Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
My name is Hayden O'Mara.
I am the principal of Fremantle Primary School.
Fremantle Primary is a wonderful school of over 300 students,
based right in the heart of Fremantle City.
Our staff and students are very fortunate to have a welcoming and supportive parent
community, whilst encouraging the values of our school,
which are excellence, care and diversity.
It is our values of care and diversity that make us unique at Fremantle Primary.
Integral to care is teaching children the value of diversity.
At Fremantle Primary, diversity is not only about acceptance and inclusivity.
It is about celebrating each individual for their own character.
With that said, today's brief speech will share with you a significant change that our
school has enjoyed in most recent times.
I hope that you can gain an appreciation of the journey that we are on and how our community
has embraced this change with great enthusiasm.
The change I speak of is the introduction of Auslan for all students and staff from
Kindergarten through to Year 6.
To provide some context to this change, I felt it worth sharing an email I received
from Vanessa and Jason Alford back in March 2016.
It read, "Hi, Hayden. My name's Vanessa."
"I'm a mother of two Deaf boys, Otis and Jagger."
"Otis is three years old and we are looking into options for his schooling next year."
"I hope that we can meet and discuss how Fremantle Primary can cater for our children."
"Warm regards."
Following this email, one of the deputy principals at Fremantle Primary met with Vanessa and
Jason, and Josie and Shannon, and enjoyed a terrific chat about Fremantle Primary.
It was, however, during that meeting in which the first conversation about Auslan occurred.
I recall the excitement in which the deputy came and saw me and discussed meeting these
two lovely families, and also how surprised he was that the parents
themselves were Deaf, as this was not mentioned in the email.
It was simply assumed otherwise.
What became of this meeting was a realisation that the introduction of Auslan had great
potential for our school.
But more importantly, we needed to gain an understanding of Deaf culture.
Our journey of change had certainly commenced.
As Italian was the school's nominated language, robust discussions at a board level took place,
and the board eventually welcomed and endorsed this change in language for students at Fremantle.
Alongside the work at a board level, the school made significant steps to ensuring our collective
capacity of understanding Deaf culture was enhanced,
and to secure the very best-quality interpreters and teachers to join our team.
Commencing in 2017, board members, P&C executive members were invited and joined staff,
and undertook professional learning in Deaf Awareness Training and the Language Acquisition
of Deaf children, and Auslan as LOTE.
Our school was very fortunate to have secured the expertise of Patricia Levitzke-Gray and
Dr Karen Bontempo for this day's learning.
Our professional learning gave great insight and certainly provided a sound foundation
of knowledge to commence this journey of change from.
The school's leadership team relied heavily on the expertise of Vanessa and Josie to recognise
and employ highly-skilled personnel to assist in delivering this change successfully.
Within the excitement of this new language coming into our school and professional capacity-building,
we more importantly had two young boys, Taj and Otis, enrolled in our school, ready to
commence Kindy.
Both boys were Deaf, and we knew that ensuring they would be cared for was our primary concern.
Our school was very fortunate to have a highly-skilled teacher that made every effort to ensure the
boys were involved in every aspect of Kindy life.
We were also lucky to have secured the services of the brilliant Christy Filipich, who is
a well-known and highly-regarded interpreter.
To this point, the school's journey of change had been significant.
We had enrolled two Deaf students at Fremantle Primary for the first time,
we had employed an Auslan teacher and we had secured an Auslan interpreter,
we had upskilled our staff and community on Deaf culture and awareness,
and students had now commenced attending Auslan classes.
Our approach, however, was somewhat different to how many schools run their language programs,
which is simply sending children off to their LOTE teacher once per week.
We wanted to do things differently.
We acknowledged that staff also needed to raise their knowledge of Auslan as a language.
So staff and students alike attend Auslan lessons each and every week.
Together they are learning Auslan as a language.
The approach from our school has been to focus on the cultural and linguistic aspects of
the Deaf community, rather than a medical-focussed or special needs education.
It has been nearing 18 months since the school commenced Auslan as LOTE,
in which I believe we were one of the state's first schools to do so.
Our work within this space is ongoing.
Our success is evident, and feedback from our community has been overwhelmingly positive.
And I'll share with you two quotes from our most recent parent survey.
The first, "Introduction of Auslan as LOTE – a fantastic start, exciting long-term prospects."
And the second, "Teaching Auslan to all students and staff – what a positive attitude towards inclusion."
Our journey of change however is really only beginning.
We continue to learn, understand and respect Deaf culture.
We know many other elements to ensuring our Deaf students are a part of all aspects of
school life still need to be carefully considered.
It'll be upholding our values of excellence, diversity and care that we will manage and
successfully negotiate concerns as they arise.
We define the term "change" as "doing something different",
and at Fremantle Primary we have done something different and I am confident in saying we
have been successful in doing so.
Our success is credited to not only our staff,
but the wonderfully supportive and understanding parent community.
I look forward to seeing evidence of this success continue over the years to come.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
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