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Fairfield High School - the mirror of Australia's multi-cultural legacy

By Kali Goldstone - posted Wednesday, 1 February 2012


Fairfield High School looks like your average Aussie high school, but there is a twist. There are 65 different cultures represented in the student population, including Assyrian Iraqi's, Afghani's, Burmese and Congolese. Deputy Principal, Mark Sargeant, points out that the Intensive English Centre (IEC) is an integral part of the school as most of the newly arrived students are refugees, who continue their education through to the high school.

Mark, 43, married with 4 children - one daughter, Amber, 16 and three sons, Caleb, 15, Rowen, 14 and Jared, 13 - spends a lot of time with his family and supporting his children's interests, "investing in them is really important to me," says Mark.

Mark is also a committed educator. "It's somewhat rewarding to have lots of money and buy a new car, but it's more rewarding if you get a car that is quite damaged and you spend a lot of time and love and build it yourself. It might not be as flash as a BMW but it is your car and you built it - and that's the sense I get from being at Fairfield and working with these kids," says Mark.

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Nicole Barber, 16, from Lebanon, notes that the "advantage of being here is that I can be what I am now with my weird background and I fit in just as well as anyone else."

Sarah Maarbani, 16, of Australian and Lebanese Muslim descent, claims, "the Deputy Principal is fantastic at his job and very kind."

Mark's calls himself an "educationalist," noting that he has been teaching at schools for over 20 years. He changes jobs every five years, because "I feel that I can make a difference in a finite period of time and then it is useful to move on. I really do believe that I can offer my support in a variety of different ways."

Mark fiddles with his gold wedding band as he recounts the beginning of his career at schools in Western Sydney like Kingswood High School in Penrith and Plumpton High school in Mount Druitt, where his father, Glenn Sargeant was a Principal and pioneered Australia's most admired educational programs: The Plumpton High School Young Mothers' Programme. They take in young mums, give them support and counsel, and help them complete their schooling. As Mark says, "education must be in the genes."

But such schools were too familiar to Mark because that was where he grew up. So he moved to a country town called Lightening Ridge where he started the High School. "It was a totally different lifestyle and it was one of my happiest places. My daughter was born there and that was where my wife and I decided we would have our other children very quickly, to get our family started."

By his own account he was then "lucky enough" to get promoted to Deputy Principal and "went to a lovely country town called Narromine which had a significant Aboriginal population." The year that he left Narromine High School, they had the largest number of Aboriginal kids complete HSC in the State of NSW. Mark also coached the girls rugby team and "they had some success, so that was my in, into that community." He is a huge Rugby Unionsupporter, giving his three boys middle names of ex rugby greats.

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"The most liberating thing that we can do as a society is leave it a better place than we found it – the best way I can influence that is by working with children," says Mark.

This mantra rang true even during his early days as an educator. It was in Narromine that he ran a program for disconnected kids in the community, noting that it was "easy to lose them to farm work and opal mining."

So he devised an "alternative school," where the students who were disengaged were given fun activities to do on the fifth day, on the proviso that they caught up with all their schoolwork by the fourth day. "We found over time that they actually didn't end up getting behind any more because they wanted to do fun things for the whole fifth day. So we eventually got those students engaged and able to complete the HSC," notes Mark.

Consequently, being a leader at Fairfield High School is a natural fit for a man like Mark who understands the holistic approach required to properly support and integrate vulnerable kids like refugees.

"Because a lot of students are very new to English, they are asked to come out of the IEC after 18 months and then sit HSC exams in English and be assessed for worthiness to go to university based on that, which really sets them at a disadvantage."

Therefore, Mark is extremely committed to the NSW Board of Vocational Education RAW program – Ready.Arrive.Work – which attempts to link the students to the world of work after they graduate.

For some, the program introduces them to Tafe as a pathway to university, to further develop their language proficiency. While for others, the Works Skills HSC program builds on practical skills needed in the Australian workforce like nails and beauty, hairdressing, floristry and bricklaying.

Mark personally makes sure that from Year 11, every student has an "exit plan," enabling them to have "some sort of qualifications that will give them a start in the world – it means that someone will talk to them if they walk out of school and don't go to uni or Tafe and they have some certificates," says Mark.

Mark is also the program co-ordinator and the heart behind the "Our Faces, Our Stories" program run in partnership with Stockland, a massive property group committed to helping its local communities.

Refugee children develop their stories and artwork - last year they used photography - with mentors from Stockland and Fairfield staff, drawing from their personal experiences.

"Vanessa Wiggins, 41, the General Manager of Occupational Health and Safety at Stockland, pioneered the photography component of the program.

"All the images show such a strong connection to their own culture and their homelands, but especially to their families. That strength in their connections comes through in a big way for me in their images and their stories – they are so proud of where they come from," says Vanessa.

Ehsoegay Zu, 17 a Karen Burmese refugee – was in Boewi camp ad Tam Hi refugee camp in Thailand for over 10 years. "I feel very special – I feel like it's a pleasure to learn how to write your story, how to express your feelings and how to tell your story to others through the pictures and images that we bring – working on it is great."

Angela Abduljabbat, 13, from Iraq, has been in Australia for two and a half years. Learning about other people's stories helps her deal with her own experiences and tragedy.

"I listen to the children and they talk about their country and why they had to leave, and I feel sorry for them because I feel sorry for myself. I had to leave my country and my family and I miss them and I want to see them too," says Angela.

The "idea is to give refugee kids a forum to tell their story when quite often it has been a secretive part of their past. It informs us about their mindset and rather than it being something that they are ashamed of, we actually make it something to be celebrated," notes Mark.

David Saeed, 13, from Iraq, escaped to Jordan where he lived in a refugee camp from the age of six to ten. "Discussing my story feels more comfortable because it was a heavy weight on me to talk about and show people how hard my story was and how hard my life was," says David.

He relates to the other students stories, "because it has happened to me before, the things they experience – all of them happened to me – it moves me."

Sylvia Deefholts, 55, an ESLTeacher who has worked at Fairfield for the last 20 years "finds that using personal narrative for building literacy is a really effective way to engage the students."

The program is also a wonderful platform to educate the wider community on refugee issues and is published into a formal book, which is made available in the community.

Ms Wiggins acknowledges that "refugees tend to sit on the peripheral edges of traditional Australian society – we still have a national identity that is very fixated on white settlement and we need to make a move away from that."

"Being able to give another perspective, from another cultural group, is going to give more understanding to the fact that our identity has changed," says Ms Wiggins.

"I am simply privileged to be able facilitate something like this," says Mark. But, his real joy lies in his family. "When I'm not at school most of my time is dedicated to my family. I would work for nothing except that the money I get from teaching finances my family habit."

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About the Author

Kali Goldstone is an international human rights lawyer and journalist with a depth of expertise in managing diverse programs working with minority and vulnerable groups, refugees, IDPs and immigrants for the last 12 years in Australia, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya and the U.S.

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