Name
Marie-Anne Maakrun

Birthplace
Sydney, Australia

Lives
Sydney, Australia

Your organisation/community Community Net – Preventing Youth Slipping Through

Profile

“This is a table…t…t…t…table”. “This is a chair…ch…ch…ch…chair”.

I never quite understood why my Italian, Greek and Lebanese friends and I had to attend ESL (English as a Second Language) classes in primary school when we were all born in Australia. We would sit there on the mat each week, chanting away, repeating after our teacher, rolling our eyes and making faces at each other. We realised at a very early age that not being “Australian” meant we missed out. In this case, each week we missed our favourite afternoon activity, art and craft – Ouch! It amuses me knowing that later in life I became a professional cartoonist.

I also trained as a high school teacher and ended up teaching Social Sciences for almost ten years at a state boys high school in Sydney’s Southern suburbs. There almost 80% of the students were from a non-English speaking background – a big change from when I was at school – now almost everyone had dark hair!

I witnessed a growing number of students ‘disconnected’ from school and caught in negative cycles that were difficult to break. The self-esteem of some was so low, that they were content each day with making life difficult for themselves and those around them.

Surprisingly I found that that ‘ESL mentality’ had not changed much over the years. It was through my experiences as a teacher that I realised a number of problems faced by adolescent males at school (especially those from non-English speaking backgrounds) arose from the lack of cultural awareness by school staffs and was further compounded by the lack of effective strategies by education authorities. In a moment of career disillusionment, I instigated a project called Machismo, aimed at increasing the self -esteem of adolescent males and engaging them back into learning and their communities.

It was awarded the Director-Generals’ Award for Excellence and later adopted as a joint initiative between the NSW Departments of Education and Training and NSW Health.

My aim now is to teach schools and communities how to develop effective and efficient alliances so that the needs of all young people are better met. “Community Net – Preventing Youth Slipping Through” is the result. Cultural diversity is an amazing asset after all and with proper management, can grow into a profitable investment!