Supporting Student Wellbeing during COVID-19 Restrictions and Remote-learning  By Deb Gould Image credit: HaticeEROL, Pixabay  “I can’t do this anymore”, “Nothing I do makes any difference”.  By the time this edition comes out, NSW students will have been learning from home for about 10 weeks and probably have another 5 weeks to go. We all have had to adjust expectations…

Briefing Sheet for Educators in NSW: Supporting Students and Families with Links to Afghanistan during NSW COVID-19 Restrictions Fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government forces intensified since May 2021 in response to the gradual withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan. On 15 August 2021, the Taliban captured the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul. Afghanistan is…

By Maeve Galea  Image source: Piqsels Deb Banks’ knows that trust can (and should be) hard-won, ‘I will tell kids in their first session, “I’m just going to ask you a few general questions, give me the information that you feel comfortable with, but I’m not going to tell you to trust me today because you’d be…

By Maeve Galea  It’s widely accepted that schools can play an instrumental role in supporting the recovery of children with refugee experience (Kia-Keating & Ellis, 2007; Matthews, 2008; Correa-Velez et al., 2010; Tozer at al, 2018). But did you know that the community atmosphere of a school could also be a healing space for their…

By Deb Gould  Image source: pxfuel Initially, Nicole and I had flagged ‘gaming’ as this term’s topic. But, with the average gamer being 34 (Brand et al., 2019), this doesn’t really cover the concern that many of us have about young people in the online world. And, let’s be real, the humble phone is where most of us play: games that are small bites but…

By Rafik Tanious, School Liaison Counsellor/Project Officer Rural and Regional NSW, STARTTS Image credit: Steve Snodgrass 16 October 2020 How do we make education engage with the life-worlds of learners and families with refugee experience? One of the primary challenges of our educational systems is related to how we can best connect schools with the…

By Maeve Galea Image Source: Sarah Horrigan, flikr ‘For young people with a refugee background, grief experiences could vary from having lost a close family member to grieving the loss of their country or grieving the loss of life as they knew it’, notes Nercy Clarke, who has facilitated the Seasons For Growth program at STARTTS since…

By Deb Gould Image credit: Abhinav Thakur (CCO) This is not a hints and tips piece; very far from it. Hopefully, it will stimulate reflection on the fact that 32,300 NSW public school students received short-term suspensions in 2018 with more than 9000 of them in primary school. The issue came under the spotlight in 2020 with…

There are a number of factors that educators might need to be aware of in the current COVID19 climate that have the potential of adversely impacting on learners with refugee experience. Read More…

The horrific explosion that ripped through Beirut, Lebanon on 4 August came on the back of a crippling economic crisis which has decimated people’s life savings, rising COVID-19 infections, food insecurity, power cuts lasting most of the day, widespread fury at the government and a long history of collective and personal traumas for the Lebanese…