For Schools
For Schools
Download ready-made lessons for middle-school classes
This unit of work aims to introduce students to issues related to refugees and asylum seekers by engaging students with creative activities that help them develop empathy for displaced peoples.
Lessons
The purpose of these lessons is to draw upper primary school and lower secondary school students’ attention to issues related to refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. It aims to dig beneath the surface of the controversies surrounding asylum seekers and to expose students to the stories of those who have been refugees. Issues related to refugees and asylum seekers in Australia are often believed to be complex and therefore difficult to address with school students except in the upper secondary school year levels. This unit of work aims to introduce issues related to refugees and asylum seekers in the middle years of schooling by engaging students through creative responses that help students to develop empathy for displaced peoples. It also aims to allow students to respond to these issues through creative expression rather than through analysis of the issues.
View lessons Portable Document Format
Supporting resources
The following resources provide support material for the lessons.
Short film ‘Our need to belong’
A nine minute animated film featuring the voices of asylum seekers. Hear asylum seekers’ experiences of waiting while their applications for protection are processed in Australia, and learn how the community can help.
n.b. You can view this video in full-screen mode by clicking the x-like icon in the vimeo player.
Download: Quicktime Windows Media
Stories: The Scattered People website
A website of stories of refugee claimants’ experiences. The site is built around the themes of our Scattered People CD (Link to the Scattered People CD info on the site), covering the journey of refugee claimants from their home country to Australia, and through the process and experience of waiting for their cases for protection to be heard.
Story book ‘Alone, Together’
An anthology of stories, poems, experiences and recipes from Brisbane refugees and asylum seekers.
Scattered People CD
This award winning album is “rich with humanity, hope, pain and patience, as asylum seekers from around the globe come together to put the story of their lives to us in music” (New Internationalist” magazine.)
Listen to samples from some tracks on the CD
- Scattered People
- Hometown
- Alangkolam (chaos)
- Sweet Freedom
- Labarik Sira Hotu (all the children)
- Rain
- Put U Nepoznato (a place unknown)
- Forsaken Child
- Need One Another
- Resilience
- Senzeni (what have I done?)
- Stand With Us
Purchase the CD
Video news stories: Abebe Fekadu, Australian Paralympian and former asylum seeker
Abebe Fekadu was supported by the Refugee Claimants Support centre and the wider community for nine years. In 2008 he became an Australian citizen, and later that year represented Australia in the powerlifting competition of the Beijing paralympic games. Watch two news reports of his story.
- Video 1
n.b. You can view this video in full-screen mode by clicking the x-like icon in the vimeo player.
Download: Quicktime Windows Media
- Video 2
n.b. You can view this video in full-screen mode by clicking the x-like icon in the vimeo player.
Download: Quicktime Windows Media
Our community education project was funded by Multicultural Affairs Queensland and supported by:
- Lifeline Community Care Qld
- Queensland University of Technology
- Queensland Academy for Creative Industries
- Global Learning Centre
- Southbank TAFE
- Artist Teresa Jordan
"...a refugee claimant means somebody who has to suffer many pressures and many problems because of their status, we have nothing really and we can rest only at the moment when the government says 'Here is your visa'..."