Dear Parents,

As you know, we hold our Community Festival Day (CFD) every second year. Each CFD has been special and very successful. However, I believe this year’s CFD, which was held last Thursday, was unquestionably our BIGGEST and BEST-EVER.

Every K-6 student performed on stage at least once during the morning or afternoon concert and this 100% participation of students helped make our 2019 CFD our most successful in its 20-year history.

During the CFD program:

• All members of the Auburn North learning community celebrated their own cultures and each other’s cultures.
• All 692 Auburn North students performed at least once thanks to the outstanding efforts of all members of staff.
• Our students’ hearts pumped with excitement as they tried to stay in step or in tune with their friends, and you would probably have seen them smiling from beginning to end as they enjoyed a lifelong memory.
• Nearly 1000 family members watched the morning Year 3-6 concert or the afternoon K-2 concert, and you would have seen them beaming with pride when they saw their children appear on the stage.
• All families generously shared their food that they had prepared with love and pride.

During the day one of our delightful parents explained the following to me:

“We really miss our home country but today we feel like we are back home.”

Our 2019 CFD confirmed that our students, staff and parents have produced something special, something wonderful and something exceptional at Auburn North. Our community really is united, harmonious, respectful, and a model for all other schools, and the Auburn North learning community is multiculturalism at its very best and most successful.

I would like to thank all parents for providing food for our delicious ‘Food From Around The World’ luncheon, for assisting with the serving of the food, and for attending the concerts.

I would like to congratulate our students for being excellent dancers and singers and for making their parents so very proud.

Very importantly, I would like to thank and congratulate Ms Mirzai and Ms Corteous for coordinating the program, Mr Ray and Mr Don, Johnny, all members of our administration team, all teachers, and all leaders for spending so much time organising the event and for ensuring our students were prepared to perform superbly.

During the morning concert I presented a principal’s address before the concert commenced. Please find below an extract from my address:

“I hope today, our first-time visitors start to appreciate why our students, staff, and parents are very proud to say that they are members of the Auburn North FAMILY.

The theme for today’s CFD program is ‘The World is Ours’. I believe The World is Ours … to Shape Into A Better World for all children and adults so that it is just like Auburn North, which we believe is a world family that lives and learns together in perfect harmony, a family that celebrates all cultures every single day.  

For at least the past 15 years I have believed that the world would be a more peaceful, compassionate, kind, and happier place if it and each of its communities modelled themselves on the Auburn North Learning Community and what our community has been able to achieve. 

My view was supported by a politician when she wrote the following …

‘I have been greatly impressed by Auburn North’s incredible efforts and pioneering spirit in leading the ways on issues of multiculturalism and harmony. Auburn North has inspired numerous other schools and have had a tremendous impact on the community which goes far beyond its classrooms and playgrounds.’

My view that the world and its communities would benefit from adopting the Auburn North model was further reinforced earlier this year when one of our students wrote the following …

‘Three years ago before coming to Auburn North, my family and I lived in another state. We didn’t feel too welcome there and made me question that maybe I didn’t belong here in Australia.

However, when my family and I moved to Auburn and I started to come to Auburn North Public School, my whole opinion about Australia changed. I realised that it doesn’t matter who we are, where we came from, or what we believe in. At Auburn North we are all accepted because, at the end of the day, we are all humans.’

I think this student’s views reflect the views of the thousands of students who have attended Auburn North over many decades.

I believe our learning community has assisted a whole generation of young people grow into bright, articulate, respectful, kind, outstanding world citizens, and they, in turn, have ventured into the big, wide world and helped make the world a more understanding and more harmonious home for its children and adults.

They have been able to do this because they attended Auburn North Public School and because while attending Auburn North they learned life’s most important lesson and learned to live some of life’s most important values.

Life’s most important lesson that they learned was that regardless of a person’s background, religion, or colour, all people are essentially the same and just want to live safe, happy, and successful lives.

While attending Auburn North these young people also learned to live our school and life values of Kindness, Fairness, Friendship, Respect, Honesty, and Responsibility.

Our school’s graduates have then been able to help the world become a better place because ever so gently they have assisted thousands of other people learn life’s most important lesson, and modelled how to live those six essential life values.

During the recent two-week holiday, I had the good fortune to travel overseas to visit a number of excellent primary schools and high schools in Canada and Finland. I visited Finland and Canada because they have two of the best education systems in the world and because Canada, along with Australia, is the most multicultural country in the world.

During my school visits I learned many lessons that will assist our school and hopefully many other NSW schools become even better schools. Very Importantly, I learned that our school is WORLD CLASS in terms of our school’s leadership, teaching, learning, and parent engagement and participation.

However, the most important lesson I learned was that Auburn North is an ABSOLUTE WORLD LEADER in terms of developing a sense of community for its students, parents, and staff.

We are a world leader in terms of developing a community where we proudly celebrate our own and each other’s cultures every single day and not just on CFD. We are a world leader in developing a community where children and adults teach, learn, and parent in perfect harmony.

We are a world leader in assisting each Auburn North student, parent, and staff member feel and know they are important, valued, and VITAL members of their own learning community, a learning community that is very special and unique.

Over the two weeks, I looked and listened but nowhere in my travels did I see or feel a school that was as welcoming as ours, or a learning community where all relationships and communications between students, staff, and parents are always positive and always based on trust and mutual respect as they are here at Auburn North.

Nowhere else did I see a school where more than 100 parents attend daily assemblies, or where parents attend English, maths and computer classes in THEIR school.

Nowhere else did I hear of parents joyfully participating in cultural celebrations where they celebrated their own cultures and that of their new friends in the equivalent of our school’s extraordinary Harmony House.

Where else but at Auburn North would you see parents happily participating together in yoga and dance classes in their school, or where one of its staff organises for parents from three different schools to meet at the local pool to learn how to swim and then jumps into the pool to join the parents.

And in my trips to other Australian schools and overseas, I certainly haven’t seen any program that resembles our award-winning Parents as Partners in Learning program where teachers and parents work hand-in-hand in a large number of grade-based workshops so that our parents develop the knowledge and skills to be active participants in their children’s learning.

Who else but the principal of Auburn North Public School would explain to an audience of more than 100 school leaders from around Australia, as I did yesterday, that if a school is able to develop a cohesive community of parents, students, and staff with the same vision then anything and everything is POSSIBLE, especially for the school’s students.

And Where else but at Auburn North would you hear a parent say,

 “I find our school is very harmonious and like a second home, and everyone is a friend and like a sister or brother to me.”

I think most of us know that we are a world leader in the way in which we have nurtured a unified and harmonious community that is enabling all of us to flourish as human beings, and I hope our first time visitors get an inkling of that today. 

I hope our first-time visitors develop a feel for our special community and start to appreciate why I believe  The World is Ours … to Shape Into A Better World for all children and adults so that it is just like Auburn North, a community that loves each other’s company and lives in perfect harmony.”

Mark Harris

Principal

Auburn North PS celebrated Community Festival Day on Thursday 31st October. The whole community came together for this special occasion. Classes performed songs and dances representing cultures from all around the world. Families enjoyed a feast of food from many different cultures and the costumes were strikingly colourful and spectacular.

To view the videos of the performances from the two concerts, click on this link:

To see some wonderful photos of the day, visit the school website:

The KB family has started term 4 with so much enthusiasm and teamwork! We have been hard at work for most of term 3 practicing our Afghan dancing for Community Festival Day. We learnt about the Afghanistan people and their culture to help us shine on stage. When the big day finally arrived we had so much fun and we were very proud of our performance.

In Science we are learning about the Living World and we had the opportunity to work closely with our KP friends. We had a wonderful experience planting our very own plants outside on the grass area using a clear plastic cup, we then added soil, small seeds and water.

Mrs Bazzi told us that we have a very important job. We must keep our plants healthy and growing. We know that we need to water our plants every day and make sure that they sit in the sun.

When we finished planting we came back inside the classroom and created our very own books on the iPads. We are using an app called Airserver. We will be taking progress photos of our growing plants and we will record what we see into our digital books. Mrs Bazzi told us that we were very clever and successful in our learning.

Teacher: Mr Salempour

Dari community language is one of the other FOUR languages (Turkish, Arabic and Chinese), which are taught in ANPS.

There are around 150 Dari students from K-6 this year. Every Dari students gets 2 hours of their mother language leaning a week in a friendly and encouraging environment.

Kindergarten students are learning about “Farm Animals” this term. Please take some time with your kids to go through the Dari Kindergarten students photos in action who got very excited this term to learn about Farm Animals.

Stage 1 students are excited to learn more about “Community Workers/Helpers” this term, while stage 2 students are eager to learn about “Health and Hygiene”.

Stage 3 students are also intriguingly motivated to learn more and more about. “Dari Literature and Cultural Diversity”.

Alongside these topics, Dari students are improving their knowledge and abilities in all 4 components of their home language, which are talking, listening, reading and writing every day.

This term was so exciting and had a positive start with “Mother’s Day” theme and making mother’s day cards activities. But most exciting theme for this term was “Community Festival Day” in which every Dari students had an opportunity to perform and enjoy the day.

Like other students in ANPS, Dari students love to come to school and enjoy their learning and having fun with their friends here EVERYDAY.

Following photos are taken from variety of Dari students in action.

Thank you so much for your time and attention to read Dari Community Language class’s report.