The Multicultural Education and Languages Committee (MELC) recently held the 2018 MELC Youth Forum held at the Hawke Centre on Wednesday, 22 August. The forum brought together students and representatives from education organisations and other stakeholders to a forum highlighting cultural and linguistic diversity in South Australian schools.
Associate Professor Angela Scarino welcomed participants to the Forum thanking everyone for their courage and resilience in coming to share their stories, experiences, different perspectives and their vision for growing up in a multilingual world.
This was a forum to honour the voices of young people, often forgotten in the wider discourse about multilingual and multicultural Australia.
We extend a very sincere thank you to all our young speakers, particularly the students from St Michael’s College and Sacred Heart College for highlighting how languages actively shapes our thinking and relationships and teaches us ways of understanding people, how we engage with one another, and how we see ourselves and others.
They reminded us that language is about opening our mind to other ways of seeing the world, other ways of doing things, other ways of being, celebrating our differences and similarities.
We are indebted to the teachers who have supported the students to share their stories, aspirations and different perspectives. We witnessed how language creates personal connections and experiences with people from diverse languages and cultures, providing different insights, experiences and knowledge.
We thrive when we are connected. By being connected we nourish our bodies and our souls and the students did this with the support of Manal Younus who facilitated a poetry workshop that captured the unique voices of our children with a migrant background. Manal will bring all these voices and rich experiences together to form one poem. Manal Younus is an Australian-based storyteller from Eritrea who believes that language and stories are the very fabric of our existence. Manal is a writer, performer, workshop facilitator and public speaker who uses her various platforms to encourage others to develop their own voices. Manal was the 2018 recipient of the Ministerial Award for Leadership in Languages and Cultures.
In recognition of student’s participation they received a certificate of recognition.
Congratulations to the following students and their teachers:
St Michael’s College (CESA) - Jill Thorn
Jood Hussien (Year 10)
Lina Ghebremedhin (Year 11)
Sacred Heart College (CESA) - Robyn Sutherland
Chariqua Buzzacott (Year 10)
Rebekah Mc Kenzie (Year 10)
There was a general pride in speaking languages in addition to English, a resource to be used and ‘carried in their pockets’ for the rest of their lives, no matter where they end up living in the world.
Year 4/5 students at Saint David’s Parish School have been busy using the real building experience to explore what makes a really great learning space.
