Module 3-Unit 2-Activity 3

Your choices are great!

“Children with disrupted or different experiences of school life may find joining a new education system extremely challenging, so it’s important to be welcoming to children and parents and alert to the family’s back story. In order to understand a child’s experience, it is important to gather basic information without delving too deep. School staff should build up more of a profile over time. Children and families may have been interviewed in other circumstances which are not so benevolent, so it might be better to build trust, be welcoming and give opportunities for them to tell you more in their own time. Schools have the ability to provide certain ‘healing’ opportunities to refugee and migrant children – giving a daily structure to a child who may have experienced chaos, and acting as a bridge to a new way of life. Staff can help children to integrate with their classmates, who will have had very different life experiences, and help them re-build their self-esteem and develop friendships.    Language barriers can greatly undermine a child’s confidence and make it harder for them to participate in school life and form relationships. Schools should ensure that children have the opportunity to receive additional help to develop their language skills”. Source: Adapted from Mentally Healthy Schools. (n.d.).