Interview transcript (1 of 1)

Louise Whelan:
This is Louise Whelan interviewing Beth Godwin on 17 July 2014. Beth is the school principal of Cabramatta High School. We are conducting this interview in Beth's office - that is, the principal’s office at Cabramatta High School, New South Wales, Australia. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for the State Library of New South Wales Refugee and Migration Studies.

Elizabeth Godwin:
Thank you.

Louise:
Are you okay to begin?

Elizabeth:
Yeah, let’s start.

Louise:
Good, okay. So let’s just start with your full name, date of birth, and where you were born.

Elizabeth:
I’ll give you my full legal name, which is Elizabeth Godwin. My date of birth is 04/05/61, and I was born in Camden, in New South Wales.

Louise:
Great. Maybe we'll just start with, tell me a bit about your earliest memories as a child, kind of -

Elizabeth:
All right. Well, I grew up in a country area, so it was no bitumen roads. It was a dirt road area, mostly orchards. But we had our cattle on our very small farm, and with my three siblings, we were pretty much isolated. There was no public transport, there was a one-teacher school; all the things you’d expect from country New South Wales, including a telephone number with three digits, all of that sort of thing. So my father worked in the coal industry; my mother was a stay-at-home mum, did a lot of community work in our schools. We lived a very simple life without a lot of external influences, shall we say. We didn't even have TV until much later in life, and we were probably one of the last ever to get colour TV. When man walked on the moon, I heard it on the radio and didn't see it on TV. So that sort of gives you a bit of a picture of - a bit insulated, possibly. Isolated, definitely. But very grassroots, a very simple life. Then I left there after coming to the Big Smoke to go to high school.

Louise:
Where was that?

Elizabeth:
Campbelltown, as a day student. So I was able to get back home each day, and then head to Bathurst for training for teacher training, and then back into the city area from Campbelltown, through to Cabramatta for my teaching career.

Louise:
Right. So when you moved into the Big Smoke for high school, what was that progression like after being -

Elizabeth:
It was terrible [laughs]. It was terrible. We were simple little country kids who liked to play hopscotch, and we all held each other’s hands, and everybody was just like brothers and sisters. But you go to a high school, which is 20 times the size of your primary school, and everybody’s fast and aggressive, and you’re called names instantly, so you learn to shelter and seek shelter within a big environment if you can.

Louise:
Right. Tell me about your high school days and then progression into tertiary education and what you did. Yeah.

Elizabeth:
Okay. So, the first high school I went to was Campbelltown High School, and that was for a year while my high school was being built. So then I went to Eds High School, and we were the first year group through, so we were always considered quite special. We were given lots of opportunities for leadership and to develop and grow and do community service. Academically, I was a middle-of-the-road student, and in year 10 or 11, I decided I’d like to try being a teacher. So, somehow ended up doing quite well academically at school and gaining a scholarship. That allowed me to go to college, and then I moved away from home to Bathurst. That was a three-hour trek, so I lived out of home then to go to Bathurst. Again, that was another - it's a country area, very Anglo area, very country. Quite a different place to study, because most of the students were boarders in the local areas. If you’ve lived at home all your life and you're 17 when you first move out of home, it can be party life. But I was there to be a bit of a nerd. I was a studier. They wanted - and I have to study hard. To get academic results, I put in the hours. So I chose to live in a less social environment, shall we say, and to spend my time at least graduating.

Louise:
Good. Then so tell us about your work in the education area after that.

Elizabeth:
Right. When I came back to Sydney - again, to move out back with the farm, my parents, until you can get some money and move out - I took an appointment at Eds High School, which is actually my school I went to as a student. I chose to teach special needs students. I was offered a class that everybody else in the state had rejected as an appointment, because they were a tad wild, shall we say. But I looked upon it as teaching children that other people had given up on. That’s always been my desire, is to work with people - to make a difference when other people don't want to make a difference - and loved it. Absolutely loved it. There were some wild times -

Louise:
In what year was that?

Elizabeth:
1982, I began.

Louise:
What constituted special education then?

Elizabeth:
Intellectually disabled students within a high school. It was one of the first times they had put intellectually disabled children in a regular high school. We started with two classes; one with moderate, one with mild intellectual disabilities. But they had a whole host of behaviour, emotional problems as well that we just needed to sort through - you know, 14-year-olds that don't know the alphabet. That cycle of failure was really hard for the students to come to terms with. I actually worked with probably my first refugee student there. He was from a South American country and was - and I didn't realise it at the time, actually, that he was a refugee student. He was just a child that had come from a country where there was war, and there was violence, and his house was bombed, all of that sort of thing. He was my only student in the class of that background, and he was just a fantastic kid, and mixed really well with every other student and great to work with.

Louise:
So he was refugee and special needs?

Elizabeth:
Yes. Yeah, very, very interesting.

Louise:
How do you teach children with special needs? Tell us a bit about that.

Elizabeth:
Patient, very patiently. Very step-by-step, with alternative teaching methods. Often, for example, the boy that didn't know his alphabet at the age of 14, we’d make letters using sandpaper so that he could trace the letters with his fingers, and so he could feel the letters. He could see the letters. If he wanted, he could rub them on his face and hear the letters. Then when he eventually recited - we did that for about three weeks of those sorts of activities. He eventually recited his ABC to the rest of the class - and I’m telling you, they were tough kids - stood and applauded, because it was the first time in his life he’d ever been able to do that. But the methods you use are very different to the method -

Louise:
Are they methods that have been developed, or are they self-initiated?

Elizabeth:
Both, both. Because I studied special needs at university, but you also develop a lot along the way. You sometimes stumble across strategies, as you would stumble across ways to deal with difficult people or ways to deal with gifted people. You sometimes stumbled across something that works. So it's a bit intuitive, and it's always with the person. Even a child with intellectual disability can work out how they learn. You just reassure them that you're going to try and find the method for them to learn, and eventually you’ll find one. Sometimes it's just so different to what everybody else is doing, and it's at a different pace. It's a different - you still have high expectations. I expect every one of my students to be great citizens and gainfully employed and to achieve their potential. You still have to have that, but you also have to be positively reinforcing every little step. Even special ed students I’ve taught recently, their Band 6 for the HSC may be that they’ve said hello to you, whereas before they might not have been able to speak or they may have been a selective mute. So, you just look for different gains, and every gain is a good gain.

Louise:
As a principal of a high school now, how has this special education developed in comparison to when you were first working?

Elizabeth:
It's grown a lot. My first classroom I walked into, they gave me an overhead projector, a set of Nepean maths pads, which was basically adding and subtraction, and said, “Keep them quiet.” That’s what I was told, "Keep them quiet." I’m not satisfied with that.

Louise:
I was going to say, how did you respond to that?

Elizabeth:
I’m not satisfied with that. I kept them quiet, but we did the most amazing things. I got resources from everywhere I could possibly find. I became the best scrounger in the universe, because I had no budget. It was just, keep them quiet. Okay. No wonder nobody wanted to teach the class. Now, we have a special ed unit at Cabramatta High School. There are outcomes, there is resourcing, there’s a budget, there’s trained teachers. I wasn't even a trained teacher at that stage. There was no training for special ed.

Louise:
How does the training work? Do you study it as part of your - yes.

Elizabeth:
At university. It’s a special course at university now. You can get a degree in it. You can get a Masters in it. You can get a PhD in it. It’s considered genuine learning. But the fact that there’s a syllabus, there’s outcomes, there’s resources; there is an expectation that these young people will learn and gain employment and be citizens, and can go on and do TAFE or other studies. It’s fantastic. But it wasn't like that in 1982. There was an expectation that you will just keep them quiet. Keep them happy and quiet. Well, that’s not education. They are some of the most vulnerable people. We’re talking about probably the most abused set of young people, because they don't speak out. Now, we encourage students to speak out. In fact, they do the most amazing things. My IO class at the moment, at this school, is filming a movie based on the Titanic, which I was a guest star in, I must say, the other day. I was the captain, and I pretended to drown and I got rescued by one of the students - with using the green screen and all of that sort of thing. Now, you would never have thought that, 30 - however many years ago, since I started teaching, that that would even be possible.

Louise:
What are the new technologies that are used now compared to then, like iPads or whatever? What would you use?

Elizabeth:
You went through the whole gamut. Getting the first computer into a classroom, when everybody else had already had all their computers, which had the floppy disk, the large floppy disk - and not even knowing how to turn the thing on, through to, I put together a - in one of my schools, I built a computer room for the students to have access to, with Apple computers. It was considered revolutionary - through to, now, iPads, and the students have access to iPads. But they have access to the Mac lab and they have access to video technology - though it's not called video, it’s digital recording now. As the kids were creating this movie the other day, they just - they know how to use it. They can use it. They have everything that everybody else has access to, which is fantastic. It hasn't always been that way. They can use mobile phones, handheld devices, to Google and do whatever. It's fantastic.

Louise:
Good. Let’s just go back to your employment. You took that position. What, from there, where did you -

Elizabeth:
Okay. I spent nine years, and I thought of the student’s name who was a refugee: Walter, young Walter. I don't think that was his proper name. I think that’s the name they gave him at the border [laughs]. But Walter was gorgeous. I did think of his name. He’s a great kid. I stayed there for nine years, teaching and building up the unit, and gained my first promotional level there, which used to be called a 'list', so you were inspected. Then I was a consultant for the Department of Education in the area of community.

Louise:
What did that involve?

Elizabeth:
It meant working with schools on how to build community relationships with parents, and get parents involved in schools from all language backgrounds, and in a variety of different ways. Not tokenistic - not just coming up and volunteering at the canteen, but helping make decisions and have a say and how to communicate with schools. It worked both ways. I worked with parents and I worked with schools.

Louise:
How does that play out in a real sense, like this type of programs?

Elizabeth:
My KPIs were based on how many schools undertook programs and how many parents were involved in schools. To a degree, I was asked into schools to do that. I probably worked with about 40 schools over nine months.

Louise:
In what kind of area of New South Wales?

Elizabeth:
Again, out in Southwest Sydney. My heart is in Southwest Sydney. Do I say 'my people'? That sounds a bit trite, doesn't it? It's the area I believe needs the most help for people to make a difference in their lives, and that’s where I’m committed to staying. From there, I went as a head teacher - so it was my second head teacher job - I went as a head teacher to James Meehan High School at Macquarie Fields. So, low socio-economic -

Louise:
What year was that?

Elizabeth:
Gosh. I don't know. So nine years plus nine months, and then I was there for 10 years. I don't really count by years. I sort of - it's just a flow. It’s a flow-on effect. That was interesting. High housing commission, as was Eds, but this was 100 per cent housing commission at Macquarie Fields. I got to work with the most amazing teachers and students. Very in-your-face, honest students. I set up not only the - I ran the IM and IO unit, so intellectually disabled, but I set up a unit for behaviourally and emotionally disturbed children at the same time.

Louise:
Is that a kind of classification by the department, or is that something -

Elizabeth:
Yeah, a label given by the department. Labels are there for funding and for resourcing. But it basically meant I dealt with the kids that really struggled in life. I worked with kids that were victims of terrible trauma. They're done by their parents in their homes, from a father giving his children ice cream at the dinner table and making them watch him stab all the children. Not stab the children, stab his wife, and make the children watch. Well, those children end up emotionally disturbed, and who wouldn't? They weren’t born that way. My job was to set up structures and schooling for them.

Louise:
How does that work? What do you do? What do you physically do?

Elizabeth:
Well, yeah. Well, the first thing we did was, we put two classrooms and kitted out two classrooms with lots of space, lots of resources, lots of time-out areas, lots of quiet zones, lots of action zones. Then I worked with a group of teachers and trained teachers on how to step through an educational process, which is based on respect, it's based on calmness, it's based on success, it’s based on dealing with issues as they arise. For example, one child’s mother died, and that very day, he was in class. He came to school. So that whole day was spent on therapy for the whole class.

Louise:
Did you know his mother had died?

Elizabeth:
When he arrived at school, he told me. Or the teachers rang to tell me. So that whole day, I dropped everything that I was doing, every teaching I was doing, and swapped it over with somebody, and we then just went to therapy approach. So you sit and you play music, you talk, you draw, you create visions. You surround the child. He had nowhere else to go. This is the sort of children I was working with. They have nowhere else to go. They don't choose this life. This life is done to them. That was really interesting. For ten years, I was at that school.

Louise:
How did you personally cope with all that kind of -

Elizabeth:
That's a really good question, because it does take a toll. But I have balance, and I have a healthy life outside of work, such as, I do things like scuba diving and I travel overseas frequently, and I have a really good set of friends that we can laugh and talk. Later - now, I even have home very separate from school. I do all my schoolwork at school, and it doesn't interfere with my home. Even if I get home late at night, at least I know when I’m going home, it's my haven and my safety zone. But yeah, just a really, really healthy outside life. Also, there’s times I talk to counsellors, to debrief your own trauma or of vicarious trauma. I’ve dealt with a lot of kids with child abuse. Because I’m so committed to young people, that takes a huge toll. So, under those circumstances, I talk to our own school counsellors, or I go and seek a counsellor, or I have a good network of people that I can debrief with - never divulging personal information about other people, but just coming to terms with it. But does make it perfect? No, absolutely not. It’s just working your way through, and I think heaps of people do that. I’ve also had some good mentors that have - they help me get through those things.

Louise:
Wow. So you were at that school for -

Elizabeth:
That was ten years, and then I -

Louise:
At that school, was there any - was that very Anglo, or was it mixed?

Elizabeth:
Yeah, it was quite Anglo at that stage, but lots of unemployment. You’re looking between three and five generations of unemployed. Very, very earthy; can be quite aggressive. Of course, the kids I was working with, they were quite aggressive at times.

Louise:
How do you deal with trying to engage those things, like you said, like respect and so - how do you that then, if they go home and it's completely different?

Elizabeth:
You know you only have them for six hours a day, and all I can do is show them for six hours a day, there’s something different. Some of the things I would do is, I would take them on a four-five day camp at my mum’s place. By this stage, Mum and Dad had a farm in the Hunter Valley. We’d go up there and stay for five days, and they could see how you can relate to your parents. They could see - my parents became their parents for five days. You can see how you can all take chores in the house and nobody has to fight over it. You can see how having shower times can be fun, because we turn it into a competition. You can see how you can play practical jokes on each other that aren’t nasty, and sit around and laugh for five days and enjoy it. But I know that I only have them for six hours a day otherwise. I know that, when they went home, things would be different. Yes, I’d get disappointed every time that a child wasn't successful after school or went and committed crime and went in jail, or a young girl that I had set up for a great career in something decided she’d rather get pregnant and have a stream of babies. But I can't - I can only show them what's possible. I can’t make people live a lifestyle that I think they should live. But I can only show them what's possible, and try to be good people, and try to see the world from other people’s perspectives.

Louise:
Talking about the girl that decided to have some babies, did you have young students at the school that were mothers or expectant mothers?

Elizabeth:
No, not that I knew of at that stage. They tended to leave. That was in the early ‘90s. They tended to leave if they were pregnant. Or they would leave and then get pregnant straight afterwards. Whether it was the chicken or the egg, I’m not sure. But they would tend not to be in the school environment. That's not until probably late ‘90s, early 2000s, that you saw more young mothers in schools. I don't know whether that’s an acceptance thing or whether it's just, “Hey, listen. This is happening and these kids still need an education.”

Louise:
Yeah, all right. So from that school, to -

Elizabeth:
Yep. So, from that school, I was getting a tad burnt out. I had spent nearly 20 years working in fairly tough circumstances, but enjoying every minute of it, and learning so much about myself. I was actually applying for jobs outside of education, which surprises a lot of -

Louise:
Like what?

Elizabeth:
I applied for a job at the zoo [laughs]. I thought, “I’ll give that a shot.” I didn't get an interview. I was a bit disappointed in that. I came from a farming background. I can brand a cow. Why couldn't I work at the zoo? Then I thought, “Well, let me have a look at some deputy principal jobs, and just see if a different school…” So I put in eight applications for deputy principals, and I received an interview at Cabramatta High, and got the job based on that. I took the job. Now, that was interesting itself. My parents nearly died. They thought I was going to a tougher place than what I’d been, and they advised me against it: 'Are you sure you really want to do this?'

Louise:
What year was that?

Elizabeth:
Now, that was in the early ‘90s. I've backward-map it in a minute. I’ve been here now for 12 years, and it's 2014. So it was at the start of - this is my 13th year. So, it's in the very early ‘90s. So, my parents were terrified.

Louise:
Why were they terrified?

Elizabeth:
They’d heard things about Cabramatta. They’d heard it's a tough place. But they didn't really realise what I’d been in before, I don't think, which was much tougher, much tougher. I’ve -

Louise:
But didn't have the same profile?

Elizabeth:
No, absolutely not. Not until the Macquarie Fields riots did it end up getting a profile. But that was actually a lot of the kids from my role call class. Should I say that on tape? [laughs]

Louise:
It’s up to you.

Elizabeth:
It’s true. There was a lot of the kids I already knew. A lot of it was hammed up in the media, and I know what was being done in that community, and it wasn't really riots. But that's what it's like to be held. They were great kids, but caught up in a terrible circumstance. When I came here, for the first six weeks, I was wondering when it was all going to go pear-shaped, and it didn't. I kept looking behind me to see what was going to go wrong.

Louise:
What were you expecting?

Elizabeth:
Well, I don't know what I was expecting. When I applied for the job, I didn't expect anything. I just thought, a school is a school, I've been in tough places already; let's see what can happen.

Louise:
What was the demographic makeup of the school then?

Elizabeth:
The demographic makeup was, I predict, about 85 per cent Southeast Asian, and we'd still be looking at kids and parents that didn't have any English. They were coming through the Southeast Asian countries as either refugees or family reunification. Not so much - there would have been some "boat people", but they may have been older, at that stage. There was certainly quite a few from the former Yugoslavia, and they were a little bit aggressive at the time. But they'd come through a terrible patch, but nowhere near what I'd [seen 24:04] before. The first child that came to me for discipline arrived at my door and said, "I need to report to you, Miss." I thought, well, here's a child on their own, that's a bit of a novel concept. I looked at the child and said, "Yes, and what may have you done wrong?" He said, "Well, I'm out of uniform, Miss." I looked the child up and down. I couldn't see anything wrong. I said, "That's shocking that you're out of uniform. You'd better tell me what part of uniform you're out of." "It's my shoes, Miss." I looked down. The child actually had shoes on, which I thought was a great thing. Apparently, they weren't black leather. That - so, of course, you had to put your very straight face on and go, "What a disappointment," and issue the appropriate punishment. But to me, it was like, so this is the tough stuff? Of course, there are times when it's tough, as in any environment. But nowhere near what people were leading me to believe; that it would be violent. It was nothing like that, you know.

Louise:
What was the change like, working with people from backgrounds where English was a second language?

Elizabeth:
I loved it. I loved it. It was a learning for me. I had never conducted an interview with an interpreter before, though I had certainly taught people how to do it, because that was my community job. Well, no, I had worked with interpreters with adults, but it was in a different job. But every interview that I conducted with a parent was with an interpreter. Often, the students didn't understand my humour - could you believe that? They didn't - they don't understand irony, and it's a great Australianism, is to have sarcasm and irony as part of our humour. My first assembly announcement, I thought I was hysterical, but everybody just looked at me. I thought, okay, well, I'll have to work on their humour.

Louise:
That was a cultural kind of difference, and the language, do you think?

Elizabeth:
Cultural, yeah. Language, cultural, expectations - people bowed to me a lot as I'd walk through the playground. I would get bowed at.

Louise:
How did that make you feel?

Elizabeth:
Well, initially, I wasn't quite sure. But then it's such a sign of respect, and it became a very calm part of my life. I walked slower, I talked slower than I used to.

Louise:
Why was that?

Elizabeth:
Because things get slowed down. My language changed, becoming more precise. My explanations are much better. A lot more events where I'm the cultural leader, even as the deputy, and there was not as much swearing here. Would you believe? I noticed that immediately. I don't hear the F word here. If you can imagine, I'd come from a situation where there was a fair amount of ocker swearing to none - it changes your whole way you speak, and the way you behave. So I started to learn from the students, more than I think they learned from me. However, they were passive learners in the classroom. I was teaching science when I first came here to intellectually disabled kids. Very passive learners. They're happy for me to tell them what to write, but not to think themselves. That was what I thought would be my first battle.

Louise:
Why was that, do you think?

Elizabeth:
I think that's cultural. I've since been to many parts of Southeast Asia, and it is, "Listen to the teacher". You're a walking textbook, basically, as the teacher, whereas that's not going to get great results in Australia. It'll get reasonable results on international testing. You'll get reasonable results if you can regurgitate what the book says. But it won't get you a HSC. It won't get you along in life. So, a lot of the work I did with my classes, even the intellectually disabled was, "Think for yourself, and question me, and don't believe everything I say. Question me. Make sure you probe and find out." That took ages.

Louise:
Did you see changes?

Elizabeth:
Yes. I can see changes now, which is fantastic. I was two years as a deputy principal and teaching science at the same time.

Louise:
What's the role of a deputy principal, within that?

Elizabeth:
Okay. Basically, a deputy principal deals with kids - everything kids, good and bad and ugly, so from the uniform through to the missing classes through to exams through to merit certificates. They basically deal with the good, bad and ugly of students - hopefully more good than bad.

Louise:
So lots of contact with the students?

Elizabeth:
Well, yeah. Your day is spent with students, and the day-to-day running of the school - making sure that, if the toilets are blocked, you get the plumber in. If the bells aren't ringing, you fix the bell ringer. All of that day-to-day running of the school - and it's a great job. I loved it. I loved the - and it's a bit of administration, but yeah. It's a good job. It's busy, it's full on, and the days go very quick, and they're always varied, so you get lots of different opportunities. So, that for two years, and then the principal that was here retired. He took long-service leave, and I stood in for him while he took long-service leave. Then he retired, and he asked me to apply for the job. I think it was sort of, 'I feel happier retiring if I know somebody will take the position'. It was very kind of him. I didn't think I was ready, after two years of being a deputy, very different school. But I applied, and whatever happened, happened, and I got the job. I can still remember the moment that I was offered the job. I was driving home in Memorial Avenue, Liverpool, I pulled over to answer the phone, and I was told I had the job. There you go.

Louise:
So you'd been in the principal's position for -

Elizabeth:
This is number 11, this is my eleventh year. I've done 10 years and six months.

Louise:
Right. Tell me, let's just talk a bit about the demographics of the school and how that's changed since you've been here.

Elizabeth:
I think it's changed from the opening of the school. If you look at the school roles, you can actually see immigration and the trends in immigration based on the surnames of the students at the school. Way back when, when there was a hostel at the back of the school for migrants that have come out from the UK -

Louise:
There was a hostel here?

Elizabeth:
Yeah, there was a hostel at the back of the school. Actually, one of my teachers here now tells me - and I only found out the other day, she actually grew up - was placed in that hostel. She grew up in that hostel.

Louise:
How did that work?

Elizabeth:
Well, they were the hostel kids. They were the little migrants that had to go into the hostel, and they went to schools during the day. I suppose their parents were indoctrinated into Australian culture and got jobs, and then eventually, they moved out of the hostel. Is it the first community detention centre? I'm not sure, but it reeked of that. It was big tin buildings that were, like, made out of corrugated iron and domed.

Louise:
Do you know what year that would have been?

Elizabeth:
Well, I know, in the '70s, they were still there.

Louise:
Would other schools around have had that, or was it specific to -

Elizabeth:
I think there would have been hostels in other places. I just find it fascinating. When you talk to some of the people that lived in them, very fascinating. She talks about taking her thruppence to one of the private houses, because the person in the private house would charge them a thruppence to come in and watch their TV. I know, I was shocked. Isn't it terrible? Depending on what mood the woman in the house was, as to whether you got in or not - but she charged every child thruppence.

Louise:
Wow. That would have been a very Anglo kind of area then.

Elizabeth:
Yes. Yes and no. It's always - Cabramatta has always been an area of immigration. It may have been because the hostel was there. The first in the hostel were certainly the British and the UK. Now, going through time, you'll then see changes from Italian, when the Italian migration was high, through to - well, in more recent times, we've got the Vietnamese War, though they prefer to call it the American War. So you've got the fallout from that in terms of people seeking asylum.

Louise:
That was a big population here?

Elizabeth:
Yeah, huge. If you talk to some of the teachers that were here then, they talked about the first of the Nguyens that came through, and having to learn the pronunciation, but also those children being very frightened of helicopter noises. Bankstown Airport is not far away, so when helicopters would fly overhead, the kids would cower under tables. That became evident then, they were from war-torn countries. Cabramatta - that was our first contact at Cabramatta with refugee students from war-torn. When you can imagine, you've got kids cowering under a table because of a helicopter noise, you suddenly realise the need for better counselling, better therapy services, better education designed to meet the needs of those students.

Louise:
Was there much set up then for that?

Elizabeth:
The Intensive English Centre arrived here about 35 years ago. That would have been probably when the first wave of Vietnamese students came through, but it wasn't intense as such. It was fledgling, where you're still working out what to do and how to do, and how do you help parents come to terms with the new country, and it's a totally new culture?

Louise:
Would that have been with more emphasis just on learning English -

Elizabeth:
Yes.

Louise:
- or would it have been more counselling or settlement?

Elizabeth:
Initially, it was learning English and becoming literate so you're able to survive in the country. From the Vietnamese people, you would have then had a look at the role, and you've got lots of people coming in from Cambodia, from the Pol Pot regime. I've even got staff here that were refugees from Cambodia, who's from the Mekong River. One of my staff was arm-in-arm, physically holding her brother - he was shot, she lived. They talk about these now - it's hard for them to talk about, but we get tiny snippets of their life. So, we had those students needing a particular - and then you can see the therapy starting to come in. There's such torture and trauma. The former Yugoslavia, during - from the war there, you saw students coming in from backgrounds, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. All the time, you've still got this melting pot of what's existing. As they're coming through in waves and immigration is changing all the time, you're looking at what is possible to do with the children and the students. Then there's the community itself that was in conflict during - and it's well-documented and spoken about in every media thing ever written on Cabramatta, but you're still running a school within that community; that needs to be education-based, therapy-based, but also one that is calm and respectful.

Louise:
Do you think some of that media coverage was fair or unfair in relation to what you would deal with?

Elizabeth:
Well, no. Good stories don't sell media. People aren't interested in the great stories of triumph, and resilience from the people. They don't want to know about a boat person who has gone on to do amazing things. They'd much rather know about anything bad that happens, and mud sticks. So, no, I don't think it was fair at all. I think some things were true, and they needed to be reported - I agree. But you don't then tag a community based on an incident, and I think that's what has happened in Cabramatta. Even now, we're trying and trying to keep developing the great work of Cabramatta as a community, but mud sticks. People would rather know about bad things. So, the population from there has changed again. You see a lot of immigration and a lot of people coming through from the African countries, through the terrible things, the atrocities that are happening in Africa. That was interesting to watch come in to a community that was predominantly Southeast Asian, and some former Yugoslavian.

Louise:
What countries?

Elizabeth:
Congo Sudan is where our - and Burundi. I like the little Burundian name, and it's got a great culture. That was different, because we hadn't had the very black African people in Cabramatta before, so we then had to do work on acceptance of those cultures within a multicultural school.

Louise:
How did you do that?

Elizabeth:
We were blessed. We were blessed to have Elizabeth Pickering, one of our counsellors, plus the IEC staff, plus staff that are very accepting, and we did lots of work on culture and showing that these young people have great things to offer. Our drumming group is now looked upon as a huge bonus, and working on the positives. But those students, some of them have never been to school, so they didn't quite know how to behave in a school either. You have to do it from both angles. We worked on helping the young African children become - not little Aussies, because that's not right, but learn how to learn - and then making sure that the other students in the school were accepting and gentle with that.

Louise:
How does that work in the classroom?

Elizabeth:
Not easily. In the IEC, I call it a place where everyday miracles happen. In our classrooms, most of my teachers here are trained for English as a Second Language Teaching, and so they've done other courses. We do lots of work on working with refugees or working with students who don't have any English.

Louise:
Yes, and then how does it work if they haven't had any English or have never been in a school?

Elizabeth:
Yes, that's the IEC. We have to learn how to sit in a classroom. We have to learn, you raise your hand to speak. We have to learn, no, you can't just go and get a drink whenever you want. It's basically, you go all the way back to basic learning. They are small classes with very gifted teachers.

Louise:
Are they mixed classes?

Elizabeth:
Age-wise, yes, and culture-wise, yes. It's based on ability and your mastery of English. They'll often have interpreters in the classroom at the same time, particularly when they first start. You can imagine - even now, we've got two kids that are select mutes because of the trauma that they've experienced in their life. Our job is to get them, over the next couple of years, ready to face the world. So patience and slow, and every gain is a good gain - and sometimes, they'll be backwards, but you just keep plodding along, and then it takes off. It works. Because some of our students have had no English - three years later, sit the HSC and get remarkable results with an ATAR of 98 per cent or something. It works. But you'll be judged on your NAPLAN results, and you'll be judged on the whole things that are totally unfair about education. But we get really good growth with students. They have a dream to learn. We also do a lot of work with the parents, and making sure the parents are okay with the school setting, and come in and having access to their own language.

Louise:
How do you work with that kind of parental engagement, if you deal with so many different cultures and people who haven't had access to -

Elizabeth:
Well, that's interesting, because my School Council/P&C/Parent Forum get between 60 and 80 to 100 parents once a month in a high school, and it's in seven languages. We employ Community Liaison Officers that phone parents and have personal contact, but I deliver that meeting in seven languages - and I only speak English, so I've got all these interpreters working. It's great to watch. You treat people not as empty vessels to be filled with my knowledge, but with humour and with a personal touch, and with really good information, and you empower people. You give them knowledge, skills and information, that they can take on what they need to as parents. We've been doing a lot of work on cyber safety, in seven languages. Children have computers in bedrooms, and who knows what's on computers? It's a very large world out there on a computer.

Louise:
Have you had any of the kids being exposed to stuff like that, that they shouldn't be?

Elizabeth:
Yes. Yes, constantly.

Louise:
Can you give us any examples without -

Elizabeth:
Yes, well, they've been preyed - predators online, and have fallen prey to sexting, that sort of thing. Our job is to try and help the parent and the child come to terms with that. It happens everywhere. It's when it's in different languages - how does the parent know what's on the computer, how do they know their child is being groomed? So we do a lot of work on how parents can identify that. What do they look for, where should the computer be in the house. If your child is staying up all night in their room with the door locked on the computer - never a good thing. They're not doing their homework. They're not that addicted. There's other things happening. So, we do a lot - but that's the information we give the parents, as I would any parent. But if you treat parents as if they have ability and control and the power and the respect that they deserve, then you'll get them to places. It's when you think you're the be-all and end-all and you're filling empty vessels that that will never work. So, we work with people. Not - we don't talk to them, we work - talk with them. We have conversations, even if it is in seven languages.

Louise:
Can you maybe give us examples of challenges from maybe the different cultures or the different refugees that come here, to -

Elizabeth:
Yes. Well, so cultures and refugees are similar but not similar. People that immigrate to Australia under regular immigration, they face challenges that are the same but also different to the refugees, so I'll talk a little bit with them differently. Some of my students that have immigrated to Australia based on family reunion, maybe Dad has come out earlier as the refugee, got a job, is able now to sponsor the family out - you would think that would sound really good. Yeah, I'm going finally to meet Dad - but it's not always good. Dad has changed a lot in three to five years. The child may not know Dad in three to five years. Dad may actually have a second family here by now.

Louise:
Give us an example of a country that that would be, just for -

Elizabeth:
Okay, so some of my Southeast Asian, Vietnamese, we've had that happen, that Dad has actually got two families - he's got one in Vietnam and one in Australia. That's not always the case. But also, the reunification where the child has stayed back, being raised by Grandma or aunties - Mum and Dad are finally set up, can have the child and sponsor the child out, that child doesn't identify with the parents as parents. Now, that doesn't always happen. But you've also got to look at the ones that immigrate here as a family. They've left their friends, their network, their social networking at home. Everything is so different in Australia. Public transport is really different in Australia than any other country. You can't just jump on it while it's moving and pay at the end of the trip, you've got to pay before. Now, I've been to countries where you pay as you get off, and you're all sitting on top of each other, and you have to run to get on it, because it's not going to stop for you. I don't know, there's all the legal things, there's all the - one boy described it to me as having to learn to walk again, being born again. You have to learn to walk again, because we have a different way of walk; you have to learn to talk again, with the tone. You have to learn absolutely everything, the nuances of the culture. These were two boys who were refugees from Afghanistan, I think. They had attitude. They were quite - they had been through terrible things. They had seen their father tortured, and they thought every adult was going to hurt them. I had to spend a lot of time with them talking about how culture changes, and those boys were able to describe it to me as, 'It's almost as if we are born again. We cannot use anything from our previous culture here, because it doesn't work. It doesn't get us anywhere, it doesn't make for good relationships'. Even the way they were working - initially, they were strutting, big tough guys, because they had to be. We don't have to strut and be a big tough guy here - in fact, that invites a fight, if you do that in Australia. You don't have to be aggressive when you want something. You just have to say, "Can I have this, please?" But they were used to having to live in an aggressive world. So it was just that sitting down and unpacking that, and learning what their life was beforehand. Then you get the 'aha' moment and you can say, "All right, this is where I think you're going wrong." Now, those boys came a long, long way, to the point where they were no longer barging through doors ahead of you - they'd hold the door open for you as you came through. They developed a fantastic sense of humour, rather than the sense of aggression, and went onto university - both the boys went on to university. From - if you can imagine coming into a school, which is very regimented, you're likely to get suspended, if not expelled, if you've got the wrong attitude. The fact that they went and got a HSC and went to university was an everyday miracle. It's fantastic. That's our job. I think the realisation my teachers have here is that our students behave in the way that they may have had to behave in their former country. Or that they may have been expected to behave in a former country, such as passive learning that I spoke about earlier; such as having to be more aggressive to get what they want; such as even being passive and hiding to survive. That is totally different in Australia. None of those things are going to help you. My teachers realise that, and are very - not gentle, but they work kids through it. We're not wimps by any means, but we work students through it. But at the same token, kids can't come in and be aggressive to other kids. That has to be dealt with in a disciplinary manner.

Louise:
Is there much cross-cultural tension at all?

Elizabeth:
I get asked that a lot. I get asked about cross-cultural tension. No, there's not. Okay, in the playground, it's possible that kids hang out with their own culture, because they can use language one at school. If they want to use language one at recess and lunchtime, that's okay, because I encourage the use of language one. You need to maintain some -

Louise:
Their own language?

Elizabeth:
Culture and language, absolutely. Sometimes their parents only speak language one. If you don't maintain your first language, how the heck are you going to talk to your relatives? So sometimes they'll associate in the playground with their own cultural group. But they also mix, and we actually proactively teach that anyway, through Peace Day, through Harmony Day - through any event we can manipulate and use to teach cross-cultural understanding. I never call it tolerance, because I think that's a really bad word. We don't tolerate each other, we understand and accept each other.

Louise:
How many different backgrounds, like cultural backgrounds, do you have here?

Elizabeth:
Yes, that's a good question. I get asked that a lot too. 43 language groups, including Pigeon English, which I'm very proud of - we've got two students from Papua New Guinea. But if you add the teachers to it, we've got over 60 languages spoken. I've got over 60 per cent of my teachers from backgrounds other than English-speaking, and I think that helps. It helps me understand, and it also helps students understand too; that you can be somebody. You can be a teacher here if you want. 16 of my staff were refugees. They are great role models. But we don't walk around with a refugee tag on, but they are great role models to kids. You can be anything if you just are determined and work hard at it. You can be and do what you need to do, and be somebody and take on the world. I want my kids to take on the world.

Louise:
So what percentage of the school is - like, is there many Anglo?

Elizabeth:
3 per cent, and a bit.

Louise:
Aboriginal?

Elizabeth:
96.5 per cent of my population is non-English-speaking background, so that gives you 3 per cent and a bit that are Anglo background, and I have six Aboriginal students in the school. We run very significant Aboriginal programs, because that is our first cultural group in Australia, and we have a big committee - in fact, there are more people on the committee for Aboriginal education than there are students. So I would have a committee of about 15 teachers that are committed to Aboriginality. We have a really strong association with our Elder in the area, Auntie May - really strong association. Now, a lot of that - some of that is role-modelled, too. Auntie May and I have known each other for 30 years, so we walk hand-in-hand onto the stage as sisters. I think that role-modelling helps students see that - and Auntie May is a black Aboriginal woman standing next to a white country woman - that it's actually okay; we're both people and we're both sister-like. Auntie May calls me Blossom, and it's wonderful. It's a good relationship.

Louise:
We'll just go back a bit. Can you maybe walk us through the first day that a student has maybe just arrived from - maybe an asylum seeker or a refugee family?

Elizabeth:
Would you like a community detention family maybe?

Louise:
Yes, if we can -

Elizabeth:
Yes, okay.

Louise:
Well, let's talk about that too. Do you have people in community detention?

Elizabeth:
Yes, we do. We're a school registered to take students from community detention.

Louise:
What legal responsibilities do you have with that?

Elizabeth:
Yes, it comes with an extra layer, because they are charged with coming to school and only to school. So if there's an additional thing, such as parent-teacher night or a sports carnival, or as one child got bitten by a dog on the way to school, you notify more than the parents. You have to notify the agency that are working with them - probably Anglicare or one of those - and it has to go through a whole list of procedures. You have to ask permission for absolutely everything, not just from the parent. So they basically have two bodies of responsibility. If they come to enrol and they don't speak English, they'll go immediately to the Intensive English Centre, and they'll be with their sponsor or their community group, their parent. Some don't have parents, so some will come just as young adults - well, 15, 16-year-olds if they are children.

Louise:
Who'd be caring for them, like a -

Elizabeth:
Well, often it's just a house parent type thing. It's not always successful, because they come with a whole host of trauma and things attached to it as well. Then they'll start in Intensive English, and they're welcomed. They are interviewed in their first language. There will be some sort of testing, to find out whether they've been at school or not, to determine their class placement and if they have any English. We'll have interpreters on deck, so they are spoken to in their first language. We don't try to speak to people in English if they don't have any English, because that would be silly. Nor do we speak louder to them, as if they are deaf, because that would be silly.

Louise:
Common practice.

Elizabeth:
It is. It is, and I watch people do it - I have that smile to myself that I think, 'Yeah, okay. They don't really understand'. I actually have been in countries that don't speak English, and people try to speak to me louder too, so I get it. It's fine. [laughs] Then they can start school the very next day or that day. We kit them out with the uniform. So our young refugee students, we give them a uniform, and we give them a couple of lots of uniform, because there's additional funding that comes to the school. They are placed in Class One, where they learn the basics of, "Hello. My name is, I live in Australia now, this is where I came from." We always acknowledge first country - always, their country and their culture, because a displacement is really hard. Then all the emotional stuff is also undertaken with counselling and refugee services, and anything we can find, such as Capoeira and drumming groups and dancing groups, to have some sort of cultural connection. Then the process begins, of beginning to learn. Now, we can't assume that these students don't know anything. They're not coming to us as empty vessels.

Louise:
Do you do some sort of assessment with them, to know -

Elizabeth:
Yes, to find out where they've come from and if they've had education, and what level of education. Then we try to compare it to what level they are up to in Australia. When we're in the IEC, we're not teaching Spot the dog chased by Ben followed by Jill. It's not that at all. It's chemistry, it's science, it's business studies, it's history, geography, it's mathematics at the level that they would cognitively understand - bearing in mind that some kids have never been to school, and of course, we have to start in a different way. But they only get a year in the Intensive English Centre before they are meant to come into the high school, and that's a maximum.

Louise:
Really?

Elizabeth:
Yeah.

Louise:
Do they usually stay for the full year, or does it depend?

Elizabeth:
No. Some kids can do it in less. Depends on the ability of the student. Some can do it in six months. A year - you can apply for extensions if they've got special needs. But then they are expected to sit side-by-side with somebody who may have been speaking English all of their life, and learn. You work that through with buddies and specialist teaching, and so on.

Louise:
Those who have come through from torture or trauma areas, what do you have to do there?

Elizabeth:
There's a lot. There's a lot. I mean, obviously, there's the educational things, but there's also the trauma that may not come now, but may come later. Initially, there's a sense of relief that you're in a safe place where nobody is shooting at you anymore.

Louise:
Can you give us examples of what countries the kids are at for when you're talking about this?

Elizabeth:
Some of the African kids in particular, and some of the Middle Eastern kids now that we're seeing come through in more recent times. We've also had a fairly big immigration from the Pacific Islands. That's a whole host of a whole different set, because they are not necessarily war-torn countries. But the war-torn countries with the trauma are probably the most difficult for resettlement, and just finding people of your own culture to associate with, and just a familiar face. When things go really bad or when you're not feeling so good, you want to talk to somebody that really deeply understands. Where I first saw this was actually with people with illnesses. If you watch cancer survivors talk to each other, they have a language of their own. Well, people that come from a particular country that's war-torn, they have an understanding that is a deep understanding that nobody else has. To be able to get those people together, I think, is amazing. We did that with our Middle Eastern families a while back. We had a weekend picnic day where we got our families together so that they had a bond; they had a common group that they could refer to, they could swap stories. They felt as if people understood them. Because, you look at me, you can tell I haven't been through any of those countries or lived their lives or walked their footsteps. How do I have a deep understanding of what they've been through? I don't. But getting them together, and so that they have an association, so that they have access to starts - some counselling therapy services, some multicultural programs, some community that is going to help them through the horrible thing that we call Centrelink.

Louise:
Would you make referrals from the school?

Elizabeth:
Yes, all the time. In the Intensive English Centre in particular, all the time, referrals are made so that we can keep people connected with each other and to services. Now, that's instantly, but maybe it's down the track too. Because sometimes, when you come to a safe place, there's culture shock. Everything is so different here. Then there's the lolly shop, where you've got all this money and you've got all these freedoms, and you can just go berserk in the shops and it's the lolly shop. Then comes the period of time where, oh my goodness, this is me for the rest of my life; what's my place in this community, what am I going to do? I may have been a doctor, I may have been a teacher, I may have been a policeman.

Louise:
In a previous -

Elizabeth:
In my previous country - but none of that is recognised here, and how do I get through the bureaucracy? I'm working with a family at the moment. Just to get their L-plates for their daughter, through a name change at the border that somebody decided to give this girl a different name -

Louise:
From what country?

Elizabeth:
Iran, she's from. Now, she's managed to change the passport, but still can't get her L-plates. Just the bureaucracy - like, this man is told to go down to an office to get a notoriety stamp from a JP. Six hours, it takes him to go to the courthouse and do that, to go back and find out that the woman at the counter that told him to go is also a JP. It's absolutely criminal. The bureaucracy is hard. They don't have anybody to step them through, and that's what you're facing after the lolly shop. You're facing, how do I make my way in this world? How do I support my family? How does my family make their way? As a young person, you're thinking, gosh, I've got to get educated, because if I don't get educated, I've got no hope. Two years into education, students start to lose hope, because they don't think they're learning fast enough. They don't think their English is good enough. In reality, research shows that it takes seven years speaking a language to speak it like a native, and yet these kids have got to compete with the HSC and everything else to get their way in the world much quicker than that. So depression and anger and disillusionment sets in at about the two-year mark for many of the students, including - we've got a great number of international students here, a lot of pressure on them. Their parents are paying a fortune for their education, and -

Louise:
What countries would they come from?

Elizabeth:
Mostly from here, from China and Vietnam - Vietnam in the main. A huge pressure - two years in, you still don't feel like you're getting it. Now, I've been to other countries. I'm hopeless at other languages, and I know it'd take me longer than two years. But if I wanted to earn a living, if I wanted to compete educationally, that's all I've got. Then later on - and it's much later on - becomes, maybe there's light dawning, there's something forming. Maybe it's not at the HSC level, but maybe it's when you've gone to TAFE or uni after that, that you can start to see that there's light; that you can get somewhere. Does it always happen? No. There are a lot of barriers placed in front of young people. There are a lot of barriers placed against people who are not Anglo in Australia. There are a lot of barriers placed against refugees. I mean, you're sitting at home listening to the news - okay, you're great at English now, you've got yourself your HSC, you're starting uni, and they are turning back the boats to go to Manus Island to a very uncertain future, and refugees are being tarred as the evil. How would you feel? I don't think everybody sees that - not until you get to sit and talk to young people that have been through it, or families that have been through it, and develop a deep respect for them; that people would say they understand. Although, I don't think many people do.

Louise:
Do you think that kind of fear-based media portrayal affects current refugees that you deal with? Yes.

Elizabeth:
Absolutely, absolutely. Every day, they are being told by the media that they're not worthwhile. That's not fair. You don't choose to become a refugee. You don't choose the country you're going to go to, most of the time. You don't choose what's going to happen to you next. You're a victim of circumstance. If you're a young person placed on a boat by your parents as the only hope for the family, you're lucky to be here. I've been blessed to hear the stories through some of the writing projects we do, but even just having conversations with my staff about their experiences as coming to Australia or being a refugee or being an immigrant. If you can develop empathy, you may not completely get it - you haven't walked in their shoes. But if you can develop empathy and just a bit of broader perspective - I think it's enhanced my life. But not everybody wants to open their eyes and open their ears and open their hearts to hear those stories and to see those people. I've worked with the most amazing teachers and students from all over - from very different backgrounds, that are going to make a difference in Australia, a positive difference in Australia, and yet have had it all stacked against them. Whether that's because they live in Cabramatta and the media would rather hate you, or because they've been a refugee and, again, the media and many politicians would like to think you shouldn't be here, to many Australians that may also have been immigrants themselves at some stage thinking you don't belong.

Louise:
Just talking about the asylum seekers, do you have any students here - I know you said community detention, but do you have anybody that comes from any of the detention centres, Villawood or -

Elizabeth:
Okay, so not at the moment, because we did have, from Villawood Detention Centre. But the policy has changed more recently, that they try, when there's children involved, to put them in community so that they're not living day-to-day in the detention centre itself, which can be quite horrific. I had recently one child that had come through Christmas Island as a young - I've got a few, but as a - I was able to talk to him more about his experiences. As a child, he came through Christmas Island and his father was with him, but his father developed significant mental health problems. He also developed significant mental health problems from what was done to him on Christmas Island, which is absolutely obscene.

Louise:
Can you talk about that?

Elizabeth:
We're talking about lots of abuse, and sexualised abuse of a young boy. So, whilst I can't give you all the details, because I didn't probe all the details from him either - it's not fair for him to re-live it. But he ended up with all sorts of emotional problems as a result of that experience. Those places aren't a picnic ground. They are not a holiday camp. I think sometimes they may be worse than a prison, because they are not regulated as - people aren't protected in there. This young boy wasn't protected. He wasn't - his father was unable to protect him. He wasn't protected from what was done to him, and yet we don't allow that to happen in Australia, except if you're in a detention centre. So there are lots of problems that come through. The uncertainty that the young people have about, you're going to be sent back home - if they get sent back home, what's going to happen to them when they arrive? Some will certainly suffer torture, they will suffer alienation, maybe be put in prison for what they may have spoken out against or their religion or anything like that. They are in a no-win situation, and there's a sense of hopelessness. This young boy I spoke to at length was a sense of hopelessness. "There is no hope for me. What will happen to me? I may as well be dead." He had suicidal thoughts on a daily basis.

Louise:
How do you work with a student like that, that doesn't have hope?

Elizabeth:
Yeah. Well, it's not easy, because what can I say to that young person other than, "Let's get you an education. You don't speak very good English, it's going to take you a lot longer to learn English. You're then going to have to compete with everybody else." We go through all of this. I guess developing the relationship and showing them that you care, and the one-to-one relationship and the class teacher relationship, and showing them a pathway that is possible for them - but that's a leap of faith. Okay, so if you're a young person that has been abused by adults, that has seen adults try to kill each other and in fact torture your family, why are you going to believe the next adult that comes into your life? It's - you need to just persevere. As a teacher, as a principal, I just need to persevere at it, and have hopefully all my teachers on the same page so that they're hearing it from more than one person. Can we change everybody and make hope for everybody? No, absolutely not. Do I want to? Yeah. I still believe I can change the world, and I still keep trying, no matter what. But I don't always succeed. I've got women at the moment, young women at school, who are living in refuges because they can't live in their homes, they are too abusive. So they've escaped to refuges. Well -

Louise:
Have you helped with that process?

Elizabeth:
Yes. The trouble is now, the women's refuge services have been cut and those girls will have nowhere to live. I've got three in particular. They have nowhere. Hopefully, we can get housing for them, and - public housing, and hopefully we can get the three girls together. But one girl now has changed from a bubbly, outgoing, athletic, intelligent child to one with depression who wants to kill herself, has lost weight, is unable to concentrate for more than two minutes, is now on anti-depressants and will have nowhere to live in two months' time. Can I change that world? I'm working on it. Will I change it? I'm working on it. I have enough furniture for her house when they give her a house, just by putting out the call. So, everybody has got a little bit they can give. Together, a village can raise the child. I tell her that we're her parents and that she can talk to us about anything. Yeah, we can work on it. You have to be the eternal optimist to be here, I think, and I have to be surrounded by optimism.

Louise:
Yes, how do those kind of situations affect you?

Elizabeth:
As it would anybody. Some of the stories I tell, they make you cry, as it does anybody. You go home and you worry about them. You want to take every child home, but that's not the answer. You want to give every child $500. That's not the answer either. It's not about money. It's about resources and equity of resources. It's about a helping hand that is not a handout but a hand up. It's about getting these young people to have opportunities. It's about making sure that our village here at Cabramatta raises the child. I've had kids come in that are homeless - they couch-surf and can't get a couch, so they've tried to break into the school to sleep on the back oval, because they know the school is safe. I can't take that child home, but I can possibly get him accommodation for a couple of nights. I'm lucky with my teachers. Some of my teachers are given permission by Department of Community Services as foster carers, so if I need immediate foster parents, I can get them here at school. I've got two or three teachers - three now, that have got clearance to take children home in emergency foster care. So, I've had kids that I've needed to do that for.

Louise:
What about educating parents in terms of maybe different culture stuff, like girls being married early, or domestic violence stuff - stuff that might have been acceptable in one country that is not here?

Elizabeth:
Yeah. There's two levels there. The deep cultural stuff is really, really hard, such as the circumcision of females. That's a really deep-seated cultural issue. That's really, really hard. The superficial stuff, not so hard.

Louise:
Would you have to have dealt with those issues?

Elizabeth:
Yes. Kids being, yeah, married off at very early ages. The superficial stuff, we run - I'll talk about that first. We run families and cultural transition programs, so we get groups of families together in their own language, and we run through things, like we introduce them to the ambulance service, the police and all that sort of stuff. At our parent meetings that we host in seven languages, we bring in guest speakers all the time about domestic violence, and it's not just our people from other countries, I have to tell you. We have some most horrific stories from our people that were born here of deep-seated abuse and domestic violence. So we do that at Parent Council. We actually use it as a learning as well as - and there's a bit of self-help as well as school-based stuff. So, there's programs for that. In the Intensive English Centre, we run skills-based workshops, that the kids learn about that too. They learn about the use of the police, because police in Australia is very different to other places in the world. We also run things like White Ribbon Day, so that we're making sure that our young people are aware - both boys and girls - about domestic violence issues. The deep-seated ones - things like, it's okay to beat your child up if they are naughty. Sometimes, we have to think outside the square there. Yes, it's a DOCS referral, but that's not going to solve the issue, it just takes the power away from the parent and makes them more frustrated, and DOCS get overloaded and all of that stuff. Sometimes, we involve the churches and the pastors and the ministers in trying to help us with that. With the young women that are sent overseas to get married at a very early age and brought back, what we try to do is - and we've had to do. One girl realised that she didn't want that life, and so she was 15 or 16 - she ended up having to be removed from the house by DOCS. Is that the answer? No, but it's the only answer we had at the time. I think that's a deep-seated issue that takes a lot more than a school. It takes a lot more than the police, and I don't know if it's ever going to change easily. But awareness raising, absolutely. Making sure that they know there's somewhere they can go for help, absolutely. I will often have children in here, just come to tell me the issue. Then, if we can talk to the parents and they understand, great. But if they don't - sometimes we've had kids that have had to be removed and hidden by the police somewhere, because they're about to be kidnapped by their family or something. We have to use the resources in the community for that. We're not capable of doing that ourselves.

Louise:
Just for the record, what's your responsibilities for contacting DOCS? Like what -

Elizabeth:
Oh, yeah.

Louise:
Yeah, just for the historical record.

Elizabeth:
So, schoolteachers are mandatory reporters for abuse to children on all levels of abuse, whether it be emotional, physical, habitual absence, educational neglect - all sorts of levels of abuse. My teachers are to report to me, if they suspect children are in danger or at risk of abuse. Then there's something called the Tree, which guides me towards whether it is abuse or not - but I've been doing this job for a little while, so it's pretty obvious what the answer is.

Louise:
What's the Tree?

Elizabeth:
It's a decision-making tree. You put in a series of - they ask you a series of questions, which point to a series of more questions, and then that tells you whether you should report it to DOCS or not, which is now FAHCS or - the name keeps changing, but it's the same thing. So you ring up a help line and you report it, and they take a report and that report then goes to a manager, then goes to a local office, and they make a decision as to whether they're going to act. But they often only meet once a week. Then they'll make a decision to act or not act, and most of the time, it will come back with no action.

Louise:
If you think it's really urgent, what do you do?

Elizabeth:
Okay. I do a couple of things. Firstly, I will ring the DOCS referral, but I will also ring the police. If it's really urgent, I will take it into my own hands to phone the police and have action taken, legal action taken on behalf of the young person.

Louise:
Do you have a good relationship with the police?

Elizabeth:
The local police in Cabramatta are awesome. They are fantastic. They work with us hand-in-hand. We run mentoring programs for students with them. They come and do a Police Links Day and play basketball with the students, and develop a really good relationship, and they respond really quickly to anything that we need them to. Because we need to protect the students in our care, and if I think the students aren't being protected in our care, I'll shut the gates and I'll ask the police to come down and help, and they're quick. But they're quick for everything, from - there might be - there's some pretty undesirable people on the streets anywhere in the world, but there might be somebody that's trying to lure young people into cars and things like that. The police will be down straightaway, take the report, get on the streets and action it. If I think a parent is abusing their child and DOCS aren't going to act quick enough, the police will act a lot faster, and they're fantastic. But it's - you have to take that step to phone them. You can't rely on a one-week turnaround for a decision to be made. It's just - that's not workable for young people. My job is to help protect young people. It's one of the things that actually gets me really cranky, is child abuse. I try not to be cranky about anything, but child abuse is one of those. Children aren't born into this world to be abused.

Louise:
Let's talk about the other programs at the school, so like the Capoeira and the different ones you've got set up, and your storytelling.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. We have a lot of connections with outside agencies, which is really good - about 50 outside agencies and organisations work with us.

Louise:
For examples?

Elizabeth:
Okay, so Capoeira starts, which is the counselling and trauma association that works with refugees and migrants. They have offered and run a variety of programs, so they actually sponsored someone to run the Capoeira program for our - and it was particularly for our young African students, to give them a sense of physical and emotional healing. But we also have drumming groups. That's run by somebody else that is also sponsored by a community agency. Burnside will come in and run some girls programs or some youth work. Our storytelling program, we're linked with the Commonwealth Bank in a business - and nothing to do with money, just everything to do with mentoring and sharing. So the students are mentored through writing their story and then developing an artwork, and then they publish that in a book and have a very lah-di-dah function, which is an art exhibition. That's a part of healing, but it's also a part of letting the rest of the world know what Cabramatta really is. We have fitness club two days a week, plus breakfast club two days a week, which are run by staff and sponsored by staff. We have a homework centre every day of the week - in fact, we have two; one for students in the Intensive English Centre that goes two days a week, and then the high school operates one five days a week from 3 to 5 o'clock every day, and we provide free tutoring for every student in the school that wants it.

Louise:
Is that one-on-one or is that -

Elizabeth:
It can be group or one-on-one, depending on what is needed. I've got one girl at the moment I've organised one-on-one for, and others are doing small groups.

Louise:
That's the staff working that, or is it -

Elizabeth:
Uni students. I get uni students, and I pay them - usually my high-flying ex-students, plus staff, and they get paid after hours to do that by the school, to give additional help to students so that they can have access to what everybody else has access to. We have so many programs. I often say we have more pilots than QANTAS. We have so many programs running on a daily basis for young people that are about creating opportunities and showing them that there are opportunities. So I think today, there was a group going out called TEAM, and they go out into a big business in Sydney, and they learn how to develop projects and then present projects and communicate that. It'll be a project based on the school - it could be on reducing litter, or it could be done on reducing our carbon footprint. Like, we try to tackle reasonable issues, and then they come back and present that to school, and we build it into our strategic plan. So it's huge. We -

Louise:
So they go into a workplace?

Elizabeth:
Yeah. They are mentored by executive in a workplace in the city, in the CBD, one of the big businesses. That's through some contacts that we've had. We've got students here that go and write for the local newspaper and get published through another business contact we have. Rotary has a huge influence in the school, so students will go to model United Nations. They'll go to a RYPEN camp, which is a leadership camp sponsored by Rotary. As many things as we can connect with the community, we do, but we also go out into the community. So we help out with Red Shield Appeal, so the Salvation Doorknock. We help out with anti-graffiti days. We help out with whatever is happening in the community that we can, so that we respond in kind. It's about working with each other. Heaps of programs - every day, there is something happening.

Louise:
What else do we need to talk about? Do you want to talk about the Peace Prize?

Elizabeth:
We love the Peace Prize.

Louise:
Yes, and your involvement in the Peace Prize?

Elizabeth:
Yes. So we have a connection with Sydney University, and the Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies. That originally came about when Stewart Reece opened our Peace Garden. That was, gosh, that was 12 or 13 years ago. It was actually my -

Louise:
What's a Peace Garden?

Elizabeth:
It was my first job at this school, was to coordinate the building of a Peace Garden. It came after the September 11 - as we refer to it, the disasters, the terrorism of 7/11 - and with the students needing to come to terms with global unity and the need to respect each other. Elizabeth Pickering, our counsellor, came across the idea of creating a garden of peace. So, every student in the school had a hand in building this garden, and it's still - it's in the centre of the school. It's still beautiful. Stewart Reece opened the Peace Garden. From then, we've kept a fairly close contact. A few years after opening it, Stewart rang me and asked if I'd be interested in hosting the winner of the Sydney Peace Prize. Now, I'm go big or go home, girl, so we turned it into an event and we invited other schools, because we believe in sharing. Now, to the day, we've hosted from - I think Olara Ottanu was our first one. We'll host this year's Peace Prize recipient, and there will be up to 30 other schools invited to attend. Not all of the students will come from those schools, about 20 from each of the schools. There will be performances, there will be a lecture by the Peace Prize winner, there will be questions asked from the student body, there'll be doves released because they always get released - we've got our own Cabramatta white doves, they get released. There will be opportunities to have one-on-one conversations with the Peace Prize winner, and a chance to realise that there are people out there that care, that make a difference, and one person can make a difference. I think that's what the students come away with the most each time, that 'I think I can do that'. One person can make a difference, one person can stand up for others. I'm really blessed that, this year, Julian Burnside has won the Peace Prize, because I want my refugee students to see that there's somebody that is going to stick up for them, and I want other students to see it's important to stick up for those that can't stick up for themselves. I think that's what's going to come out of this year, and we'll spend the next couple of months putting that together, so that a team of students and staff work on that. There's about 30 on the committee that work on that, and decide how it's going to look on the day.

Louise:
Excellent. Well, is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that we haven't covered?

Elizabeth:
We've covered a lot.

Louise:
We have.

Elizabeth:
We've covered a lot in the time. Only, I guess, that it's 'watch this space'. This is never going to be static. This is going to keep changing, and the cultural diversity will change, the cultural mix will change. I believe it enhances the Australian community, but I believe so many people are frightened of that still, and that's because people live in microcosms. I have been truly blessed to be working in this school, and get to see the very best - but the very worst, I suppose - of humanity. My staff have taken me on journeys to their homelands through - it may be Mozambique, it may be Ethiopia prisons, it may be to the borders of Burma to work and see young people that are refugees in that part of the world. So, I'm very blessed to have been in this position. I may not have been in this position if I went and worked at the zoo.

Louise:
That's true.

Elizabeth:
To be perfectly honest. [laughs]

Louise:
There is a question I've been asking people towards the end of the interview, and it's about, do they feel a connection to Australian culture, and what defines Australian culture for them?

Elizabeth:
Oh, gosh.

Louise:
Which you can answer if you want. But maybe also, I might ask you, with your students, do you see that it's important for them to feel a connection to Australian culture? Is that something that they strive for?

Elizabeth:
It is, in many ways. But it's also important that they connect with their first culture as well. They often bridge two worlds. In terms of myself, I have a deep connection through Australian culture, through my own family history, but also being brought up on the land. In a farming community, you are earthbound, just by necessity but also by lifestyle. We went and played in caves as children. We had our own caves in our backyard. Kangaroos in my parents' backyard is - that's just what happens. In terms of early Australian history, I have a connection with early Australian history and country places and city places. So, I connect very deeply with Australian culture. Australian modern culture, I connect as well, because I'm living Australian modern culture. Not all my family does, however. Not all - some of my family don't live the same experience as I do, and tell me the stories of their very Anglo-type experiences. I remember eating sweet and sour pork as the first Chinese meal I ever had done by Anglo people. It had chips on the side, I thought I'd add that. Do students have a connection? Not completely. Sometimes they are isolated, I'll be honest about that. But they are bridging two cultures, and they are learning Australian culture and developing a connection. We try to help the connection by always acknowledging country, by always recognising that we are Australian. We sing the anthem. We acknowledge ANZAC Day, we acknowledge Remembrance Day. We connect with the good parts of what has gone before, but also recognise the very deep, dark parts. At the same time, we still must remember that you have another heritage to connect with that I think is - the first culture is just as important as the culture they're in now, and please don't forget that your parents and their culture led you to here, and that they gave up so much for you; that there's a respect thing that goes there. I actually think there's more pressure on my students than what there is on me for that, about cultural identity. Does media have a part to play in that? Yes. But in school, we don't turn the TV on, if that makes sense. We try to develop the Cabramatta culture, if you like; you are all my children, therefore you are all Cabramatta children, therefore you are all Australian, somehow. Do they believe they are Australian? Not all of them. If I'm being really honest, not all of them. They are blended.

Louise:
Great, fantastic. Thank you for the interview.

Elizabeth:
That's okay. I hope I was coherent.

Louise:
You were, indeed.

[End of interview]