language,
(12:33):
but you need to understand the culture of it. And one of the things,
Diana Eats has written a book called Aboriginal Uses of English. She's written a number of books,
I think she's a professor. And I was teaching, I was doing a lot of PD with my staff last year,
(12:55):
about Aboriginal English. And I read one of her books and it was eye-opening because of you.
Oh yeah, because it was about the culture, Aboriginal culture and how they used Aboriginal English.
(13:16):
And one of the things that she said, and I can't remember the word,
no, 'quizitorial' maybe, is that English, you ask questions in English. So English is a, English,
you ask questions, right? We ask questions all the time. You start off asking me questions.
How do we interview you? We ask questions. How do we get to know people? We ask questions.
(13:38):
In Aboriginal culture, and I don't know how widespread, she was only talking about one area in
Queensland, but it's definitely been my experience in other areas. Aboriginal culture doesn't
have questions. So when I talk to my assistant teachers who may be Aboriginal, and I ask,
(13:59):
what do you think about your arrangement of the room? They'll go, "Oh, I don't know."
And the effect is that they don't have an opinion about it. Maybe even they don't know what I'm talking
about, but they do, it's just that they can't, I'm asking a question. So she was saying that the best
(14:24):
way is to actually give, I like the room like this, and then they'll say, "Oh, I think the chairs
should be moved over there." So there are opinions there. My head, the present time,
my head assistant teacher, she has strong opinions, but it takes a while. I can't stop asking questions.
(14:47):
Yeah, it's just, it's just such a natural part of my culture. But when I stop and I put it in another
context, she'll have an opinion. Often, I'll ask the question, "Oh, and she'll come back later and give
me the opinion, because she's dealing with that culture, that two-way culture as well." Diana Eves
(15:09):
said the problem is in our judicial system. So it's based on questions and answering questions,
and Aboriginal people don't do that. And that just blows my mind, the impact, and the sad impact
of that. Wow. I can see it again. Yeah, it's, I don't know what to do about that, but we can definitely
(15:34):
teach our students to ask and answer questions in our culture. Yes. So it's, when we put it in context,
this is, this is the western way of doing it, as opposed to the Aboriginal way of doing it,
and we can teach them, and they can become comfortable with it. But it needs to be taught, it needs
(15:55):
to be. So we're empowering our students to be able to live and learn in both cultures, but also really
important. An interesting thing you highlight about the way we interact with our First Nations staff
as well, and re-framing our thinking, because I haven't actually spent time thinking about that idea
of question-asking versus other ways to share an illicit knowledge. That's very interesting.
(16:18):
And I really don't, I know Yarning is a big part of Aboriginal, many Aboriginal nations culture,
but I don't really know how that works, because it's so different to my own culture.
I can only sort of meet in the middle a little bit. And we've spent a lot of time in remote communities,
(16:40):
U7 and a half years, I think you said, and yet we're still learning and still thinking and still
these big, you know, light-bulb moments which force us to go back and rethink our own practice and
our own interactions. And also acknowledge that we'll make mistakes, so that if when we're speaking
(17:01):
with our First Nations assistant teachers or teachers or community, it had to be easier on yourself,
but also be aware of what's going on, you know, and then you can meet in the middle just a short
break to share books and resources by Hakey Hussler and Karl Mererson. The Children's Book Council
of Australia book week on a book in 2019, Black Cocker 2, is a middle reader, short novella,
(17:27):
set on JARU country. Well, short, there are many jumping off points to explore.
Tracks of the missing is a WA Premier Book Award, Daisy Atomara Award, shortlisted,
YA Suspense Thriller, set in Outback Australia, it follows Declan Archer in his race to find a
missing busload of students. My deadly boots is a First Nations picture book about confidence,
(17:53):
identity and connection. Karl and Hakey Hussler have many more books out across the next few years,
perfect for remote classrooms. Full teaching packs are available over on the website,
Karl and Hakey Hussler.com.au. We also create remote teacher resources, getting to know you,
to learn, and much more over on our TPT store. So let's get back to this deadly interview.
(18:20):
The other thing that I get very upset at is please and thank you. Please, English is the
please and thank you language. We have to say please and thank you all the time. In fact, we have a
whole heap of greetings and I don't know how many times I've stood and kids are to be given
please. Thank you. You know the and comments by teachers and other people are kids are so rude.
(18:45):
Kids are so rude, but English is the please and thank you language. So we have to put it in context
that we're teaching two ways. So Western way is saying, it Western Anglo-Saxon English way is saying
please and thank you. It's not necessarily the Aboriginal way, it's not necessarily the French way.
(19:07):
We're used to saying please and thank you. We're used to having greetings. I was with
by assistant teacher who is Walpry and he's now a close friend and he jumped out of the car and
started talking to a person like I just said he never said good morning or how are you?
(19:28):
And he stopped and he looked at me and we often had these conversations so he was used to me,
you know, and he went, I don't have to. He said he's family. He lives in this community. I know who he is.
I know our relationship. It doesn't change unless he's been away for a long time. And I, that is
(19:51):
interesting. So I had to talk to my daughter and went, you know, I say good morning to you. Am I
having to reassert our relationship or actually repressence our relationship when I think about
English culture? Families split up easily, they do other things, but it's a different view of family
that the understanding of that I don't need to do those things because it's not that I don't need to.
(20:18):
It's that we are all one, one family. And I just get blown away by that context whereas in my family
I have to have those introductions. I reassert our, well, even some of them is not even kind of
important. So you say how are you and everyone automatically says good? There's no, there's no
debt or that communication or that relationship in that context. But I expected from you.
(20:45):
I expect you asked that because if you don't ask that you're being rude, it's, it's really,
I'm fascinating. And in regards to that, that we're showing respect, the idea of showing respect in
First Nations cultures is often different to and often through facial expressions and body language
that we as teachers from other areas might not be aware of. And yet it impacts our teaching and
(21:09):
our interactions with students without our knowledge perhaps. Now look at me, look at me.
That's right. I think you're having a bad day and you're walking around with your bunch of
shoulders or you're feeling it even though you're saying nice things to your students,
they're picking up on this other layer of communication as well.
Yes, because they also have to because they don't understand you. So they're very attuned to
(21:35):
what's happening. Good point. It's also also English speaking kids in mainstream are often
very much more attuned to their teacher than teachers think because they're watching them
knowing how, oh, a student who was a long time ago, a student who was paying the pub really.
(21:57):
Back row boy, you know, can I, can I, can I, we said that, um, stood up one day and said, Miss Adams,
we don't know who we're getting. Every day you're different. I walked out and I went, oh my god,
what's going on? I went to the doctors and there was, there was something, something easily fixed,
but I had a hormone imbalance and he, you know, the class had picked up on it and I had had no idea.
(22:24):
I just thought I was being moody. Yeah, no. And those things to be aware of in our teaching, especially
not necessarily, we could have those underlying conditions as well, but, you know, sometimes your
homesick, your feeling isolated, you're, you know, having all these, you family sick back home and
you can't get to them, you're having all this stuff going on behind the scenes and yet you're
(22:45):
turning up to teach in the impact. But some of those things can have on our teaching and our
foods and sometimes with being honest with the kids. Yes. Yes. So if you're being authentic with them
that, um, okay, I'm not feeling well today or this has happened and it makes you human, it makes you
not a perfect model of knowledge or whatever the, um, the kid just has you relate to them.
(23:13):
No, and they understand kids are fantastic. They are. So in regards to EALD, because this is your
specialty and I'm excited to hear how is teaching an ELD student different than teaching a native speaker.
So I know a lot of the people listening might be coming from a crack or some teaching experience
(23:34):
or maybe years of teaching experience in a mainstream school. What do they need to be thinking about
when teaching an ELD student? So I think there's two things. First of all, we say teaching
English that has a completely different meaning in mainstream. So when I'm teaching English in high
school or, um, I'm teaching about characters, I'm teaching about understanding the narrative, um,
(24:00):
I might be teaching some grammar, but all the kids can use the grammar. I'm, I'm teaching about the
metal language, how to name it. And there's nothing wrong with that. Um, we expect our students to read.
So understanding the text is very important. But for teaching EALD, I have to look at what language
(24:22):
I'm, uh, I'm teaching science. I can't think like reflection or something. Um, I have to think about
not only the nouns I'm going to use. I have to think about the tenses I'm going to use. All right,
so we're teaching about light, so is it present tense? Light refracts. It is refracting.
When we're writing up the experiment, I'm, it's past tense. What am I going to concentrate on?
(24:45):
How am I going to teach that? It can be, um, it can really be a dark hole that you fall down into.
But you have to think about your intention of the lesson and what you want the kids to learn.
For example, and this is not an EALD example, but this is an example of intention. So
(25:08):
we're going to teach history, right? We're going to teach history. Let's, we'll do a timeline of
the event I'm talking about. So I'm doing this in year, um, say you're six and you seven.
I'm going to teach, uh, we're going to do a timeline. Well, the very first thing I'm going to have to
teach many of the kids is how to hold a ruler to rule the line. So to do a timeline, the successes,
(25:33):
can they, they can draw a straight line with a ruler? Then they can divide it into equal segments,
which links into fractions. Then they can list in order chronological order events. Now they may
have to list events events without knowing the actual dates, but they might have to list
(25:54):
put dates in chronological order, years in chronological order. Can they do that? Then after they've
got their timeline up, how do they actually organise it so that they read all of it? What tense you
going to do the timeline in? Timelines are usually in present tense. It might, they might be in past tense,
but you've got to make a decision about that, you know, Mother dies 1849, Mother died 1849. It's your
(26:18):
decision and it's got to be a actual conscious decision because you've got to have to teach that
and have you talk about consistent structure across the digital. Yes, right across in the how I'm
speaking. Tell them that I'm speaking differently because this is the way we do it when it's written
because our tenses are quite different written and spoken tenses or if I'm telling a story or
(26:43):
does listing events the tenses are all very different so to stop and think about it and most
teachers don't have that expertise and I think that's where you need to work together. If I had my way,
I'd have all teachers do a ALD course, a Tesla course of some sort. Yeah, even a six month one would
(27:06):
have them start thinking about how they're teaching and what they need to teach so that the students
develop an understanding of language and can use it. At the moment, it's very piecemeal.
I've just written a core language map for ALD for we haven't told everyone I'm a principal of the
(27:27):
school. I've been principal of two schools and I'm now principal of Inbloder, which in
Barclay region in the Northern Territory and I it's in draft form. It hasn't got everything in it,
but the idea is if we teach these grammar points and use of, hey, before and after all then,
you know, the order of instructions, which is round about grade one, maybe transition grade one,
(27:52):
but you have to actually teach it, right? You've got to think about how you use it.
And of course, thinking about that there'll be these gaps in knowledge too, so that like you said,
piecemeal, many of our students won't have learnt that along the way. So sometimes you're
making sure at the beginning of a unit or even beginning of a lesson that you are putting these
structures out there and this background knowledge that students in the vocab that they'll need to
(28:14):
use in that lesson so that yes, everyone's on the same page, yep. It's a nice piecemeal approach,
really. We have such a turnover of staff. I breaks my heart, really, because I do know that
the schools I've been into that have had constant staff had a greater impact on the students,
(28:35):
because things aren't changing. And you know what one teacher's taught, hasn't. How do we get kids
in year six who can't rule a line? Yeah. Never had a track to, never seen a division sign.
And that's just the change over a staff and the lack of that core, core skills going through.
(28:56):
Which is what your language map might hopefully help to address that there'll be the document to
refer to. And obviously you'll train up your first nation's colleagues in using and valuing it.
And then as the staff turn over, then you'll have that. That's the idea. And then I discovered that
even when I say, okay, we're going to teach past tense or present continuous or whatever,
(29:20):
teachers still need to know how to do it. They need to actually understand how to construct a lesson
to actually do that. And you know, you may have the language lesson at the start of the week repeated
through and then then have all your other subjects using that construct. Because we're teaching
English as a foreign language, they don't go back into a community that speaks English. They might
(29:43):
speak English at the, might speak English at the store, but probably not. Probably they're not allowed in.
So their parents will be dealing with that, but they'll have their cousin as the person on the cash
year. They don't have to. They're only people that they're speaking English to are us. And even when
they go into the town, they stay in their own camps. So we have to provide that.
(30:09):
Which really highlights the importance of having these high expectations classrooms too. And knowing
our core role as teachers that we provide this gateway into two way learning and code switching and
and kind of this key, which all of our students should be able to access as soon as they're
in the right to be able to operate in both worlds. It's very important. And it's what the parents and
(30:33):
communities want to. Yes. They want their children to be able to operate in both worlds and to understand
both worlds. And so that's our job. So thinking about everyone should do a T-sole or an ESL
D course, at least a short course or six months like you said, but for those people who are listening
(30:53):
to this now and about to go remote, what should they be thinking that they're kind of the key,
basic 101s that they can implement from day one to make them a better teacher for these ESL D
students? That's actually a really good question. Where do I start? I probably don't start straight
away, but I start by listening to my students learning about a little bit and I'm really in the first
(31:15):
week or so learning a little bit about the languages they speak. So that when I go in, I can actually
talk about the different, get them to teach me about the different languages. So this is what I
say. What do you say that you said? Most of them can't do it. They don't switch like that. They can
sit in the seat, speak standard-straining English to the teacher, turn around and speak Aboriginal
(31:42):
English to the kid next door and then Mum comes in and they'll speak another language. I mean,
but they don't have their conscious switching. So that needs to be taught. And they'll have a hard
time of it, but once it's taught, they'll get really good at it. I've had great vibes and sixes who
were fantastic translators. When the little kids came up, they go, "Oh, Annie, they want da da da da da."
(32:08):
And I go, "Oh, yeah, okay, okay, I understand that." So they can be a real ally, but you need to give
it time. You need to actually differentiate those languages, name those languages. You can talk
about standard-straining, which is what I'm out for. You can actually make them shorter. I always
(32:31):
followed by Aboriginal English. I usually call it by the town therein. Yeah. And they get that
straight away. Yeah. They get that they speak differently. And I think that's the first thing I do.
Just a matter of how old they are. That's the first thing, you know, what's, and get the
indigenous, the local families to help you. If you want to teach them, get them to come in and
(32:58):
be the translators and learn how to translate with their kids. They love it. You know, actually learning as
well. And then we can all learn together. And it will give the basis to that child. I think that's
the first thing. So I think that's really important because not only is it forming the relationships
outside the classroom, it's allowing the families and the parents to be those first teachers as well
(33:21):
and to take that knowledge of two-way and code switching back out into their homes and homes.
I think that's really important, really, really important because then they start to understand
it because many of them don't know they don't speak standard-straining English. Yes.
And that's the first thing is to put them to be proud of having not two languages, but three or
(33:42):
four languages, you know? Yeah. That was part one of our interview with Anne Adams who specialises
and is very passionate as you could hear about ESLD and supporting students who are English as a
second language. Stay tuned to a future episode where Anne talks about improving attendance.
(34:02):
Each podcast episode, we also try and highlight or spotlight or do a shout out from amazing
businesses, organizations, groups and services that are working in remote communities. This could be
run or owned by First Nations people or services that regularly are committed to going into remote
(34:24):
communities and listening and working with First Nations people. So here is our shout out and spotlight
for this episode. The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation believe that all Australians have
the right to literacy because being able to read and write is key to accessing education and employment
(34:46):
and to participating fully in society. ALNF was founded in 1999 by Mary Ruth Mendel and Kim
Kelly who are passionate about helping people in Australia's most marginalized communities gain
literacy skills. Mary Ruth is a leading speech language pathologist specialising in assisting people
(35:08):
of all ages with literacy and learning difficulties through her private practice. Kim is a mother of four
with a background in business management. So what do ALNF do? They have a range of programs including
Early Language and Literacy, Refugee Action and Support, Indigenous First Languages,
(35:33):
Fostering Links Between First Language and English, Subtext Using Art for Literacy, Literacy Packs
Sent to young people in remote areas to help develop basic literacy skills, share a book where there
are new and pre-loved quality books to communities most in need, the Breakfast Library,
(35:59):
an innovative program through ALNF. They've also been developing language apps between First Language
and Standard Australian English. So you can tell through the variety of programs that there are some
that would be suitable to engage with ALNF to support your students in remote communities through
book packs or their language apps or other ways. So reach out to ALNF to see how they can support you.
(36:25):
The link will be in the show notes. You've been listening to the remote teacher podcast,
a podcast where we discuss all things remote outback teaching. Make sure you follow us on Facebook,
Instagram, join our email list and our Facebook group, Teachers in Remote Communities,
Past, Present and Future. Any important links mentioned or businesses or organizations to support
(36:48):
your remote teaching that our guests has mentioned today will be in the show notes. So make sure you
have a look at them to find out more. And a reminder again, this podcast can be downloaded so you can
access it when you do not have internet coverage or reception. So you can listen to it on your
long drives between communities in the outback. Thank you for listening. We look forward to seeing
(37:09):
you in the next episode of the remote teacher.
Welcome to the Remote Teacher podcast. We're excited to have you here.
(00:09):
I'm Hake Hussler, an experienced regional rural and remote teacher, author of children's
middle and YA books and co-creator of the Facebook group, teaches in remote communities
past, present and future, along with Karl Merrison and Lynette Gordon, and the co-owner of
website, the remote teacher. The remote teacher, podcast and all our support platforms come
(00:32):
from a passion to improve the experience of remote teachers and in turn create positive
outcomes for our remote students and communities.
You can find out more about us on www.theremoteteacher.com.au, over on our Facebook group, teaches
in remote communities past, present and future, and of course by listening to this podcast.
(00:55):
I remember you can also download these podcasts so you don't need internet access and you
can listen to them wherever you need, including on your long drives out to your remote and
rural communities. Please remember to like us on Facebook, on Instagram and by signing up
to our email list. Before I introduce our guest for today, it's important to acknowledge
(01:16):
that the discussions that we have here are the opinion of the guest and myself alone and
do not represent anyone including Department of Education or any particular organisation
unless of course they've come on stating that they're representing that organisation.
It's also important to consider. First-ation peoples, communities, students and families
(01:38):
are all diverse and unique and what works for our guests and myself, they all may not work
for you, your students, your families, your communities and your schools. So take what
you need, leave what you don't, fit back and enjoy, let's begin.
Happy to welcome Anne Adams, but before we begin our discussion today, I'd like to acknowledge
the traditional custodians on the lands we meet, the Bungalong people of Northern Rivers
(02:02):
New South Wales and the Larrakeer people wear anis for her holidays and this interview
today. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that
respect to any first-nations peoples, listening along with our podcast today. Welcome Anne.
I pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging of the Iawaro language group,
(02:27):
the land on which I teach, live and whose children I work with and whose community I serve.
Wonderful, thank you. Do you want to share a little bit about your background prior to going
out to work remote? My background prior to going out to work remote is quite convoluted.
(02:48):
I started off with a psyched degree, I worked in alcohol and drug counselling, then I worked
as a youth worker to homeless youth in Melbourne. And then I went to Japan with my partner and
we ran out of money and I started teaching English and fell in love with it. Absolutely
(03:08):
fell in love with it. Of course we were teaching English as a foreign language and that means
that the people you're teaching are not immersed in a culture that speaks English. And I just
and I was teaching adults. So we came, we came, several years, we came back to Australia and
I started teaching and became the director of an English language college in Melbourne and
(03:32):
then life changes and I had a child and I became a single parent and I became, I got my
teaching degree because up to that stage I didn't have any teaching qualifications, got my teaching
degree and I moved into high school. And the next 25 years I spent teaching English, teaching
(03:53):
Japanese, teaching EALD and teaching history. And I wound up in a wonderful job in a senior
secondary college and I loved it. But things have changed again and my daughter, my daughter
was in London and I was sitting in a suburb of Melbourne and had been in the same house for
(04:17):
30 years and went, "What am I doing here? I could be anywhere in the world." So where do I want
to go? And after thinking about going overseas again, you know, teaching English in Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, China, I decided that I actually wanted to go remote. And it took about,
(04:40):
um, another 18 months before I managed to organize everything and went for a month and
about seven and a half years ago. What are wealth of experience and knowledge you were
before coming from remote? I imagine that your experience is working in psychology and youth
work have really served you well when you went out to a remote community as well.
(05:01):
Why I went into psychology and youth work is because I love kids and I'm passionate.
About them having confidence in themselves. And that's where I want to make a difference.
I want children and their families to actually have pride in who they are. And it doesn't matter
whether it's a child and a leafy suburb of Melbourne or it's a child on the streets or it's one
(05:27):
of my students. That's my passion. I want them to be feeling better about themselves
when they came in. But I'm about. You're background in AARLD and working in all those different
countries and teaching English as a foreign language then you transferred that knowledge into your
remote concept text. So I wonder what strengths do English as a second language or dialect students
(05:50):
bring to the table this idea of being multilingual? I want to actually go back a bit.
I want to go back to my first experience in remote. I came in, came in as a high school teacher
and they don't really exist in remote. I mean you have the classes from Kinder through to year 12
(06:12):
but in other remote schools it's rare to actually have a high school as I know it.
I'm still teaching primary so I had a lot to learn. I never taught reading before. I taught English as
a subject and AARLD but my kids could all read. So I had to go back and do a lot of learning
(06:33):
on how to teach reading, how to teach maths or sorts of stuff. But my first, my first
school, I was told that kids spoke, were learning English, they spoke English, they needed some help
and I started listening to them and they didn't, they weren't speaking English. They weren't
(06:55):
speaking standard-estraining English so there's not such languages English. It's an umbrella term
for all different dialects. And we as a person from Melbourne I speak standard-estraining English
but the kids were not speaking standard-estraining English. They were speaking something else and I
(07:16):
didn't know what else it was but I started listening and it was obvious that it was embedded in
an English that was a long time ago because they say things like 'Muracar' instead of 'kar'
and it had its own grammar rules, it had its own language, it had its own referencing and I
asked around people told me I was stupid, you know, that they speak, speak English, what are you talking
(07:40):
about? And I made some terrible mistakes with my ATs because I, you know, I just assumed that what
I was being told was correct that they were speaking English so I corrected some stuff and they were
horrified that they were making mistakes because they didn't know that they were speaking a different
language. And that's when you teach in remote, you're teaching children who are actually speaking
(08:05):
into from language to you. Some of the things sound alike but don't be too confident about it.
You know, things that you say and things that they say can have completely different meanings.
And I have troubles listening to my friends who speak Aboriginal English because they don't have
any markers for, they don't have many markers for time and they don't have many markers for who they,
(08:29):
who or what they're speaking about. English has a million markers. We are, we're used as a business
language because everybody's very clear about what they're, they're speaking about because we have
those time markers and those referencing markers but a lot of other languages don't and Aboriginal
English doesn't, that I know of, I don't know it well enough. So the first thing that they bring to
(08:53):
the table is that they're speaking, they come in wanting to learn, I think the greatest change is
all children want to learn. And if you come from that premise, then things start unfold and you start
understanding what's, what's stopping them from learning. All children want to learn, they come
and they may not be speaking the language or speaking. So everything you say, everything you do,
(09:19):
you need to actually preach. So it's not an assumption that they actually know, they, they're good at
guessing, they're good at working it out but they really need to be taught. One of the things that
we do, like if I hold up a picture of chair, a chair and listen to how I'm describing it at a chair,
(09:46):
if I hold up a picture of a chair, I get them to chorus chair, I mean, it's very simplistic but we
never use chair as a word, we always use our chair, your chair, my chair. It's always prefixed with
with one of those pronouns or counters or whatever. And we need to be teaching that from the very
so that we're modeling language but the other thing our students need to know is that they're
(10:12):
learning a different language. It's not the same language. So the very first thing I do when I'm
with kids is, all right, so you speak Aboriginal English, you might also speak another
and I speak standard Australian English. Let's have a look at some of the differences, you know? So if I
go to the shop, I, you know, bingo shop, you know, it's, I put on my, can you put your seatbelt on,
(10:41):
seatbelt, put them, you know? And we start seeing that there's differences and they start understanding
whether it's a different language. It's a good language. So we start moving between the languages,
so they know that they're actually learning a different language because what happens is kids come
in, you speak, they don't understand you, they don't, they think they're bad because they can't
(11:02):
understand you. They think that they, it's something to do with them and you have thoughts,
why can't they understand? And when you realize it's the filter that it's the same language,
you're putting everything in there, putting everything, but they're all speaking the same language
and it's untrue. So yeah, it is fascinating. And then the work you do on the code switch,
(11:27):
you once they understand that they are speaking Aboriginal English or Creole and you're speaking
standard Australian and the places that you can use both or, you know, switch between both. Yes, I
think it's really important. Creole at least has a name that is recognised and kids often know that
they speak Creole. But Aboriginal English is a, I mean, how do I survive until my 60s before I
(11:52):
even heard about that language? Yeah. But it's a miracle of a language. When you think about it,
it started as a language between non-indigenous and indigenous, but it's spread to a language between
different people from different countries, indigenous people from different countries. So people
(12:12):
in Perth can speak to people in, in Alice Springs, that never used to be the case. So it's actually a
remarkable language that has grown up in the past 100 years, but it's not recognised.
And there's a whole heap of, it's not just language comes with culture. So you can learn a language,
(12:33):
but you need to understand the culture of it. And one of the things,
Diana Eats has written a book called Aboriginal Uses of English. She's written a number of books,
I think she's a professor. And I was teaching, I was doing a lot of PD with my staff last year,
(12:55):
about Aboriginal English. And I read one of her books and it was eye-opening because of you.
Oh yeah, because it was about the culture, Aboriginal culture and how they used Aboriginal English.
(13:16):
And one of the things that she said, and I can't remember the word,
no, 'quizitorial' maybe, is that English, you ask questions in English. So English is a, English,
you ask questions, right? We ask questions all the time. You start off asking me questions.
How do we interview you? We ask questions. How do we get to know people? We ask questions.
(13:38):
In Aboriginal culture, and I don't know how widespread, she was only talking about one area in
Queensland, but it's definitely been my experience in other areas. Aboriginal culture doesn't
have questions. So when I talk to my assistant teachers who may be Aboriginal, and I ask,
(13:59):
what do you think about your arrangement of the room? They'll go, "Oh, I don't know."
And the effect is that they don't have an opinion about it. Maybe even they don't know what I'm talking
about, but they do, it's just that they can't, I'm asking a question. So she was saying that the best
(14:24):
way is to actually give, I like the room like this, and then they'll say, "Oh, I think the chairs
should be moved over there." So there are opinions there. My head, the present time,
my head assistant teacher, she has strong opinions, but it takes a while. I can't stop asking questions.
(14:47):
Yeah, it's just, it's just such a natural part of my culture. But when I stop and I put it in another
context, she'll have an opinion. Often, I'll ask the question, "Oh, and she'll come back later and give
me the opinion, because she's dealing with that culture, that two-way culture as well." Diana Eves
(15:09):
said the problem is in our judicial system. So it's based on questions and answering questions,
and Aboriginal people don't do that. And that just blows my mind, the impact, and the sad impact
of that. Wow. I can see it again. Yeah, it's, I don't know what to do about that, but we can definitely
(15:34):
teach our students to ask and answer questions in our culture. Yes. So it's, when we put it in context,
this is, this is the western way of doing it, as opposed to the Aboriginal way of doing it,
and we can teach them, and they can become comfortable with it. But it needs to be taught, it needs
(15:55):
to be. So we're empowering our students to be able to live and learn in both cultures, but also really
important. An interesting thing you highlight about the way we interact with our First Nations staff
as well, and re-framing our thinking, because I haven't actually spent time thinking about that idea
of question-asking versus other ways to share an illicit knowledge. That's very interesting.
(16:18):
And I really don't, I know Yarning is a big part of Aboriginal, many Aboriginal nations culture,
but I don't really know how that works, because it's so different to my own culture.
I can only sort of meet in the middle a little bit. And we've spent a lot of time in remote communities,
(16:40):
U7 and a half years, I think you said, and yet we're still learning and still thinking and still
these big, you know, light-bulb moments which force us to go back and rethink our own practice and
our own interactions. And also acknowledge that we'll make mistakes, so that if when we're speaking
(17:01):
with our First Nations assistant teachers or teachers or community, it had to be easier on yourself,
but also be aware of what's going on, you know, and then you can meet in the middle just a short
break to share books and resources by Hakey Hussler and Karl Mererson. The Children's Book Council
of Australia book week on a book in 2019, Black Cocker 2, is a middle reader, short novella,
(17:27):
set on JARU country. Well, short, there are many jumping off points to explore.
Tracks of the missing is a WA Premier Book Award, Daisy Atomara Award, shortlisted,
YA Suspense Thriller, set in Outback Australia, it follows Declan Archer in his race to find a
missing busload of students. My deadly boots is a First Nations picture book about confidence,
(17:53):
identity and connection. Karl and Hakey Hussler have many more books out across the next few years,
perfect for remote classrooms. Full teaching packs are available over on the website,
Karl and Hakey Hussler.com.au. We also create remote teacher resources, getting to know you,
to learn, and much more over on our TPT store. So let's get back to this deadly interview.
(18:20):
The other thing that I get very upset at is please and thank you. Please, English is the
please and thank you language. We have to say please and thank you all the time. In fact, we have a
whole heap of greetings and I don't know how many times I've stood and kids are to be given
please. Thank you. You know the and comments by teachers and other people are kids are so rude.
(18:45):
Kids are so rude, but English is the please and thank you language. So we have to put it in context
that we're teaching two ways. So Western way is saying, it Western Anglo-Saxon English way is saying
please and thank you. It's not necessarily the Aboriginal way, it's not necessarily the French way.
(19:07):
We're used to saying please and thank you. We're used to having greetings. I was with
by assistant teacher who is Walpry and he's now a close friend and he jumped out of the car and
started talking to a person like I just said he never said good morning or how are you?
(19:28):
And he stopped and he looked at me and we often had these conversations so he was used to me,
you know, and he went, I don't have to. He said he's family. He lives in this community. I know who he is.
I know our relationship. It doesn't change unless he's been away for a long time. And I, that is
(19:51):
interesting. So I had to talk to my daughter and went, you know, I say good morning to you. Am I
having to reassert our relationship or actually repressence our relationship when I think about
English culture? Families split up easily, they do other things, but it's a different view of family
that the understanding of that I don't need to do those things because it's not that I don't need to.
(20:18):
It's that we are all one, one family. And I just get blown away by that context whereas in my family
I have to have those introductions. I reassert our, well, even some of them is not even kind of
important. So you say how are you and everyone automatically says good? There's no, there's no
debt or that communication or that relationship in that context. But I expected from you.
(20:45):
I expect you asked that because if you don't ask that you're being rude, it's, it's really,
I'm fascinating. And in regards to that, that we're showing respect, the idea of showing respect in
First Nations cultures is often different to and often through facial expressions and body language
that we as teachers from other areas might not be aware of. And yet it impacts our teaching and
(21:09):
our interactions with students without our knowledge perhaps. Now look at me, look at me.
That's right. I think you're having a bad day and you're walking around with your bunch of
shoulders or you're feeling it even though you're saying nice things to your students,
they're picking up on this other layer of communication as well.
Yes, because they also have to because they don't understand you. So they're very attuned to
(21:35):
what's happening. Good point. It's also also English speaking kids in mainstream are often
very much more attuned to their teacher than teachers think because they're watching them
knowing how, oh, a student who was a long time ago, a student who was paying the pub really.
(21:57):
Back row boy, you know, can I, can I, can I, we said that, um, stood up one day and said, Miss Adams,
we don't know who we're getting. Every day you're different. I walked out and I went, oh my god,
what's going on? I went to the doctors and there was, there was something, something easily fixed,
but I had a hormone imbalance and he, you know, the class had picked up on it and I had had no idea.
(22:24):
I just thought I was being moody. Yeah, no. And those things to be aware of in our teaching, especially
not necessarily, we could have those underlying conditions as well, but, you know, sometimes your
homesick, your feeling isolated, you're, you know, having all these, you family sick back home and
you can't get to them, you're having all this stuff going on behind the scenes and yet you're
(22:45):
turning up to teach in the impact. But some of those things can have on our teaching and our
foods and sometimes with being honest with the kids. Yes. Yes. So if you're being authentic with them
that, um, okay, I'm not feeling well today or this has happened and it makes you human, it makes you
not a perfect model of knowledge or whatever the, um, the kid just has you relate to them.
(23:13):
No, and they understand kids are fantastic. They are. So in regards to EALD, because this is your
specialty and I'm excited to hear how is teaching an ELD student different than teaching a native speaker.
So I know a lot of the people listening might be coming from a crack or some teaching experience
(23:34):
or maybe years of teaching experience in a mainstream school. What do they need to be thinking about
when teaching an ELD student? So I think there's two things. First of all, we say teaching
English that has a completely different meaning in mainstream. So when I'm teaching English in high
school or, um, I'm teaching about characters, I'm teaching about understanding the narrative, um,
(24:00):
I might be teaching some grammar, but all the kids can use the grammar. I'm, I'm teaching about the
metal language, how to name it. And there's nothing wrong with that. Um, we expect our students to read.
So understanding the text is very important. But for teaching EALD, I have to look at what language
(24:22):
I'm, uh, I'm teaching science. I can't think like reflection or something. Um, I have to think about
not only the nouns I'm going to use. I have to think about the tenses I'm going to use. All right,
so we're teaching about light, so is it present tense? Light refracts. It is refracting.
When we're writing up the experiment, I'm, it's past tense. What am I going to concentrate on?
(24:45):
How am I going to teach that? It can be, um, it can really be a dark hole that you fall down into.
But you have to think about your intention of the lesson and what you want the kids to learn.
For example, and this is not an EALD example, but this is an example of intention. So
(25:08):
we're going to teach history, right? We're going to teach history. Let's, we'll do a timeline of
the event I'm talking about. So I'm doing this in year, um, say you're six and you seven.
I'm going to teach, uh, we're going to do a timeline. Well, the very first thing I'm going to have to
teach many of the kids is how to hold a ruler to rule the line. So to do a timeline, the successes,
(25:33):
can they, they can draw a straight line with a ruler? Then they can divide it into equal segments,
which links into fractions. Then they can list in order chronological order events. Now they may
have to list events events without knowing the actual dates, but they might have to list
(25:54):
put dates in chronological order, years in chronological order. Can they do that? Then after they've
got their timeline up, how do they actually organise it so that they read all of it? What tense you
going to do the timeline in? Timelines are usually in present tense. It might, they might be in past tense,
but you've got to make a decision about that, you know, Mother dies 1849, Mother died 1849. It's your
(26:18):
decision and it's got to be a actual conscious decision because you've got to have to teach that
and have you talk about consistent structure across the digital. Yes, right across in the how I'm
speaking. Tell them that I'm speaking differently because this is the way we do it when it's written
because our tenses are quite different written and spoken tenses or if I'm telling a story or
(26:43):
does listing events the tenses are all very different so to stop and think about it and most
teachers don't have that expertise and I think that's where you need to work together. If I had my way,
I'd have all teachers do a ALD course, a Tesla course of some sort. Yeah, even a six month one would
(27:06):
have them start thinking about how they're teaching and what they need to teach so that the students
develop an understanding of language and can use it. At the moment, it's very piecemeal.
I've just written a core language map for ALD for we haven't told everyone I'm a principal of the
(27:27):
school. I've been principal of two schools and I'm now principal of Inbloder, which in
Barclay region in the Northern Territory and I it's in draft form. It hasn't got everything in it,
but the idea is if we teach these grammar points and use of, hey, before and after all then,
you know, the order of instructions, which is round about grade one, maybe transition grade one,
(27:52):
but you have to actually teach it, right? You've got to think about how you use it.
And of course, thinking about that there'll be these gaps in knowledge too, so that like you said,
piecemeal, many of our students won't have learnt that along the way. So sometimes you're
making sure at the beginning of a unit or even beginning of a lesson that you are putting these
structures out there and this background knowledge that students in the vocab that they'll need to
(28:14):
use in that lesson so that yes, everyone's on the same page, yep. It's a nice piecemeal approach,
really. We have such a turnover of staff. I breaks my heart, really, because I do know that
the schools I've been into that have had constant staff had a greater impact on the students,
(28:35):
because things aren't changing. And you know what one teacher's taught, hasn't. How do we get kids
in year six who can't rule a line? Yeah. Never had a track to, never seen a division sign.
And that's just the change over a staff and the lack of that core, core skills going through.
(28:56):
Which is what your language map might hopefully help to address that there'll be the document to
refer to. And obviously you'll train up your first nation's colleagues in using and valuing it.
And then as the staff turn over, then you'll have that. That's the idea. And then I discovered that
even when I say, okay, we're going to teach past tense or present continuous or whatever,
(29:20):
teachers still need to know how to do it. They need to actually understand how to construct a lesson
to actually do that. And you know, you may have the language lesson at the start of the week repeated
through and then then have all your other subjects using that construct. Because we're teaching
English as a foreign language, they don't go back into a community that speaks English. They might
(29:43):
speak English at the, might speak English at the store, but probably not. Probably they're not allowed in.
So their parents will be dealing with that, but they'll have their cousin as the person on the cash
year. They don't have to. They're only people that they're speaking English to are us. And even when
they go into the town, they stay in their own camps. So we have to provide that.
(30:09):
Which really highlights the importance of having these high expectations classrooms too. And knowing
our core role as teachers that we provide this gateway into two way learning and code switching and
and kind of this key, which all of our students should be able to access as soon as they're
in the right to be able to operate in both worlds. It's very important. And it's what the parents and
(30:33):
communities want to. Yes. They want their children to be able to operate in both worlds and to understand
both worlds. And so that's our job. So thinking about everyone should do a T-sole or an ESL
D course, at least a short course or six months like you said, but for those people who are listening
(30:53):
to this now and about to go remote, what should they be thinking that they're kind of the key,
basic 101s that they can implement from day one to make them a better teacher for these ESL D
students? That's actually a really good question. Where do I start? I probably don't start straight
away, but I start by listening to my students learning about a little bit and I'm really in the first
(31:15):
week or so learning a little bit about the languages they speak. So that when I go in, I can actually
talk about the different, get them to teach me about the different languages. So this is what I
say. What do you say that you said? Most of them can't do it. They don't switch like that. They can
sit in the seat, speak standard-straining English to the teacher, turn around and speak Aboriginal
(31:42):
English to the kid next door and then Mum comes in and they'll speak another language. I mean,
but they don't have their conscious switching. So that needs to be taught. And they'll have a hard
time of it, but once it's taught, they'll get really good at it. I've had great vibes and sixes who
were fantastic translators. When the little kids came up, they go, "Oh, Annie, they want da da da da da."
(32:08):
And I go, "Oh, yeah, okay, okay, I understand that." So they can be a real ally, but you need to give
it time. You need to actually differentiate those languages, name those languages. You can talk
about standard-straining, which is what I'm out for. You can actually make them shorter. I always
(32:31):
followed by Aboriginal English. I usually call it by the town therein. Yeah. And they get that
straight away. Yeah. They get that they speak differently. And I think that's the first thing I do.
Just a matter of how old they are. That's the first thing, you know, what's, and get the
indigenous, the local families to help you. If you want to teach them, get them to come in and
(32:58):
be the translators and learn how to translate with their kids. They love it. You know, actually learning as
well. And then we can all learn together. And it will give the basis to that child. I think that's
the first thing. So I think that's really important because not only is it forming the relationships
outside the classroom, it's allowing the families and the parents to be those first teachers as well
(33:21):
and to take that knowledge of two-way and code switching back out into their homes and homes.
I think that's really important, really, really important because then they start to understand
it because many of them don't know they don't speak standard-straining English. Yes.
And that's the first thing is to put them to be proud of having not two languages, but three or
(33:42):
four languages, you know? Yeah. That was part one of our interview with Anne Adams who specialises
and is very passionate as you could hear about ESLD and supporting students who are English as a
second language. Stay tuned to a future episode where Anne talks about improving attendance.
(34:02):
Each podcast episode, we also try and highlight or spotlight or do a shout out from amazing
businesses, organizations, groups and services that are working in remote communities. This could be
run or owned by First Nations people or services that regularly are committed to going into remote
(34:24):
communities and listening and working with First Nations people. So here is our shout out and spotlight
for this episode. The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation believe that all Australians have
the right to literacy because being able to read and write is key to accessing education and employment
(34:46):
and to participating fully in society. ALNF was founded in 1999 by Mary Ruth Mendel and Kim
Kelly who are passionate about helping people in Australia's most marginalized communities gain
literacy skills. Mary Ruth is a leading speech language pathologist specialising in assisting people
(35:08):
of all ages with literacy and learning difficulties through her private practice. Kim is a mother of four
with a background in business management. So what do ALNF do? They have a range of programs including
Early Language and Literacy, Refugee Action and Support, Indigenous First Languages,
(35:33):
Fostering Links Between First Language and English, Subtext Using Art for Literacy, Literacy Packs
Sent to young people in remote areas to help develop basic literacy skills, share a book where there
are new and pre-loved quality books to communities most in need, the Breakfast Library,
(35:59):
an innovative program through ALNF. They've also been developing language apps between First Language
and Standard Australian English. So you can tell through the variety of programs that there are some
that would be suitable to engage with ALNF to support your students in remote communities through
book packs or their language apps or other ways. So reach out to ALNF to see how they can support you.
(36:25):
The link will be in the show notes. You've been listening to the remote teacher podcast,
a podcast where we discuss all things remote outback teaching. Make sure you follow us on Facebook,
Instagram, join our email list and our Facebook group, Teachers in Remote Communities,
Past, Present and Future. Any important links mentioned or businesses or organizations to support
(36:48):
your remote teaching that our guests has mentioned today will be in the show notes. So make sure you
have a look at them to find out more. And a reminder again, this podcast can be downloaded so you can
access it when you do not have internet coverage or reception. So you can listen to it on your
long drives between communities in the outback. Thank you for listening. We look forward to seeing
(37:09):
you in the next episode of the remote teacher.
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