Explore how learning communities empower through cultural connections

Ziyad Serhan

Hello, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Ziyad and I am a Be You Consultant in the NSW/ACT team. Welcome to our session today on exploring how learning communities empower through cultural connections. With me in the studio today is my colleague Sheralee Fordham. We are also virtually joined by our fellow panellist and guest presenter, cross-cultural consultant and TV-famous Tasneem
Chopra. 
I'm going to do the introductions. So I'll be introducing both Sheralee and Tasneem very, very briefly. So Sheralee, sitting beside me here. After 15 years teaching in metropolitan, regional, rural and distance education settings, Sheralee brings unique insights into the way cultural inclusion and wellbeing can be supported through a whole-school approach.
Her passion is working with school leaders, wellbeing teams and educators to create mentally healthy communities through postvention planning and response, supporting student voices and sharing practical strategies for developing whole-school approaches to wellbeing in school communities. Welcome Sheralee.
Joining us virtually is Tasneem. Tasneem Chopra is an experienced cross-cultural consultant and diversity, equity and inclusion trainer helping schools, businesses not-for-profits and government institutions understand and navigate diversity and inclusion using an intersectional lens. She helps leadership become progressive in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusivity, so they can communicate, work and lead across different cultures for better innovation and profitability. Welcome Tasneem.

Tasneem Chopra

Thank you Ziyad and hi, Sheralee.

Ziyad Serhan

Awesome. So I'll hand over now to Sheralee for a brief Acknowledgement.

Sheralee Fordham

Okay. So 'worimi', which means hello in the land of the Dharug Language. And we are on Gadigal Land at the moment with the Eora people, we would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people as the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which we're coming to you today. We'd also like to acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, in general, as the Traditional Owners of Lands throughout Australia, which we're all meeting on. We value their cultures, their identities, and their continuing connection to Country, Land, waters, kin and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and thank them for their care of the Land and the waters of Australia. It is our great privilege to be able to partner with them in this endeavour. And we'd also like to extend our respects to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people here today. We'd like to encourage you to share your Acknowledgement of Country in the chat and the Lands that you're on and also just want to pay respect to the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have centuries and centuries worth of knowledge and wellbeing and mental health. And so we'd like to draw on that as well, where we can. Over to you, Ziyad.

Ziyad Serhan

So in today's session, we aim to provide a safe space to discuss information around personal wellbeing and cultural inclusion.
As part of making our virtual space safe for everybody joining us virtually, please consider confidentiality and privacy throughout the sessions when using the chat box. We would love to hear from you throughout the session, so please feel free to participate through the discussion forum chat and polls that will be made available to you and moderated by our fellow colleagues. The image you see on the screen has contact details will Beyond Blue, headspace and the number of other external services that you may find useful, should you need to reach out for some external support. We acknowledge that each of us comes today to the session, potentially juggling many different things and that we are all very busy. We thank you for making the time to join this session and learn more about your wellbeing and this really important conversation. We hope that you will come away from the session feeling empowered to try some new strategies, but also highlight the strategies and strengthen the strategies that already work for you.

Sheralee Fordham

I might also highlight, there Ziyad, that there's a new number for lifeline 13 YARN, which is 1-3-Yarn. And that is a service provided for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people where those looking for support can speak to mob and have culturally appropriate and safe support. So 13 YARN is an additional service number that you might like to use. 

Ziyad Serhan

So for those of you who don't know about Be You or haven't been in one of our Virtual Conferences before, this might be the first session that you've joined. Just very briefly Be You is a national mental health in education initiative that is federally funded.
And the vision is that every Australian learning service and school is a positive, inclusive, and resilient community with every child, young person, staff member, parent and carer can achieve their best possible mental health. It complements and pulls together all the existing wellbeing and mental health work early learning services and schools are engaging in. Early learning services and schools can adopt the Be You initiative wherever, whenever and however it suits the school or early learning service best. We will be touching on some of the resources and implementation tools throughout our conversation today so that you may reference them beyond just the conversation of today's session.

Sheralee Fordham

So in our session today, we're going to be looking at unpacking what culture, diversity and inclusion are and then looking at how we can apply that in our school settings. Ziyad and I have both worked in multicultural schools and so we'll be bringing some of our experiences to the fore today. We're also going to be looking around considerations for mental health in culturally diverse schools and then embracing and empowering cultural diversity in learning communities. So what can we do to actually highlight the voice of those in our community effectively? So before we hand over to Tasneem, we thought we would do a quick little poll to find out what you already think about engaging authentically with different cultures in school communities. So, what are some of the potential barriers to engaging authentically with the diversity of cultures in school communities? We've got a few options on the poll there. Or if you've got something else, tell us in the chat. Oh, we've already got some people rolling in with their responses, Ziyad.

Ziyad Serhan

Yeah, I think one of the most dominant responses we can see is the fear of saying the wrong thing.

Sheralee Fordham

I guess that that's a real thing because you don't want to offend people, but sometimes our curiosity can be something that, we really want to know something, but we just don't know how to ask it. So I think acknowledging that fact that we have that curiosity is important. And then I guess being as respectful as we can in that, maybe considering what the other person might think when we ask that question can be really helpful. Or if you've got people in your world that might know a little bit about that culture, that can be useful. What do you, how would you approach that?

Ziyad Serhan

I believe that having some, a normal fear is actually part of being authentic. Naturally, curiosity might drive us to wanting to find out more and usually cultures where individuals that see that you're trying to authentically engage, even if you make a mistake, you know, it can acknowledge that that's okay. So it's really about that connection and building those relationships that, that is so crucial and important.

Sheralee Fordham

The other thing that polled pretty high there too, was the 'feeling the need to know more before you engage'. And I think that point you make about being authentic with that engaging. Sometimes we can paralyse ourselves with 'I need to know more. I need to know more. I need to know more' but in actual fact if you're not already in that culture and community, you're actually never going to have enough knowledge. So I think, sometimes, just authentically diving in is a good way to approach that.

Ziyad Serhan

Absolutely. Absolutely. So we're going to pass over now to Tasneem, who's going to take us through some foundational terminologies and bringing her insights to the conversation. So, over to you Tasneem.

Tasneem Chopra

Thank you, Ziyad, and thank you, Sheralee. I, too, would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Land where I'm speaking from today, which is the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Peoples of the Wurundjeri nation. It's an absolute delight to be here to discuss this issue in amongst the suite of other topics that all relate to how do we be more inclusive? How do we engage with those who are more, maybe potentially, more vulnerable that we don't necessarily have the tools and the skills to do it better. And I think when we talk about multicultural inclusion and diversity, of multicultural communities specifically, there is a lot we don't know. And I'm not surprised by those by those poll results. 
But I think the first thing I want to say before, moving on is that, it's actually okay to not know and to feel unsure because that means you're acknowledging this is not something that we've got covered. And for many of us, it is new terrain. It can be an uncomfortable space because it's something that we've not confronted before often when it does challenge even our own biases or perceptions. So one of the key drivers in the space of inclusive learning and pushing more culturally woke agenda, if I can use that term is to be, is it's to be comfortable with being uncomfortable sometimes in knowing that we don't have the full story and we do need to learn and we need to, to get better at it, so we are evolving as a nation the cultural breadth of who we are is so much more advanced than what it was. And there are certain schools within the Australian landscape, which are incredibly diverse. So while one in two of us are born overseas, or have a parent born overseas, so that's a diversity fact that we know is there. In certain schools that it could be much higher than that. So the need and the drive to be more inclusive to understand what culture means, to know how to mitigate maybe obstacles in families and communities accessing school services. These are all learning tools. These are all going to be areas that we need to grow in and to do better at, and there isn't a silver bullet solution to doing these overnight. It's a long game. But it begins with the right attitude and the right perspective of accepting that we don't have all the information but we're on the, you know, the intentions are that we're on the right track to get there.
So, I guess the first point of starting this is, you know, we talk about: What is the actual experience for children that are coming from these CALD backgrounds - these culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. And why is it even an issue that needs to be attended? And it needs to be attended because often the cultural collateral that they're bringing to the school space is causing them to experience their school life in a very different way to say, well, the dominant cultural group might be experiencing or the mainstream community will be experiencing.
And this is important because it'll help you often, again, understand issues of behaviour that might be concerning. They might be presenting with issues that you don't necessarily recognise or have seen with students, again, historically from dominant the dominant culture. So knowing what those triggers are, it helps you then respond better. So in some of these triggers or some of these issues might be the background or settlement experience of children that they bring to school. And often we're dealing with children who've arrived as refugees or migrants or asylum seeker background, for example. They're experience automatically as newly-arrived Australians or citizens even into this country is mired with settlement trauma. And that can impact their ability to function essentially in the most, sort of, efficient way that ability to communicate safely, to be understood, to want to relate, to understand what a school system is in a new, in a new country with a new language, with new people and new teachers. Where everything's different, there's a massive bar of adaptation that they have to meet. And it's not spelt out very clearly, obviously prior to settlement, if they're, if their immersion into Australian culture has been basically posited on escaping a war torn experience or being forced to relocate into a new country, when they had, once upon a time been very happy in their own.
So adjusting to these new experiences on the back of trauma will automatically mean that their experience of the Australian education system is very different and will require a different sensitivity in handling and approach from you as educators and workers in the mental health area. And, of course, culture, that that can also be an issue that will, to some extent, frame the experienced interaction that students are having or young children are having in the schooling system, even in early childhood, because if they're not necessarily used to formal education or a formal school system, it can be new. It can be, it can be foreboding and if the parents of these children, themselves, are still grasping with, as I mentioned earlier, just the settlement issue. The idea of managing their child's psychological transitioning to school isn't necessarily the highest on their agenda of survival. It's more related to housing security employment. So often these kids are sometimes thrown into a new cultural experience a little bit in the deep end, if they don't necessarily have the adequate support systems from parents, not because they don't care that they don't necessarily have the support and resources at that moment to provide to the children, which again, becomes an area where the school community and working professionals can think about how can we do better to support those particular students whose families want the best for them but they don't necessarily have the resources to provide it.
I talk about economic factors and political climate here, they can impact the experience for students as well, depending on how other students perceive them and see them. So cultural bias, to be really frank, talking about, you know, issues of racism that even young children will experience because other children bringing perceptions that they've drawn from home experiences or their own communities.
These are real. And so not to blend this into bullying per se, but certainly issues of racism can stand on their own that need to be addressed, and that can be informed by political conflicts overseas, which then transferred to the playground, if you like, in Australia that need to be watched and managed. And this was only going to, I guess, become apparently when you dissect or interrogate the cultural background of students and see where are they from? What's going on? How has this being informed? Why are kids necessarily saying antagonistic things to other kids and how are they receiving it? And what's the impetus for this? So, often, it's not just, like I said, bullying per se can be informed by something bigger. It's not a common practice, but it's certainly one to be aware of and certainly African Australian students from a range of African communities would be far more likely to be experiencing this at the brunt-end of hostilities and, again, the dominant culture.
In a post pandemic climate, of course, the adjustment back into the school community has been a struggle for everybody. It's being celebrated, but it's also been a massive adaptation. And then I think for CALD students as well, along with everybody else, getting back into a system of learning when there's been such a prolonged break it means there's so much more to catch up on and they don't necessarily have had the benefit at such a young age of the essential skill-building that is so crucial in those formative years.
So the language barriers and the cultural barriers and the distance learning, you know, farce that was remote learning during COVID is only going to amplify the lived experience, the barriers that again, CALD students will have to grow through.
Sector education and awareness. So this can impact the experience of students when the school community itself, their approach to dealing with CALD communities is considered, it's not a high priority. They don't see it as a need. There there's an attitude of, 'well, they're here now, they need to adapt to the way that we do things. And this is how it's done'.
And I will keep coming back to the issue of the difference between that model and an effective model is meeting students where they're at and as opposed to expecting students to meet the school community where the school community model is at.
And I bring this up because in cases of vulnerability amplified by, maybe, a cultural barrier - it is so much harder for both the children and their families to access the resources and support that they need from a school environment due to, maybe, limited language and limited cultural literacy about the schooling education system. So the expectation for them to meet you where you're at, as opposed to the other way around I think it needs to be seriously agenda'd as it has as one of the very many critical points to do better.
So the importance of culture, diversity and inclusion, I think, without labouring the quintessentially obvious here is it's about belonging. And when we recognise that the students' vast cultural backgrounds that you will encounter, perhaps, in your teaching career can actually enrich the school and class experience, not just for them and you but, perhaps, for the entire school or class.
I think that's a wonderful expression of what it means to be Australian in 2022. We are not just a melting pot. In fact, I don't like that term melting pot and rather than look at each student as, as a melting pot, look at them as, and this is an analogy that I'll share: a melting pot is, by definition, everything coming together into a massive blend. Which might sound efficient but what it actually does is it takes away from the nuance and individual capacity and greatness of each individual person and the cultural growth, breadth that they bring. So rather than look at a cohort of diverse students or diverse children in your care as a melting pot, look at them as a fruit salad. I know that sounds corny, but literally that's individual fruit, brought together still, incredible. Still amazing that are recognised, respected and understood for the breadth that they bring. And together, this collective means that you understand that the wealth of cultural diversity is, is a bonus, but individually they will bring in their own particular assets and breadth to.
We have individualist and collectivist identities and communities, which means obviously there are going to be communities and young children coming from communities that are very much centred on 'us and them' and not so much in 'me and I', which again, is going to be a clash in a sense of dominant cultures and and newly-arrived cultures. Again, it's important to recognise this because it will come into play when you're dealing with the families of a lot of children from diverse communities, particularly if they're hailing from, say, Eastern traditions. The sense of community goals, community expectations, familial expectations, which often much bigger than the actual child, but often put on a child. So navigating that space and understanding that's often the parental approach, will be useful for you to know in, again, dealing with families of these children.
So the way communities organise and operate is, again, a learning curve that will increase with the more exposure and interactions that you have with the families of these children that are coming from these CALD communities. And the more interactions you have, the more knowledge that you can build up, I guess, a repository of understanding different communities have different expectations. They go about it in a different way. They might have particular views about expectations of girls versus boys, but then again, this issue of gender notions within cultural practices, while recognising what that is, as working professionals and as working educators in this space, your role as educators is to provide a level playing field and opportunity for young children but understanding that often you might be contending with gender norms and that can be an issue that we discuss later on, but certainly it's an issue that, while it's there, my experience again, is that parents that are usually arriving in Australia under traumatic circumstances and resettling under very difficult conditions are very determined for their kids - boys and girls - to succeed in the school environment and often will shed away some of those cultural expectations and mores that they might've held onto even firmly in their countries of origin. But here they really do go about in a different way because of the expectations that they place on their children, which can create another level of expectation we need to deal with, but something to be mindful of.
Next up, I went to talk about the cultural iceberg. And I'm throwing this up here, because I think it's a very common tool that many of you might've encountered in social research and understanding identity, but, essentially if you look at the iceberg, you'll see at the top of an iceberg, as we all know, is, is it's quite magnificent. It's very visual. And until we know better, we think that's it. But obviously underneath the iceberg is where the depth lies. And when you were dealing with CALD communities and young children often we might just be guided by the exterior and what we're seeing on the periphery, which is maybe the race of the child, perhaps the faith of the child. And they might be having several siblings and so that's our understanding of that. And maybe they're from that region of Melbourne or Sydney or the east coast, or whatever.
What lies beneath is really nuance. And the nuance isn't very clear. And obviously a lot of these rules might go beyond the realm of dealing with just, you know, within an early childhood environment, but they're very, very important dealing with communities that you're going to be engaging with. And when you're dealing with young children and then when you're dealing subsequently with their parents, then you are, by definition, dealing with communities. It's important to understand that what lies beneath the iceberg is often what matters most when it comes to modifying behaviour expectations, course-correcting, dealing with trauma, dealing with mental health issues. And so much of that will be better understood by you as a professional and enable you to respond better when you acknowledged the nuance beneath. And that comes with rapport building and that comes with time.
And that comes with building expectation and building relationships and fostering a better positive relationship, both with families and with the children where it's required.
But I think for too long, not just in the education space, but I would say even in the health and community space, there's been a focus on responding and planning and mitigating against problems based on what's on the surface of the iceberg. And as a result, we don't actually see sustainable and meaningful change in outcomes.
Now it's impossible not to talk about engaging with CALD communities without understanding broadly why it matters in the first place.
And where does it sit in the realm and ecosystem of inclusion?
So diversity as we know is the expressions that young, in this case, early childhood, and young children will demonstrate and will be visible through their social identity, their age and culture.
Obviously, as they get older, it'll be other issues as well and it's the blend of that, that together creates a very vibrant society. We know that it's the diversity that it brings, but when we have that diversity, but we don't provide the framework or architecture and support to nurture it in a safe way we don't get the inclusion. We get the optics, but we don't get the substance. And I think inclusion is when you extend yourself and your systems and your work practices to be respectful, to engage to meet them where they're at, not where you're at. As one example of many, that's when the ability for those communities that you're specifically working with actually feel they're in a safe place, actually feel that, okay, this is a place where I can be me. This is a place where I can be heard, where the teacher gets what I do. Or I can bring what I need or if I have a problem, I know it's going to be responded to.
No, one's going to make fun of me. I mean, it can take that capacity to feel included. Can take any number of dimensions. But when that happens, it mirrors the diversity in a beautiful way. So we want to reach a point where yes, we have diversity, but more than diversity we've been successful in workshopping inclusion.
Now, this is a visual, again, that many of you might've seen in social research as a tool to understand what equity means.
So diversity and inclusion without equity aren't just buzzwords. They all sort of fall into place quite effectively. And the point that I want to make in highlighting what equity is, is that when schools prioritise equity more so than equality, it's understanding that students are all coming to a school learning environment from a different place or advantage or privilege and benefit.
But when you enable each of those students to reach the same level playing field through adequate support and resources, and time, and management of that time, your ability to optimise their outcomes in the long-term is going to be significantly enhanced.
So that means, really understanding where your kids are coming from. And, and that goes back to some of the earlier parts of this presentation, which is how did they arrive? What are their circumstances, their settlements, what kind of resources were in place?
What's the ability for you to engage your rapport with community? How successful can that be? Do you have the resources to manage
that level of engagement? Because how valuable would it be in improving the outcome and uptake of maybe retaining kids at school?
Improving their literacy, improving their life? You know, not life outcomes but their schooling and education outcomes.
So there's a lot to be gleaned from successfully including children in a learning environment, and that can best be done when the resources are there in place to do that. And when the resources are delivered, or provided, to the same with sort of an optimum outcome of achieving an equal sort of opportunity for every student from where they are, regardless of their background, 
moving into the next year -  the next schooling year. So, yeah, optimising those resources in a way that really looks at or interrogates an individual child circumstances as opposed to throwing resources generally at any community and expecting the best outcome. So these things do take time and they do require some very, very thorough assessment of, you know, how schools have been dealing with communities in the past. What's worked? What hasn't? How could it be done better? But more so, who can actually do it? Who should be leading and driving the engagement better with communities in order to increase and better outcomes?
The last thing I want to talk about is cultural safety. So in a sense, this sort of summarises the idea that you want to create an inclusive learning space and educational experience for young children that is recognising the diversity of young people where they're coming from, respecting that and making them feel that that is not going to be liability to their schooling experience. Often kids might feel very self-conscious, very scrutinised and want to small themselves down because they feel different due to bullying, due to racism, due to unfamiliarity with the school system. There can be a lot of reasons why that happens.
These shouldn't be tokenistic gestures either. When you do try to make kids feel more included, more welcome, it means they feel that they can comfortably you know, speak their truth, speak to authority or speak to a teacher that feeling belittled. Or speak to their colleagues without being ridiculed and feel understood.
Once you achieved this level of comfort, usually the uptake of that is students will thrive. They'll do better. And often that level of comfort and ability to thrive within a schooling environment that is supportive of them has a trickle down effect with their relationship with the family as well. So happy child at school and more functioning child at school or in a learning environment is going to be a more functioned childhood home as well. That's what the data shows us.
So, yeah, I finally want to say meeting kids where they're at, understanding that you've done. If you do the hard work, understand the ecosystem of the child where they're from, how they get to school, what their support systems are like, what could be missing and how you can provide that. Ultimately the outcome for more culturally and linguistically diverse children will be so much better.
Thank you.

Sheralee Fordham

Thanks Tasneem. It's been great listening to your expertise in this area.
So, Ziyad, now we're going to have a quick look at cultural diversity in school settings and bring some of our professional expertise as educators into the fore.
So, I guess just before we get into that is there anything that Tasneem said just now that you think is probably most pertinent from what you've seen in school?

Ziyad Serhan

I think one of the things that stood out from the conversation, or Tasneem's unpacking of the conversation, was that this is a journey and not necessarily a destination when we're looking at diversity and inclusion and really exploring at a deeper level what the implications are within the schooling context. Yeah, that really kind of stood out for me. Anything that stood out for you?

Sheralee Fordham

For me it was that concept of valuing the young person and where they're coming from. And I guess that links into some of the other sessions we've seen across the conference in the last couple of days about student voice and including student voice. For me, I guess it comes down to when you've met one young person from a particular culture, you've met one young person from a particular culture. They don't necessarily speak to the entire group of people. There are some commonalities of course, but just to have that open mind and speak to each individual child from their context and where they're at.

Ziyad Serhan

And I think one, one analogy that comes to mind on the spot is that you want children to come and feel as though they're walking into a circle where everyone's valued the same as, as opposed to walking into a hierarchy and feeling like what they bring to the, to the front in terms of their culture and their background is a deficit. You don't want them to feel like that. You want them to feel like they're valued equally.

Sheralee Fordham

Absolutely. So some of the factors to think about when we're looking at cultural diversity in schools: Language is a big one, because often the way we talk about things in, say, a dominant school culture might be really different to how students are talking about things in their own culture. An example of that is so in the schools that I've worked at a lot of the time we talk about mental health.
But in a lot of cultures, it's not really mental health that's a term that's accepted by that culture. It's more about wellbeing and that holistic view of wellbeing. So I think language can be really important. But there's also that level of communication as well. So I've had experiences where I've had students who've been translators for their parents, and that can be pretty tricky. So I think as educators looking at the fact that sometimes we need to bring translators in so we can have good conversations with parents or people who already know the language. So that burden of translation is not sitting with the child themselves.
Ziyad, faith or religion. In terms of cultural diversity, this might be something that you can speak to. What, what do you think we need to consider in schools?

Ziyad Serhan

I think acknowledging that faith/religion for many young people can play a role in terms of how that influences their overall wellbeing.
So I think embracing that conversation considering different schooling sectors and backgrounds of students it can definitely be seen as a strength when we're talking about social and emotional wellbeing, or mental health. So I think that definitely should be, be factored in because, generally, looking at faith and wellbeing that can inform the worldview of young people.

Sheralee Fordham

And I think too, there's in some faces diversity across that faith too, in terms of culture and different cultures interpret their faith and their religion in different ways. So again, that understanding that just because you've got one group of schools that maybe have a particular religion or faith as the banner over that school doesn't mean that that's necessarily the same cultural expectation as a different school with that same banner.

Ziyad Serhan

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Sheralee Fordham

With migrants and refugees. I've taught at a few schools where we've had fairly high populations of migrant and refugee students. And I think, as Tasneem was saying earlier, the fact that those young people have often had traumatic experiences, or their parents have had traumatic experiences and that sort of flow down through their family line. That's something that really needs to be taken into consideration in schools. I had one student who, and it's something that didn't occur to me until I'd had a conversation with the student, but because they'd been in a refugee camp and there had been German shepherds there, their understanding of dogs and what that meant was very different to the rest of my class, who were all suburban. They had family dogs as pets. So just little things like that. Sometimes we just need to be a little bit curious and sensitive when we're talking with young people and realise that their experience might be very, very different to what we would assume.

Ziyad Serhan

And likewise in my experience working with a predominantly refugee, well, partly refugee populated school. It was, you know, recognising that the various backgrounds and it wasn't just one dominant refugee culture that was present in the school. And for the particular school I was working at one anchor point in connecting with not just the student, but the wider family was through the community liaison officers, the CLOs, and yeah, and acknowledging that they were a pivotal point in terms of establishing communication, but also, yeah, that acceptance and making them feel included.

Sheralee Fordham

So we've got on our slide here also Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as a factor to consider in schools. I think sometimes we can be tempted to just look at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as one culture, when in fact, there's multiple cultures within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. And the fact that we need to consider the Elders of our community and their cultural expectations and protocols when we're working with students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and that's not necessarily the same as the community Elders. So for example, at one of the schools that I was at, I taught a lot of young people who were from Wiradjuri Country but we were actually on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. So those cultural protocols are different, even though they both were Aboriginal communities. 
So just considering that when you're having those conversations, again, coming back to that young person, coming back to that family and being, I guess, curious and respectful in that engagement and not just assuming that just because we're on Ngunnawal Land, you'll have the same cultural protocols.

Ziyad Serhan

Also the next thing we have listed there is considering the collectivist or the individualistic dynamics of cultural communities and how that can also inform or impact what wellness or wellbeing means to them. So there are some communities where community wellbeing is at the forefront and that informs the wellbeing of the individuals and we know operating in our broader society, we operate within an individualistic society. So, yeah, bringing cultures that are a collectivist in nature versus to operate within an individualistic society, which is the dominant one can sometimes it'd be a bit of a clash where there can be some friction. So I think schools are important considering they're microcosms of society and they bring these different communities together is how do we kind of acknowledge the different perspectives that this potential dynamic brings. 

Sheralee Fordham

I think there's also an opportunity here too, though, because one of the things we talk about a lot with Be You is the idea of a whole-school approach to wellbeing. So sometimes we look at wellbeing and we think of that more from that individualistic perspective, it's about my self-care. It's about what I'm doing for my wellbeing. But in actual fact, our own wellbeing does impact on those around us and so that's where I guess in some ways that collectivist cultural strength can come through because then we're looking at it as it's not just my wellbeing, but it's the wellbeing of my whole school community that's important. And so I think sometimes we can take some strengths from other cultures and there worldviews. 
And finally customs. So I guess just recognising that customs can be quite diverse again, across school communities. And it's something really that we can celebrate. So one of the things that we have done in my school is look at things like Harmony Day and that's an opportunity to celebrate those customs. So, Ziyad, looking at cultural safety.

Ziyad Serhan

Yeah. So Tasneem touched on this prior, kind of looking at it more practically now within the schooling context is how do we practise cultural safety in our own learning communities? And we've just listed a few things there that you can make reference to. So the first thing we have there is being aware of how mental health and wellbeing is described in your communities. Consider the alternate worldviews that may influence wellness and wellbeing - in different faiths, in different cultures and how that factors in. 
Another thing we've got there is around connection and connection and belonging. And I think we've spoken about the underlying this conversation today is how do we connect and provide a space of belonging for our young people in our own learning communities?
Another thing that we've mentioned is focusing on connection, providing the young person we are interacting with a place and a sense of belonging. And on the right-hand side, we have a small image there which we thought we'd include, just to talk about this idea of cultural competence and how do we kind of delve deeper to ensure that we're, we're not just skimming the surface or doing things tokenistically and, Jowsey, in her research references, this metaphor, which is represented in this image and it talks about cultural competence being in three different levels.
So the first level, if you could relate this back to the iceberg analogy that was given earlier, it's the 'surface competency zone'. So focusing on deployment of culturally specific knowledge, what people see, say and do. But what we want to be doing is, is going a step deeper beyond that. And that is looking at the 'bias twilight zone'. And that is where people engage, as educators, as leaders is where we start engaging and reflecting critically on our inherent or unconscious biases and how such biases might inform thoughts and practices. And even going beyond that, which is the deepest of levels when it comes to competency around cultural safety is, is the 'confronting midnight zone' is that we engage in critical consciousness and self-awareness, and we look beyond the biases and interrogate how power and positionality in society might be shaping our own privileges. So this attention coupled with commitment to social justice and to working within means to reduce any potential health disparities that might be present across different communities and cultures.

Sheralee Fordham

And I think, too Ziyad, that ties in really nicely to Tasneem's comment about being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because often when we get to that challenging 'confronting midnight zone', that's the place where we can be like, oh, I don't really know. So I think that's really important.
So we've already talked a little bit about some of our school experiences. So we won't go much deeper into that. But some of the things that we wanted to discuss today was things like use of community liaison officers in school environments and really connecting with them as experts and connection points within a school to local communities. Ziyad, would you like to say a little bit about that from your experience?

Ziyad Serhan

I shared a little bit about that before. They're usually almost the bridge between the young person and the families themselves, cause we know whole-school wellbeing. And that's what one thing Be You acknowledges is that whole-school wellbeing isn't just about the students, it's also about incorporating families and the wider community. So what community liaison officers do, they play a pertinent role in bridging that gap between school and families. And I've seen that work so well. We can talk about it for a while, but I think we want to whisk through the Q and A.

Sheralee Fordham

The thing, I think I've loved about having community liaison officers is they're a safe place where you can go and ask your silly questions that aren't really silly, but you're curious. They're a really safe place for that kind of thing.
Some practical things that I've seen in schools in terms of embracing cultural diversity - multilingual signage. I was at a school where we had three or four different languages on our signage and then creating spaces for that cultural expression. So one of the schools I worked at had footprints painted in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colours, all the way down to our Aboriginal education offices space. And so that was great.
And then being open to embracing that student voice, as we've mentioned across the conference before, how really important that is in terms of connecting students together and creating that sense of belonging.
So we're going to quickly do a poll - Practical strategies that you've had in place to support cultural inclusion in your education settings. So we've talked about Harmony Day events and community languages. If you've got something else, please feel free to pop it in the poll.

Ziyad Serhan

On that note in a short while we'll be opening the floor to anyone in the chat. Feel free to ask any questions on the conversation today, share anything that resonated with you with regards to the unpacking of this important conversation, because this looks very different depending on where you're situated right across the country. So we're really keen on connecting.

Sheralee Fordham

So a lot of people were talking about being available for conversation and active listening. And I think that's a very important skill to have as educators. 
So what we might do now, Ziyad, it will invite Tasneem back in. Hopefully you can still hear us, Tasneem. We've got some questions in our chat. So we thought we might just jump to our Q and A session. One of the questions we've got is: How do we be more inclusive of different cultures when we address wellbeing and mental health within a community in school? For example, if you're working with a school or community where mental health might be a taboo subject. Ziyad, you work a lot in this space so what would you say there?

Ziyad Serhan

I think, yeah, I think understanding a few, a few practical things would be. First of all, explore what the cultures, well, the insights the cultures provide on what wellness and wellbeing is for them. And then I think it's a collegial process. So you're, co-designing alongside the community as opposed to assuming what you think will work best. So I think, yeah, I think understanding that it's not just something that you, you necessarily impose on a group within the school setting. It's something that you, you also need kind of constant feedback with them. I know, for example, working within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities that the relationships that are built from the get-go was so important in building trust within a community. And that happens, it's a two-way street. It's not necessarily something that's imparted on but it's something that you both co-design and work together on.

Sheralee Fordham

Look, we talk about that in our Cultural Actions Catalogue as well. The idea of walking softly and working together and moving together.
And I, I like the idea of moving slowly to move fast later on. So building that trust, building that relationship, having that as your focus, because once you've got that established, then being able to achieve your goals or your actions can be much faster.
Tasneem, there's a question here which says: For students who are new culturally and coming into a place where there are students that are not as open-minded, do you have any strategies that might help them feel more included or ways they might be able to share their culture with a bit of strength and a bit of, I guess, without feeling intimidated by the culture that they're coming into? 

Tasneem Chopra

Yeah. I would say again, a mental health expert might be better at some of this response but what I would say from a cultural inclusive lens is find the areas of commonality to do exist. So while they might be like question has posed issues of more openness versus more conservativeness in certain issues. Leave those issues aside, for the sake of at least immersing the child, immersing the kids into a level playing field. And find things that they're both interested in. Is it food? Is it music? Is it sport? Is it a TV program or is it a YouTube? You know, what is the thing that you can bring them on to so that they can realise that they do have something in common. And then once you establish that rapport you build on that to then appreciate those differences beyond there. So while they might be different, you certainly got something in common too.

Sheralee Fordham

That's great. Actually it reminds me of some of the lunchtime clubs we used to have at my school, where students would come together about the things that they loved. We had an anime club and it was an opportunity for some of our students to share their passion about their culture, but also for students who are curious about the culture to engage with it as well in a non-threatening space. So that was great.

Ziyad Serhan

I think we're running out of time. So we're going to move along. One thing I did want to draw your attention to is the Be You Professional Learning that you can find on the Be You website, and that's specifically looking at the Mentally Healthy Communities domain, and going through modules and checking out the tips that are available on the website in terms of building more inclusive spaces for your students and young people within your learning community. And to also reach out to your school consultant, who will be positioned to kind of direct you to resources and, and help help walk you through those considerations.

Sheralee Fordham

Some of the other great resources we have on the Be You website, we've got a number of different fact sheets around inclusion but we also have a lot of fact sheets around partnering with families and I think, when it comes to connecting around cultural considerations, that partnership is really important. And I think as educators, sometimes we can sit back in that place where we're like sharing information. I share information with you. You share information with me, but partnership is actually coming together and working alongside. And so I think that's a really important way of looking at our connection with families as educators, but then that's also something that we can do from that cultural perspective too, I think, where we can come alongside and share together and learn together.
So I think that's really important when it comes to learning and embracing cultural diversity in schools.

Ziyad Serhan

Absolutely. So just to wrap up today's conversation, please do consider what your next steps will be around this specific conversation, but also at a whole-school approach when we're looking at cultural diversity inclusion within school settings.
Feel free to connect with Be You and your consultant as was mentioned, and yeah. 

Sheralee Fordham

Also you'll find us on a lot of the social media channels so, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.
You can learn more about beyou.edu.au and sign up and register as an individual or as a learning community to get additional support around implementation tools, our Be You surveys, consultant support nd the range of other options that we have for you. So thank you for joining us today in our session. It's been lovely to spend some time chatting with you and you, Tasneem, around cultural diversity in schools and how he can make that a practical component of our teaching and learning.
And we look forward to seeing you at another session later on.

Ziyad Serhan

Thank you.

Tasneem Chopra

Thank you.

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