Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people are warned that the content below may include pictures of deceased people.
All photos that include identifiable students have been pulled from the Maningrida College Facebook page or we have personally asked the child's parents.
I have been asking Ed for months to tell you about his experiences teaching in Maningrida and in particular about the programme Learning on Country that he had the privilege of overseeing. He wants to tell that story but I think he'd rather tell it in person than sit down and blog it! Also he spends an enormous amount of time at his computer already writing lesson plans and submitting an endless stream of assignments. Instead I'll do my best to tell some of his story with his extensive library of photos. We have tried to curate them for you but honestly he just has so many awesome experiences to relate!
Ed is training to be a teacher in Maths and Science. In Maningrida he is on the team of 3 teachers for the Senior students (years 10 to 12). Amongst his cohort only one child is enrolled in a programme that will lead to a ATAR and potential university entrance. Most kids with excellent school attendance and the capacity to perform well actually get scholarships and go to boarding school for high school so those students left in Maningrida have perhaps had patchy school attendance in late primary and through middle school and have come back to school or have conservative families who spend a lot of time out bush or living more traditionally. Some went to boarding school but couldn't bear to be away so came back. Others come from families that are struggling and have had very poor school attendance throughout their schooling. On average the school achieves about 30% attendance. Many students have poor literacy. Most speak several indigenous languages. Ed says one boy speaks 8 (yes EIGHT!) languages! Very few students graduate.
To give you a bit of a picture of the challenges that the school tries to overcome here are some photos from the school facebook page.
This is a bus classroom that goes around the community teaching children whereever they can find them. It is called "Big Sky Classroom".
This is a beautiful teacher Chelsea teaching in a small community out bush.
These are some proud boys from Ed's class with their learner's driving licenses after Drive Safe NT did a trip to Maningrida to facilitate kids learning to drive.
Under the umbrella of his science curriculum Ed was in charge of the Learning on Country programme. Because this is really led by aboriginal elders Ed had the most extraordinary experiences under their leadership. Most Wednesdays the kids piled into several troopies and headed out bush for the day.
Often they partnered with the Rangers but sometimes different elders took a lead teaching particular skills. Ed has had cultural experiences that money just can't buy and he is very aware of how lucky he is! One day the logistics were a bit difficult to an elder took the class out the front of the school and showed them how to find a sugar bag (native bee hive!) buried inside a termite mound so even a day that might have been boring was fun!
He had days where he went out with petrol powered blower packs and drip torches to do back-burning.
One day they spent much of the day looking for insects.
One day they did a lot of weed spraying.
They spent some time on the school grounds with the aquaponics set-up they have there. They have multiple tanks growing small fresh water creatures and much bigger Barramundi. The water is filtered through clay balls that also support a number of plants and the water is recycled back through this system.
A massive highlight was the school camp called the "Indigenous Land Management Camp". Just being there was amazing. He called me one morning and I could hardly hear him over the deafening squawking of thousands of cockatoos.
The landscape was magnificent.
They went amongst the mangroves at low tide looking for mussels.
They trapped wild pigs
The major project for the camp was to create a large traditional fish trap which spanned a waterway (yes crocs live there too. Ed left it to the experts to decide where was safe!).
Unfortunately this enormous effort amounted to nothing when there was noting in the trap in the morning! Of course traditionally they would leave it in for longer until they were successful but this trap had grander plans and was later sent to a government building in Canberra to be on display.
At the end of a long year Ed and his team Dan and Elisha were incredibly proud of the 5 kids who graduated this year. The graduation is a huge deal and there is a significant cultural component during which each proud family bring their graduate in with singing and music. It was quite an emotional event. These kids will almost certainly take leadership roles in this community.
Here is a video that one young man submitted as his assignment which was a video promotion for the Learning on Country programme. The school gave us permission to share the video here:
And just for fun Maningrida's resident pig-pup...
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