My schools

I currently have two ongoing school projects where I am the resident music workshop artist – Pelican Primary School, and MELS (also sometimes called the Language School). These aren’t their real names – throughout this blog I refer to all my schools, fellow teachers, and students using pseudonyms. Here is some background information on each:

Pelican Primary School is an inner city state government school. It is very multicultural, with the majority of students speaking English as a Second Language, and many with quite high educational needs. It isn’t an easy school to work in – the students are often unfocused, and highly excitable and demanding of attention (and that is on a good day). But the Pelicans love music, and come to classes with lots of excitement and enthusiasm… and I love their energy. My challenge is to figure out how to channel it in positive musical directions each week when I am there.

MELS stands for Melbourne English Language School. MELS is a Department of Education-funded first port of call for students of primary and secondary school age where they can take part in intensive English Language learning before making the transition to a mainstream school. Some of the students come from war-torn countries, some from refugee camps where they may have lived for many years, some from developing countries, some from comfortable middle-class backgrounds in Western countries. Some have had greatly disrupted prior schooling, and have no literacy in their mother tongue.

I have worked in the school since 2005. I’m employed by an arts education service provider as an ongoing artist-in-residence, working on a weekly basis with students and teachers to create original pieces of music, and give students hands-on music experiences in percussion, singing, and composing.

This is a transitional school – students come and go every term (usually arriving at the start of a term, and leaving at the end of a term), spending an average of nine months in the school. Thus at any one time in a class, there will be a mix of students with 2 or more terms under their belt, alongside some who are just emerging from the first-term wilderness and others who have only just arrived.

Transition is never easy for people of any age, and these students have often faced huge instability and upheaval before even arriving in Australia. Thus, in addition to learning English, their time at the Language School is also a time for them to feel safe and stable. It’s important that this first experience of school in Australia is a positive and nurturing one, as the successes they experience here will help them build confidence and a sense of self, and that all-important resilience they will need for the next transition: to mainstream school.