MADALAH staff headed to Geraldton to conduct our Education and Well-being Day event with scholars who attend Nagle Catholic College. The all-day event included a session about career pathways, exploring topics relating to resumes, personal presentation, interview skills, career pathway planning and work ethic. We believe that it is important to equip our scholars for future employment and/or other career aspirations prior to them completing secondary school. This session ties into our Year 13 Program which was introduced in 2021 and allows MADALAH to gain an understanding of our scholar’s future aspirations so that together we can support them to achieve their career goals.
The highlight of the day was a Language Workshop presented by Bernie Jones, a Wajarri teacher from the Geraldton Flexible Learning Centre. The students were learning Wajarri, and Bernie began by asking the students how they were by saying “Nyinda Barndi”. Nyinda meaning “you” and Barndi meaning “good”. Bernie has an excellent way of communicating and teaching language to the students by pairing some potential responses to the first question “Nyinda Barndi?”, using common emojis so the students can make that connection.
The students learnt “Guwa” (yes) and “Waji” (no). Some of the common responses to the question were “Julgara” – happy, “Nyarun” – hungry, “Biga” – sick, “Garla” – hot and “Malardi” – tired. The students then had a go at using these words in sentences and even learned family members’ names. For example, mum “Yagu” and dad “Mama”. The students also played bingo with smaller laminated cards of the Wajarri names for family members and expressions.
Overall this session was engaging for all students and we thank Bernie for taking the time to present to us all, it was amazing.
In conclusion of the event, students took part in the MADALAH games and said their goodbyes to our staff! It was also great to have alumna Sydney Marsden back on board mentoring at this session having graduated herself from Nagle last year!
We would also like to thank the City of Greater Geraldton for providing us with the venue for this event!
We can’t wait to get back up to Geraldton soon and look forward to hosting our last Education and Well-being Day in July!
