Gunawirra is working towards an exciting new pre-literacy program which has been tested in Northern Territory. We seek your support.

A project with State-wide reach

Purpose of Project

Creating a pre-literacy model with Aboriginal and partly Aboriginal preschools  in many NSW towns, to support:

1. Aboriginal preschools’ and playgroups’ children, and ready them for school
2. Their parents to encourage the program, and
3. Training their preschool teachers at a university post-graduate level not only  in the program, but in the healing of childhood trauma that interferes with learning.

The program will be implemented and evaluated over a five to ten year period. The model is very important — it will establish what will need to be developed and how these new programs work. We aim to create these projects in as many country towns as we can. We now support over thirty preschools.

Gunawirra’s work is at the interface of emotional health, well-being and education. The Early Learning Department of Education and Training fully support this program and our community preschools, and want to develop it in their preschools with our help and training.

Centres targeted for this preliteracy program

Eleven of these centres are ‘DET Designated preschools in Aboriginal Communities’, and are attached to the local schools. Some of the centres we work with are located at:

• Alma Budglie Preschool — Alma PS (Western Region),
• Wingarra Preschool — Doonside P (Western Sydney Region),
• Coota Gulla Preschool — Liverpool West PS (South Western Region),
• Mungindi Preschool — Mungindi Central School (New England Region),
• Kooloora Preschool — Toukley PS (Hunter/Central Coast Region),
• Birralegal Goodi Preschool — Walgett Community College (Western NSW Region),
• Djanenjam preschool — Casino PS  (North Coast Region),
• Enngonia Preschool — Enngonia (Western NSW Region),
• Cummeragunja Preschool — Moama PS  (Riverina Region),
• Wayeela Cooinda Preschool — Nowra East PS  (South Coast Region),
• Parlu Kurli Preschool — Wilcannia Central School (Western NSW Region)

The other centres Gunawirra is involved in are made up of all or partly Aboriginal children aged three to five and are community based and operated:

Our pre-literacy program has been trialled with Aboriginal children with amazing results in the Cape York area. It is a user friendly program of twenty minutes a day with cards and pictures, songs and dances and all sorts of ways of developing phonetics and the recognition of letters in preparation for “big school”.

Aboriginal children begin school way behind their white counterparts. Already by the first week they are aware of being behind and in a sense feel inferior.

Let me give an example: We have just come back from Gunnedah and before that Inverell, and next week we will visit Tamworth and Peak Hill and Forbes area. In each of the places we work with and note we speak for an hour a week with 12 centres the story is the same. A very large proportion of our Aboriginal preschool children (in Gunnedah we have 25 in one centre) have diagnosed and accepted as a handicap speech delay. The teachers report no books in the home, no stimulus from parents who rarely talk to their children and no special preschool program to support them. We want to introduce that program.

Implementation

We will bring the directors and teachers involved in the program to Sydney and house them with our own members, at our expense, and train them for a week in the program. And, we’ll offer weekly follow up support in the program, and then evaluation to see how the centre is going. All this will be together with visiting each term to be assured the teachers and parents feel supported.

Special preparation classes for the parents will ‘ready’ them for the program. Books will be in all the homes that are reader friendly and fun and parents will be encouraged to enjoy them with the children.

The Gunawirra Aboriginal Preschool Literacy Project hopes to:

• Improve the literacy of all Aboriginal preschool children in the state. Our main focus will be on the “designated” preschools so called because they are the areas of highest youth suicide, deaths in custody, domestic violence, alcohol and drug addiction. Everyone now knows the only way to break this trans-generational cycle of trauma is to give education at the earliest time possible. Waiting for school age is acknowledged by all teachers to be too late. Our training program for Aboriginal preschool children is highly professional and so professionally evaluated it is perfect for the task
• Training for staff through the Marte Meo and Tavistock Observational program act as a wonderful adjunct to the pre literacy program. A traumatised child is not in a state to learn
• We are in the process of Creating a giant activities booklet to support the Director and teachers in their programs
• Preschool teachers going to give support from places like TAFE at Bankstown going to country areas and Early Childhood learning Centre Radford College with an interchange program to add value and support to the work in the country
• One of our paid Art Therapy workers under the direction of Judy Atkinson from Southern Cross University will do her PhD in working with these children on the interface of art and preliteracy.
• Emotional support for staff will be given through visits and in-service training.

Who will be working on the project?

• Gunawirra workers
• The preschool Directors and teachers in every centre we support will be trained by Gunawirra
• Radford College Early Learning Centre will help to develop adjunct activities
• DET Department Education Officer as DET have also  chosen to accept and be part of the program.