Reflections on Leading a Desert School (1996 - 1999)

Peter Russell

Abstract:

Pipalyatjara Anangu School serves three Aboriginal communities in the far north-west corner of South Australia on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands. The school is at Pipalyatjara but a bus also brings students to the school from Kalka, 15 km away. A homelands school at Watarru, 135 kms to the south-east in the Great Victoria Desert, is also administered from Pipalyatjara. These are the most isolated communities in South Australia and the most distant from Adelaide. Issues of literacy, health, staffing, facilities, government and vocational training are keys to the provision of education for Aboriginal students in this part of Australia. This paper discusses how school, community, system, government and non government responses are allied to addressing these issues.

Introduction

In his book, Desert School, published in 1983, Neville Green described his experiences teaching in 1966 at Warburton Ranges Mission School, where he was Principal. The school was government staffed and the continuing mission presence at that time was to feed children who came to school. So the attendance was very good. This all ceased when Aboriginal people were able to access social service benefits and became independent of the mission for the basic necessities. The school could no longer draw the attendance it had in mission times and the literacy and numeracy levels dropped dramatically.

When I read Green's book I found that except for local detail it broadly described the educational issues at Pipalyatjara Anangu School, when I arrived on the Pitjantjatjara Lands in 1996, some thirty years later.

Perhaps this is not surprising. Green in writing the book some sixteen years after his experience reflected:

My work takes me to at least ten Aboriginal schools every year and many of the problems I encountered are still apparent, the culture shock is just as severe and the teachers equally unprepared for the children they will teach.

Not surprisingly, the staff turnover of such schools is high. Some teachers do not last a year, others count off the days, a few thoroughly enjoy themselves, and this is reflected in their teaching.

This book is dedicated to all teachers, who find themselves facing a class of Aboriginal children and become suddenly aware of their personal and professional inadequacies (Green, 1983: iv).

Warburton is about 290 kms to the west of Pipalyatjara. The Ngaanyatjarra people of Warburton are related closely in language and culture to the Pitjantjatjara of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands in South Australia. Individuals residing at Pipalyatjara have cultural, ceremonial and family links with people in Warburton, Blackstone and Wingellina communities over the border in Western Australia. Some of our students move between our school at Pipalyatjara and the schools in the WA communities. These people refer to themselves as Anangu.

The Issues (1966- 1996)

The issues addressed by Green were:

• Preparation of teachers
• Discovering what and how to teach
• Attendance
• Discipline
• The place of local culture in the school
• Literacy
• Secondary Education
• Facilities

Preparation of Teachers

The effective teacher seeks to understand the culture of the child, the religious base of the community's beliefs, the richness of the music, oral literature and history of the people and the region; and in so doing he discovers the underlying values of the child's society and how these values may unconsciously be set in opposition to the values expressed by the classroom teacher. . . . . . . . . . . .

The successful teacher of aboriginal children has an engaging humour, which combined with the sense to laugh with people and never at them. He has the ability to be flexible in his classroom organisation so that he can respond rapidly to change; he is adaptive to the needs of individual children and possesses a creative resourcefulness that will enable him to convert every situation into an enriching experience. The ideal teacher in a cross cultural classroom is practical; he sets objectives that are demanding yet realistic, challenging yet satisfying. Finally he accepts the limitations imposed by the present, yet anticipates the needs of the child as an adult decision maker of the future.

These were ideals but by the end of the year I knew I was a long way from achieving many of them. (Green, 1983:106-7)

The teachers arriving at Warburton in 1996 had no preparation for what they were to meet. Green had taken on himself to seek out some colleagues who had had experience of the situation he was shortly to face. Nevertheless this was not to significantly decrease the impact of his new teaching post. In my case for some years before and in 1996 Anangu Education Services (AES) ran, in Adelaide, a five day Induction Conference for all new appointments to Anangu schools.

We were introduced to aspects of teaching on the Pitjantjatjara Lands from teachers who had some experience and were viewed as successful teachers in their communities. We looked at the specialist curriculum materials that had been and were being developed and the cultural issues relating to the classroom and living in an Anangu community. An Anangu person was involved and answered our questions. However, as far as culture was concerned we would have to experience and learn that for ourselves when we arrived.

We also looked at health issues and survival needs and we were given a day of 4WD training including looking at the idiosyncrasies of diesel engines, practical driving lessons from experts in various off-road conditions and practising changing wheels. Not even this prepared us for the real thing.

In 1998 a new means of finding staff better suited to the Lands was trialled successfully with students from Flinders University spending over a week teaching at a Lands school. Graduate students were given a real taste of what teaching and living on the Lands was like and we, in turn, were able to assess their potential as teachers in these conditions. From this group we successfully recruited five new staff at Pipalyatjara for 1999. This partnership between AES and the Flinders University has continued its success and been extended with the University of SA becoming involved in 1999.

We still have cases of teachers not lasting a year, but they are now few and far between. Today as we explore new initiatives and partnerships with the training institutions and within DETE itself we are finding better and more suitable teaching staff. A greater number thoroughly enjoy themselves. However, the staffing process is still a difficult one and we still see a number who are sitting out their time or staying on for the wrong reasons. From my own perspective the stress levels on all staff are far too high but, with the usual professional attitude prevalent, staff, including myself, tend to park that to one side for the sake of the kids.

Discovering What and How to Teach

However by trying to understand the child I came to realise that the early socialisation made it difficult and sometimes impossible for western teaching methods to succeed with desert children. I was soon convinced that it was easier for me to modify the content and strategies of school education than it was to overthrow the child's traditional learning and home values. (Green, 1983: 43)

In general terms, the curriculum for Anangu schools is the same as that required of any other school in South Australia¹. However, the school has to address the learning needs of local children who essentially come from a non-English speaking background (NESB). Unlike Aboriginal students in many other parts of South Australia, English is a foreign language for Anangu.

Anangu control their schools through the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Education Committee (PYEC) which has an agreement with the Minister of Education in South Australia to provide education for their children. While the 'whitefella' education desired by Anangu is provided through the normal curriculum frameworks of mainstream SA education, the Anangu Education Services (AES) section of the Department of Education Training and Employment (DETE) has worked in developing curricula that is Anangu friendly. Among the documents developed is Skills for Self Determination (1996) which is a cross curriculum teacher resource aimed at providing Anangu children with the skills and knowledge necessary to survive in 'whitefella' society as well as participate in the decision making structures of their own communities. Other resources being developed by AES contextualise the curriculum. These resources assist teachers to make learning relevant to local communities. In short as Green (1983: 107) indicates, the effective teacher is the one whose methodologies are flexible and resourceful, demanding but realistic and challenging.

Attendance

At every desert settlement children were not coming to school frequently enough or staying there long enough, to achieve even a basic level of literacy and numeracy. How could they be kept at school? It was easy to theorise answers but in practice it posed insurmountable problems (Green, 1983: 121).

Attendance continues to be one of the big issues in our schools. When I arrived at Pipalyatjara in 1996 the attendance levels were about 50% of those enrolled. At the end of 1999 the levels were about 60%, with some individual teachers achieving higher levels. This was very disappointing for staff who had made considerable efforts as a whole school initiative to improve this over 1997-9. The factors that Green indicated existing in 1966 still exist today.

Anangu culture is such that child rearing practices in the desert do not place demands on the young child. They are free to make their own decisions and there are few restraints. Parents may ask but not demand obedience. Children will refuse to listen, run away and come back later when an incident has blown over. This means that the decision to come to school is the child's. If they decide to go chasing lizards with their mates instead of coming to school this is what happens. The parents often do not demand attendance. Some may make attempts for compliance with shouts and a big performance but in the end the child decides.

Anangu themselves cannot agree on an answer to the problem. Anangu on the whole want their children to attend school but are unsure as to how this will be achieved.

On the school side the processes available to mainstream schools do not exist. While the statistics are there and we know which children are not attending school properly there is no systemic process in place to deal with the problem. There is no attendance officer to report to, visit families, advise and support them and, finally, after all other steps have been taken, prosecute the parents.

The school has explored countless ways of encouraging attendance. We have organised numerous trips to places such as Mt Gambier, Adelaide, Sydney and currently to Perth. These all require a measure of attendance to qualify for the trip. Attendance does rise prior to such trips but it falls afterwards. We have tried varying the start, break, lunch and finish times to better fit local custom. We have provided breakfast and/or lunch. Teachers have strived to provide stimulating and interesting programs. Special short term rewards for attendance include access to musical instruments, sleep-overs, video nights, discos, bush trips and shop vouchers. We have talked to communities and held parent meetings to talk about attendance. Community and school have installed sirens to signal get up and come to school times. All these have had some but seemingly minimal effect.

The obsession with time is a part of 'whitefella' society. The reality is that Anangu do not operate using clocks. Families commonly sleep in. Large numbers of people sleep in houses and television is commonly watched late at night. Children don't have a bed-time. There may be late night 'inmas' or ceremonies. Families may travel to other communities to see relatives or hold 'inmas'. During football season families will leave before the end of the week and arrive back late Monday or Tuesday. Then they will leave again for the next weekend carnival on the Thursday or Friday, depending how far away the carnival is. Children may be at school for a maximum of only three days during this time. Trips away can also be much longer, especially for funerals and cultural 'business'. Return can be delayed by car breakdowns which are common. While away the children may attend a local school but often do not. Green quotes a teacher whose comment might be equally made today.

We are not winning! The community expresses positive attitudes towards school but only in words not by their actions. The children not the parents decide when and for how long they will attend school (Green, 1983: 122).

In the end it will be communities that will decide how to manage this problem. The school needs to patiently continue to be open to working with Anangu but remain realistically optimistic and not despair.

Discipline

. . . I observed one basic rule that saved me from the tremendous problems and actual violence that other teachers had known. I tried not to place anyone in a situation from which there was no withdrawal without loss of face. . . .

The white child gains great esteem by being asked to display his work to the class or being praised before his peers. But when applied to a classroom of Aboriginal children it had a reverse effect, for not only did it cause immediate embarrassment but it provoked teasing in the playground.

Similarly the verbal rebuke that was a common control technique used by teachers may produce unexpected anger or even violence (Green, 1983: 64).

Anangu children present a unique problem with respect to behaviour management and the usual administrative tools to deal with this do not necessarily apply in the same way. In most cases discipline is not a problem for teachers trained in the new methods of classroom management. We have come a long way from the situations described by Green (1983: 63-66). Nevertheless, inappropriate handling of children by 'whitefella' teachers can bring a swift response from Anangu parents who are sensitive to the way their children are treated, especially in public. If a child is shamed by a teacher, whatever the provocation, the parent may consider the shaming personal and react accordingly. The most effective way of dealing with problems is the quiet personal approach, sitting alongside a student without eye contact and privately listening to the student and/or explaining the rules and expectations. Even praise for a student in public can have negative effects. Students appreciate the quiet, private word of encouragement or public praise for the whole group.

At Pipalyatjara students are involved in developing their own class rules which are posted on the classroom wall and we are working towards establishing a Student Representative Council.

Pitjantjatjara remains the province of the Anangu Education Worker (AEW) who is indispensable as the teacher's partner. The AEW maintains discipline, assists with explanations where necessary in Pitjantjatjara and provides advice for the teacher as well as working with small groups of students in the classroom.

The biggest behaviour management issue is teasing and the problem for the "whitefella" teacher is the initial and possibly continuing inability to tell what students are saying in Pitjantjatjara in a classroom that is mandated to be run using only English as the medium of instruction. The first the teacher may know of its occurrence is when students who are teased suddenly run out of the room crying after throwing something or knocking over a chair or sweeping pencils and books onto the floor. The most productive response is for the teacher to ignore the episode and close the door if rocks are thrown outside. Often the child will return later and take up work as if nothing has happened. The wise teacher unobtrusively facilitates his/her return to class activities. Later the teacher may remind and discuss the 'no teasing rule' with all the students so no one is shamed.

The Place of Local Culture

Wise teaching in the school would support the authority of tribal law, while implanting the skills to survive in modern Australia. With good teachers in the bush and in the classroom they would learn that both schools were important (Green, 1983: 99).

The purpose of the school for Anangu is to teach English literacy and 'whitefella' secrets. On arriving at Pipalyatjara I found a letter pinned to the wall which was from the local Community Council and addressed to the teachers informing them that their job was to teach English and that they were not to use Pitjantjatjara in the classroom.

It is Anangu responsibility to teach their culture. The school does not pretend to have a role in this. However the school is sensitive to local culture and supports and encourages local people to use the school's facilities to teach their children.

We welcome storytellers and lessons from Anangu teaching crafts to demonstrating technologies such as harvesting seed and using traditional grinding stones.

A recent highlight was a whole school bush camp where Anangu parents took the children and taught them about bush foods and hunting and gathering. At night the children were involved in 'inmas'. Back at school the teachers involved the children in using English to describe their experiences and knowledge about bush foods and healthy diets.

Frequent local excursions involving parents and community members strengthens the relationships between the school and community and provides a meaningful context for the literacies taught by the school.

Literacy

Language was a continual problem. English was only used within the classroom. Beyond this it was a world of dialect. A migrant child new to Australia finds he is surrounded by English. In shop windows, in comics, at school, on radio and television he meets a steady stream of the new language and consequently his learning rate in English is accelerated. But this is not the case with an Aboriginal child in a desert school. (Green, 1983:76-77)

Anangu schools have a strong focus at the moment on literacy outcomes. To support this they have engaged a variety of service providers. At Pipalyatjara we have been working with Ann Morrice, a Sydney based researcher, whose literacy learning cycle is particularly Anangu friendly. Ann spends a week on the Lands each term with a focus on working in classrooms. Staff have been utilising Ann's ideas, among others, to develop an Anangu friendly Literacy Program that suits our students' needs.

Support also comes from AES curriculum personnel including ESL Coordinator who has a strong literacy background. She assists teachers with implementing ESL methodologies and a focus on literacy across the curriculum. She also provides training and development using the Teaching English as a Second Language to Indigenous Students (TESLIS, 1998) multimedia CD package that was produced by AES in conjunction with James Cook University.

In addition our school was one of two Lands schools selected to be intensive trial sites for implementing the draft of the South Australian Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework². AES support staff are assisting in this implementation.

In 1999 a staff member was trained as an assessor in the Writing Assessment Program run by DETE. Data was collected from Year 3 and 5 students. Since then she and other staff have been woorking on adapting the process to make it more Anangu friendly and useable as a tool to both assess students' writing and inform programming.

All these partnerships mean that our staff have, despite their isolation, been engaged in cutting edge curriculum development. We are certainly no 'backwater' in this respect.

Anangu students on the whole are two to three years behind mainstream students in literacy levels. The school has been collecting data and critically evaluating a number of assessment tools. Improvements continue to be related to attendance.

However, I believe that in the end, whatever structures or methodologies may be used, the real improvements in literacy for students will come from a mix of young enthusiastic and older more experienced teachers that exhibit the qualities described above, have succeeded in developing positive relationships with their students and Anangu Education Workers (AEWs) and working together with them have produced a community of learners that revel in the joy of discovery and achievement.

Secondary Education and the future?

The one or two years of secondary education was tolerated by the children but hardly enjoyed. At the beginning of the Christmas vacation they returned to Warburton to merge back into camplife as though they had never been away. (Green, 1983: 18).

When I arrived in 1996 there were two senior classes, one for boys and one for girls, each with their own teacher. Anangu would prefer to separate the boys and girls at this stage but staffing constraints are such that this is no longer possible with a single secondary teacher and one class is now the norm across the Lands. In the past to access a secondary education students had to go to the Wiltja Program at Woodville High School in Adelaide. Many returned because of homesickness, inability to cope or fighting. On their return few came back to school at Pipalyatjara. Part of the reason for this lay in the type of curriculum offered to the secondary aged students.

Today we have one student remaining at Wiltja. She will be the first student from Pipalyatjara to complete SACE (equivalent to HSC) at the end of the year and she hopes to go on to do nurse training.

In 1996 the senior classes were more post primary in focus and did not pretend to deliver a secondary education. Last year we began seriously teaching Year 8 courses to our twelve secondary students, two of whom graduated to Year 9 at the end of the year. Both were girls. This year we have been continuing the Year 8 work with those students who have not completed it. The two girls have returned and are both working at Year 9 level. Also two older students have arrived, one returning from Wiltja and another from the Northern Territory. They have commenced studies for their South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) through phone lessons with the Open Access College in Adelaide. Our aim is to eventually provide the opportunity for all students to complete their SACE at Pipalyatjara. Although we have enrolled eighteen secondary age students less than half are attending regularly.

In 1999 we commenced Vocational Education Training (VET) modules for the first time. All our secondary aged students enrolled and a number of students successfully completed the modules. The modules included seed collecting and gardening.

Anangu do not have a cultural notion of the future as western society conceives it. What is here and now is what is important. However, the fact that our secondary numbers, if not our attendance, is increasing denotes that some of the young people are valuing the education provided.

The Facilities

Although the poverty in resources is obvious, the most serious poverty is in the poverty of the departmental attitude toward Aboriginal education, particularly in those localities where the Aboriginal population is still adhering to traditional values
(Green, 1983: 123).

Green tells the story of some teachers in other communities building their own schools from local scrap and making do with what could be scrounged or obtained from charitable organisations through the association with the mission. Being a government school was not mentioned for fear of not getting anything. The notion still exists that government schools are properly funded and that Aboriginal schools get special treatment. Pipalyatjara school is not rich and struggles like any other school in a low socio-economic area. In some ways we have come a long way, our funding is equivalent to other schools with similar populations but in other ways we are still disadvantaged.

In the staffing area, the picture is decidedly better. Additional funding from the Commonwealth enables AES to fund additional AEW places in our schools. Some additional staffing places are also funded which allows us to keep teacher-student ratios down. However in practice the stress and strain of day-to-day teaching, even with diminished numbers, is high as, in effect, we are dealing with students who are nearly all in the special education category. It is significant to note that all teaching staff, though not specifically trained as such, qualify for a Special Education allowance. If class sizes were then to match this qualification there would be no more than 12 students per teacher. This is not the case, the reality being more like 15 to 20. AEWs make the teachers' task significantly easier, but their reliability and attendance often mirrors that of the students. Teachers dread the days with large attendances and no AEW support.

All schools are heavily dependent on a good secretary in the office. Most of our schools have Anangu secretaries that require considerable training, support and encouragement. For a couple of years it fell to myself to provide this support and training on top of my role as principal. At the end of two years it was apparent to me that unless I was able to appoint a support person in the office to do this work and cover for the absences of the Anangu secretary I would soon be out on stress. Fortunately an appointment was managed but the major stumbling block to such appointments in Anangu schools is the lack of guaranteed housing for non-Anangu School Services Officers (SSOs).

In one area we are particularly poor and that is in the facilities provided. Our main classroom block is the recycled airport terminal from Alice Springs built in the late forties - early fifties. It is of all metal modular construction with a flat roof that leaks every time it rains, with water pouring from power points in some instances. The children are then evacuated and the building closed. Buckets catch the water. Later the floor carpet tiles are removed for drying. The ceiling is low so the air space is small. Four posts intrude in each of the three classrooms. Light switches are on the walls opposite the doors! Ventilation is poor and natural lighting inadequate. The air-conditioners make such a racket when on that it is difficult for anyone to hear let alone the children who may have 60% or more hearing loss through Otitus media (inner ear infection).

The classrooms are cluttered because there is inadequate storage in all areas of the school. The offices, library and staff room are all too small for the numbers of staff and students. We have 65 students on the roll at Pipalyatjara, CPC to Year 11 and 15 plus staff including teachers, AEWs, SSOs and grounds/cleaning staff.

The toilets are also too small and poorly designed so cleaning is difficult. There are not enough showers for the students. Washing facilities are non-existent in all classrooms except one.

The local health services have been endeavouring to place a warm water washing facility in the school to treat the high incidence of student trachoma. One survey measured the incidence as high as 55% of our students up to 10 years of age. The faciliity for washing has not been installed to date because suitable contractors have not been found.

There is a basketball court but no other play area. The school has managed, through co-operation with the community, to have an area close by levelled for playing sport. The community paid for this. We would like it to be fenced and grassed. Students are propagating trees from collected seed and we hope to plant over 300 trees around the perimeter of the sports area this year.

Comments from visitors reinforce our conclusion that if this school existed in Adelaide it would have produced such an outcry that the present problems would have been addressed years ago. A departmental officer responsible for Occupational Health and Safety, on visiting the school, asked, 'Why the teachers put up with the current conditions?' The answer was, 'What real choice do they have?' He made no response.

At the moment we are pleased that we have been accepted by DETE for a facilities upgrade to go forward to the planning and costing stage. We live in hope!

Conclusions: the future

It is hard to be confident about the educational future of these children. The four years I have been here have produced some cause for optimism with individuals yet little of a tangible nature to indicate any broad and sustained improvements. Community attitudes haven't changed a lot. There has been little from the authorities to give Anangu assurances that the 'whitefellas' are really dinkum about their children's education; continuing parade of officials, a lot of talk and little action. For this day and age the conditions that the teachers work in is appalling, though they make it presentable by covering the classrooms with bright displays of children's work.

The progress at Pipalyatjara is a testament, not to the wider authorities or whole communities, but to the hard work and dedication of a band of teachers, AEWs and some parents and grandparents, supported by AES, working together in partnership to provide an education for Anangu.

BOOK REFERENCES

Anangu Education Services. (1996) Skills for Self Determination.

Green, N. (1983) Desert School, Fremantle Arts Centre Press.

OTHER REFERENCES

TESLIS, (1998) Teaching English as a Second Language to Indigenous Students Multimedia Package, State of Queensland and State of South Australia.

Pipalyatjara Anangu School Web site,

http://www.nexus.edu.au/schools/PAS/index.htm

1. The curriculum is based on the National Statements and Profiles, the same as all SA schools. From 2001 we will move to using the SACSA Frameworks.

2. SACSA Frameworks Web site,

http://www.sacsa.nexus.edu.au/

© Peter Russell Pipalyatjara 2000. This paper was presented at the 4th Regional Australia Conference at Whyalla in April 2000 and published as a refereed paper in the proceedings.