Cultural Inclusion | Jeec

We value and support our rich diversity at Jesmond Early Education Centre
Educators place value on the variety of cultures we have within our service. By welcoming our families into our daily curriculum we are able to share their history, traditions and customs with our children.

Our children start the day acknowledging our traditional land owners, the Awabakal people.
"We would like to pay our respects, to the Awabakal people. We thank the people from a long time ago.
The past, the present, along with the babies, the trees and the kangaroos that own the land we play on.
We say Nunda Kumba"
Spoken and Created by the Early Learners 2017.

Jesmond Early Education Centre was selected to participate in the Ngroo - walking together program in 2018.

This program has been developed to help community preschools and long day care centres build positive relationships with their local Aboriginal community and reduce barriers that may prevent Aboriginal children accessing centres.

The program combines cultural education training, a cultural ...audit an action plan and Ngroo’s staff support for your service to prepare to respectively engage with the local Aboriginal community to increase enrolments for each child to attend 600 hours per year.

We are proud to be a centre chosen to participate in programs which seek to achieve positive outcomes for children and families.#walkingtogether

We are lucky enough to have funding to be able to have an Elder Uncle David attend our centre every Monday from April 2022. Uncle David reads the children dreamtime stories, does art/craft and lots more activities for the children to gain knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is a great source of strength to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families, including the important connections to country, spirituality, family and community.

JEEC Reconciliation Action Plan
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- Creating Patterns
  Creating Patterns

We believe that children should be exposed to different cultures to gain appreciation of cultural differences and similarities.
JEEC believes that our educational programs should reflect children’s cultural ways of being and knowing.
We aim to build strong relationships with families, so that children grow strong in culture and engage with learning about these cultures.
We also ensure that all children are familiar with the rich and long history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

We’re all human, we should be respectful of others, and tolerant with each other. This matters more than whether we eat the same food or speak the same language. The skin colour does not make us different.

— Angela Nicoara

How we incorporate culture every day
- Variety of cultural materials provided including books from around the world, cultural artefacts and experiences provided.
- Learning languages other than English. The Preschool Room are learning Spanish with our ELLA program while the Early Learners are saying hello in many languages.
- Sign language is learnt and used regularly.
- Cultural celebrations throughout the year are implemented with the help of our families.
- Inviting families in to cook traditional meals with us.
- Cultural play spaces are created frequently.
- Adding opinions, values and customs from other cultures into daily discussions.
- Exploring music from around the world.
- Educators collecting resources when in another country.