Educator Yarns with Jessica Staines & Belinda Huntriss

On today’s episode of Educator Yarns, Jessica speaks with Casey Goodman, from Wurundjeri Land in Brunswick Melbourne.

Casey discusses her journey as Aboriginal Program leader across several services where she has shared her own passions and ideas of how to respectfully and meaningfully embed Aboriginal perspectives. Casey generously shares some of the challenges and celebrations on bringing other staff on the same journey. Drawing heavily upon her belief in community, Casey details how she began to engage with local groups, and organisations while taking her time to build strong relationships. She reflects on her own journey and the journey of others as she learnt to understand and respect the different paces of her colleagues, recognising the importance of the collective community, whether it be with staff, children, families or the broader community.

Today Jess Staines speaks with Alicia Hansen, a Menang Woman of WA country currently residing in Victoria where she works as an Indigenous Preschool advancement strategy facilitator across 83 different centres.

Alicia talks about the importance of creating a welcoming and culturally safe service when facilitating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enrolments. Jess and Alicia also reflect on their face to face work with educators as they seek to build relationships with their local Aboriginal community.

Today on Educator Yarns Jessica speaks with Alix Hill, early childhood educator on Wurundjeri Land in Sunbury Victoria. Alix reflects on the navigation of inbuilt fears, common misunderstandings and an eventual realisation of obligation which lead to the creation of her teams Reconciliation Action Plan. This began a journey of a deeper more truthful embedding of Aboriginal Perspectives into their service. From their first moment during their Certificate 3 through to the engagement of staff and community, Alix reflects on the navigation of inbuilt fears, common misunderstandings and an eventual realisation of obligation, they and the staff went through as they created their Reconciliation Action Plan, and began the journey of a deeper more truthful embedding of Aboriginal Perspectives into their service.

Today on educator Yarns Jessica speaks with Donna Morley and tackles the big question, how exactly do we tackle the big questions.

Donnas deep respect for children comes through in this interview as she discusses the importance of being honest, and open when answering the questions of children. Not only to establish a relationship of respect but also to acknowledge the big world questions the children do have and do want answers to.

She reflects on the agency of the child and how to begin conscious and open to the children queries not only allows them emotional space to move freely in their thoughts but also encourages other staff to do similar and move along the same journey.

Donna is a wealth of knowledge and her understanding of Aboriginal history and its place in the classroom is both refreshing and enlightening and a big win for the child.

In this episode, I interview Adam Shipp founder of Yurbay.

Yurbay offers a range of services to connect you, your family, friends and work colleagues to local food and medicine plants from the region. Yurbay (You ra bi) is the Wiradjuri word for ‘seed’.

In this episode we will discuss:

• Adam’s background including where he grew up and what inspired him to start Yurbay.
• Traditional plan use and how Adam inherited his knowledge.
• Nature pedagogy.
• Bush tucker including bush berries.
• Aboriginal culture in the service.
• Walk on country
• How educators can move past the fear of implementing
• How to work with Adam
• And more!

Links mentioned in this episode:

Yurbay - http://www.yurbay.com.au/ Koori Curriculum - https://kooricurriculum.com/