By CASEY NEILL
PETER D’Angelo has taught children who have fled conflicts around the world for the past 30 years.
The retired Italian-born Dandenong High School teacher has shared his experiences in autobiography A Beautiful Life.
“It’s the story of my life and what I’ve been through, but it’s enriched by the stories of the people I’ve come into contact with,” he said.
“The idea came about 10 years ago when I realised one day teaching refugee kids that their stories were parallel to mine.
“I was born in one place and for one reason or another had to leave.
“Having to start again in a new land, the pressures are much greater if you’re dislocated.
“These kids that I was teaching had gone through a similar thing to me, dislocation but even more severe – theirs was forced.
“They didn’t particularly want to leave their country. We were economic migrants. These people were refugees.
“But my story and their stories were universal in the want for a better life, the want to re-establish the broken dreams.”
Mr D’Angelo started his time in teaching at what was then Rusden Teachers College.
“One day this elective came up called Teaching English as a Second Language – the first time it was offered in a tertiary institution,” he said.
“At the same time we had these Vietnamese boat people being washed up in Darwin and nobody knew what to do with them.
“It just dawned on me.”
He took the course then took a job at Melbourne’s first language school – Noble Park English Language School.
Mr D’Angelo found himself standing in a classroom in front of Vietnamese and Cambodian students and had to work out how to break through.
He pointed to himself, said his name and wrote it on the board.
“It became visual,” he said.
He then pointed to a student and the board, and the boy stood up and wrote ’Truong’.
“That was the first bridging point,” Mr D’Angelo said.
“As I gave them more language, they gave me more information about themselves.”
His classrooms over the years have reflected the world’s conflicts, from Vietnam and Cambodia to South America, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Wherever there’s been a conflict from 1978 to the present, I’ve seen it all in the classroom,” he said.
“There was a boy from Chile. I was really into poetry as expression. He refused.
“It turned out his dad had written a poem against the regime in Chile and had disappeared.
“There are places on earth when even picking up a pen against the government can get you killed.”
Mr D’Angelo moved to Noble Park Secondary College in 1996 where he taught until retirement.
But after a few years out of the classroom, he returned to the profession as a casual relief teacher at Dandenong High School until last term.
“You’ve got to be a mentor,” he said.
“It’s an extended family, the classroom.”
The book is available from bookstore.balboapress.com or amazon.com.
