I wish to sincerely thank our Aboriginal Education Mentor Matt Hammond for his hard work during the COVID-19 crisis. Matt went above and beyond for students by coming into school 5 days a week when school was all being done remotely.

Gawura students from K-6, and our Indigenous students in Yrs 7-12 (of which there are 50 students combined in total) found remote learning challenging, with a number of students vulnerable for various reasons.

Matt asked the St Andrew’s Cathedral School staff if there were any high school teachers who would be happy to volunteer their time to assist our secondary Indigenous students and he had 25 responses. These teachers gave up their time, on top of an already very full load, to provide additional support.

In a conversation I had with a Gawura parent who is also an elder within our school, she was quite emotional to hear this.

On behalf of our Gawura and secondary Indigenous students and their families I want to say a very big thank you to these teachers, and a huge thank you to Matt for giving students so much support during this very difficult time.

If you’d like to learn more about Matt, please take a look at this interview with him.