Ali Ibrahim heads back to school in Sydney with his mind still racing with memories of escaping the Syrian civil war with his family to seek asylum in Australia.
The 17-year-old Kurdish refugee is no stranger to new beginnings, whether they come in the form of a new school year, a new language to master, or a place to call home.
"I still feel like my hands are shaking, and I'm getting so hot and stressed," he told AAP.
"But the good thing is now I'm able to control it."
Mr Ibrahim is one of more than 11,000 students from refugee backgrounds enrolled in NSW public schools, according to official figures.
He graduated from the Intensive English Centre (IEC) program in early 2023 and has since moved on to year 11.
The government-funded program spread across 16 schools in Sydney and Wollongong supports newly arrived students transitioning from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
"I was ashamed because (English) is my third language," Mr Ibrahim said.
"I thought if I go to school, people would start laughing at me because I don't know that much English."
Fellow student and friend Fadi Al Akona felt relieved when he and his family arrived in Australia after five years of waiting in Jordan for humanitarian visas to be approved.
The 16-year-old still recalls the tense car ride he made as a young boy as his family fled Islamic State militants invading their village in northern Iraq.
For Mr Al Akona, navigating a new life in Australia also means navigating a different school system from what he is accustomed to overseas.
"Here, in Australia, we have to move from one class to another - not like in Iraq and Jordan where the teacher comes to our class," he said.
The students have channelled their displacement experiences by participating in Treehouse Theatre, a Sydney-based theatre company that uses performance development as trauma therapy
Unexplored trauma forces students with refugee backgrounds to experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD, according Treehouse's co-founder and school counsellor Catherine Maguire-Donvito.
"We do our best to keep them (refugee students) safe, but the reality is that these kids are triggered all the time anyway," she told AAP.
"When you get a flashback, it feels like it's happening now because a traumatic memory hasn't been processed.
"By talking about it and hearing about it, those neural pathways ... will be built and the memory can be stored as a normal memory."
