Building Global Citizenship

On Wednesday 17th May, as part of Education Week, the Year 9 cohort were lucky enough to attend a presentation from Dr Aleryk Fricker from Deakin University, Melbourne that supports their learning in Global Citizenship. Through their Global Citizenship classes, students are learning how to be ethical decision makers in an increasingly globalising and polarising world. They are learning about the power of language and the law to facilitate people in power to commit atrocious acts upon their people. In Term 3, students will be looking more closely and specifically at The Holocaust; the historical context that led to it, and the aftermath and impact on people across the world. In Term 4, students will be exploring concepts of commemoration and remembrance and why we consider these historical events to still be of significance today. 

The presentation from Dr Fricker dove into the challenging topics of genocide and how the power of language and law can shape social attitudes towards entire groups of people. He guided them through some increasingly challenging issues for discussion and debate. 

Dr. Aleryk (Al) Fricker is a proud Dja Dja Wurrung early career researcher who completed his PhD through Charles Darwin University in 2021. He is currently employed at Deakin University as a Lecturer in the School of Education. He was a former Primary and Secondary school teacher and has a passion for everything teaching and learning.

Dr. Fricker is an active teacher and researcher and works hard with the next generation of teachers so they have the knowledge and skills to begin to decolonise their classrooms to benefit the next generations of students. He uses a decolonised pedagogical approach to ensure that his students can benefit from engaging with First Nations educational practices that are tens of thousands of years old.