Tutoring Sudanese students
Every Wednesday after school, a bus carrying five to ten girls from Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar travels from their Essendon campus to an old church in suburban Footscray.Roving reporter Yvonne is one of the tutors.
This is the Sudanese Tutoring Program, which Lowther Hall has been involved with for the last couple of years. The tutors are the senior students from Lowther Hall and their students are Sudanese refugee children who have a disadvantaged English background.
My first time tutoring
This was my first time being a tutor, and I was quite unsure what to expect.
The classroom in which we tutors teach looks as if it was once a place for prayer and mass. There seemed to be limited resources for teaching, with only a couple of shelves laden with geography and science textbooks.
A box of writing utensils also sat on a bench. A fellow tutor of mine had said that if she could do anything for the Sudanese students at all, she would buy them new textbooks.
What are the students like?
The ages of the students ranged from nine to fifteen. From the moment I entered, I noticed that there were many more students than there were tutors.
The small boy whom I was put in charge of to teach sums was a quick learner and was soon tackling hard sums such as 329 x 40 and 12 x 1000.
Many of the younger children were eager and serious in their learning, turning my notebook into a times-table chart. But at the same time, there were a few who were restless and uninterested in additional work.
The hour flew quickly. I was impressed with how well the students respected their tutors' authority, even though we were not much older than them.
I was also surprised at the immense satisfaction I felt when my own student started to get the hang of his sums. I can understand why tutors would volunteer for such work. With confidence, I can say that no other hour of my life has been wasted more purposefully.
Coming to a new country
It is difficult to come to a country that speaks a whole new different language. The children who came as refugees to Australia probably felt afraid, unsure, sad or perhaps excited to leave a country they were born in to move to another.
For myself, I remember that the experience of having to adapt to a new school was petrifying. I wouldn't want to think about having to adapt to a whole country full of strangers. The courage of these young and diligent Sudanese students should be admired.
If I have learned anything at all, it is that Sudanese students need to be welcomed warm-heartedly. The hand that we should hold out to them should be one that is accepting and helping, not criticising or rejecting.
Sudanese refugees have become a part of Australia's multicultural backdrop. We should consider them just as Australian as people born here.
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