Reflections of "More than a Word" from a Family Day Care Educator

Well National Reconciliation Week is officially over for 2021! It has been so wonderful engaging with teachers all across the country through social media, and seeing beautiful pictures of their Reconciliation Week activities. It seems each year more and more schools are getting actively involved in this important week and as an Indigenous mum this is wonderful to witness.

Reflecting on this years theme, “More than a Word”, I reached out to Linda from Sunshine and Puddles Family Day Care in New South Wales to chat about what this week meant to her and her children. Reconciliation should be a year round process, and our efforts towards it and around educating our children around the issue, should not finish on 3 June, but rather, continue all year long.

As Linda says “This years theme to me means that rather than just using Reconciliation as a week where we trot out our Indigenous resources.“ We need to be providing spaces in our learning environments for children and students to engage with Indigenous cultures all year round, and throughout all different elements of the curriculum.

This need not be a ‘scary’ prospect, but should be one we embrace with open and willing arms. Ensuring we listen to First Nation voices, there is no reason why educators should not be able to respectfully bring in First Nations perspectives in all elements of their classroom, regardless of whether they themselves are Indigenous.

Linda told me that [she is] “putting my heart and soul into being a good Ally. I am always open to learning more and I expect I have and will get things wrong. My hope is that it is seen I am trying my best with what I know right now.” These are really poignant words and this acknowledgment that yes, she may get it wrong, is to me such a healthy attitude; too often we see this ‘fear’ that educators have around engaging in this space because they don’t want to ‘get it wrong’. This often results in a complete absence of engagement around Indigenous perspectives, or a tendency to leave it to others, or more specifically, to the (quite often few) Indigenous staff that may be present in the school. If majority of educators and school staff are in fact non-Indigenous, then if these people are too scared to engage in this space, our children are truly missing out on a huge chunk of learning that could be achieved if all staff took an active role in bringing Indigenous perspectives to the forefront. Reconciliation is not a one-way street, it needs to be engaged with by people of all backgrounds.

Linda went on to tell me that “I am trying to be very organic in applying this way of thinking to my service. I want the children to feel, know and have some stewardship of the process. After all what they learn is in their hands and I am just offering them facts and truths as I know them. I can hope moving forward they are aware and able to see the truth for what it is. Not how white history has portrayed it.”

Her learning goals for her children are that they “become thinkers and change makers through having had the opportunity to hear and learn about Aboriginal Perspectives. That they are not afraid of the truth no matter how uncomfortable we may be sitting in that truth.” I feel like this is such a beautiful learning goal and one which all educators should strive for. We want to be equipping our children with a respect for our First Nations cultures and an understanding of Australia’s history, through the facilitation of learning opportunities.

Facilitating and driving such learning for our children should be an ongoing learning journey for educators as well. As Linda told me, there have been many challenges in getting to this point in her own journey.

”There can be so many different paths the journey takes you. Sometimes the information is not where you are looking or you do not know, what you do not know. I didn’t understand white expectations on Aboriginal people. I didn’t even know it was a thing. To be honest; I did not know this at the time but I really wasn’t ready for what I wanted to know. I had white expectations of all the information just dropping in my lap. I still had so much to learn.”

Learning about how to embed Indigenous perspectives into your classroom comes from first equipping yourself as a culturally competent educator. This involves education of ourselves to a history that perhaps we were not taught as children. It also involves learning how to engage respectfully with your local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and people. Make time to engage in cultural capability training, and to learn your local history and meet your local people. Engage with them in ways which bring reciprocal value back to them.

I want to finish with a final comment from Linda:

“Patience, persistence and the big one SILENCE. I am better at all that now. But I am also no longer afraid. Afraid of getting it wrong. Afraid of doing the best I can. I am proud of what the children and I have achieved. Especially over the last few months. After all Reconciliation is more than just a word.”

I want to thank Linda from Sunshine and Puddles for her time and thought-provoking insight into how she engaged this Reconciliation Week.