In acknowledgement of our first program, the name, Teachabout, is based on the word 'tijimbat' which is used in Minyerri to mean 'teach your kids about everything'.

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Thursday, June 27, 2013

Erin: Enthusiasm, excitement and flat basketballs!



And so the program started. On Wednesday morning, our program kicked off with enthusiasm, excitement and flat basketballs (of course)!

I was last in Minyerri with the Trinity mob in September so it was great to catch up with everyone again. “I’m so… proud to see you!” said one girl who has attended a number of previous programs. Reid (pictured left) has grown into a five year old since I last saw him (and lost some hair!).

There’s one person missing; our friend Mickayla, (and her three-year-old, Josiebeth), who has previously designed and run her own activities. We phoned her in Darwin, begging her to come back to Minyerri before we leave. Fingers crossed!

The past two days we’ve been thinking a lot about our approach to literacy. We had some training sessions with Teach for Australia before we left Melbourne, and we have two teachers-in-training on the activity leader team, so we’re thinking about re-jigging our approach. For me, the reading component of our program is really important. Most kids in Melbourne would be read to, or read, every day in their school holidays. Many of the kids in Minyerri would not read for four weeks in the holidays – that’s already a massive challenge for their reading and literacy skills.

Today we had some downtime before lunch so I opened my book and started reading it outside. One of the kids, Tyrone, was hanging around and seemed intrigued. “You reading that book?”… “do you like reading?” I’d like to think that his experience with books during the program yesterday encouraged him to think about reading as something to enjoy.

This afternoon the kids spent hours designing their new, yellow, Tijimbat t-shirts. They look fantastic! One girl dotted her t-shirt all over, ensuring that the dots were the same colour as her design from yesterday. Looking forward to seeing the shirts on the kids in the coming days!


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