Every Tuesday afternoon more than 40 primary and secondary students can be found doing their homework at the Rumbalara Football Netball Club rooms.
Launched at the start of this year, the homework club is a partnership between Mercy Access, Academy of Sport, Health and Education (ASHE) and Rumbalara. Now a Koorie education support worker at Notre Dame College in Shepparton, Janelle Atkinson recalled a homework club growing up on the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Reserve and said it was important to reintroduce the initiative.
“The kids struggle a little bit at school and with handing things in,” Janelle said. “I remember myself and some of the kids that I work with, as soon as the teacher says hand something in, they hide. “They come out here and they’re culturally safe, there’s no hiding. “They can get all the support they need to be able to complete their homework, or if they don’t have homework we have other things they can do.”
Each week the students are picked up from school by bus and enjoy a healthy afternoon tea before hitting the books prior to football and netball training at 5 pm. Janelle said the program combined health, well being and education. “We have a lot of things going on at the footy club so it’s kind of like a hub; they feel at home out here,” she said. “This is just something else they’ll come and do, they’ll work towards their education and then they’ll go out and train.”
“It all fits in together.” Homework club co-ordinator Sister Agnes Murphy RSM said each student had a literacy and numeracy textbook as well as access to a library. “When they come in, every child has two books which they can write in and do their work in, we have some maths blocks that might help them with their maths,” Agnes said. “When they’re finished their first two books they get a little library book as a gift so they can be motivated.”
Agnes said the homework club was entirely dependent on trained volunteers who mentored the children. “They help the child with their work, make sure they keep on going with their work, help them to complete the exercises — it could be a maths problem or looking up a word and helping them get a library book,” she said. “They form a relationship.”
“Altogether at the moment we have about 16 volunteers but we would like to double that.” With hopes of seeing the homework club grow, the goal is to have one volunteer to two children while also incorporating Yorta Yorta language.
