Getting to the Heart of Inclusion and Belonging
Written by Jennifer Johnson
As a parent, a former educator, an entrepreneur and a passionate change-maker, Jennifer is on a mission to empower young people to be their best selves to create a better world. She has an M.A. in Education in Curriculum, Teaching and Organisational Learning.
Common sense tells us that inclusion initiatives cannot thrive in environments where people are disconnected, have little sense of belonging and are struggling with their well-being. Today, principals are tasked with creating healthy and supportive environments where all stakeholders including teachers, students, staff, families can thrive – all at a time when we are still recovering from the erosion of the social fabric in our schools and communities.
The reality we are all accepting is we are not going back to “normal” anytime soon. Further, the complex issues in our systems cannot be remedied with quick fixes; and, on a school level, principals are not able to tackle such formidable issues using traditional approaches alone. The struggles of the past two years have led to notable increases in everything from mental health issues to bullying and hate crimes – a spectrum of symptoms with seemingly related root causes. These indications are no doubt a result of the unprecedented levels of uncertainty, prolonged interruptions to interpersonal interaction, diminished opportunities for extra-curricular activities, an absence of routine and ritual, and the subsequent loss of a sense of purpose, meaningful connection, and engagement for young people.
However, one of the gifts of the past two years has been the collective interest in taking a closer look at what is at the heart of inclusion and belonging. In order to provide schools with foundational support for critical conversations around inclusion, we need to examine the subtle interplay between well-being and identity, and how they contribute to feeling a sense of inclusion and belonging. Since launching Captains & Poets in schools in 2019 we have seen time and again that they are inextricably intertwined.
Dr. Helen Street, honorary associate professor in the graduate school of education at The University of Western Australia and chair of Positive Schools has introduced the concept of Contextual Wellbeing: “a state of health, a happiness and positive engagement in learning that arises from membership of an equitable, inclusive and cohesive school environment. (2016) In her book Contextual Wellbeing – Creating Positive Schools from the Inside Out, she highlights the relationship between the individual and the environment. “Rather than, ‘How can we improve the wellbeing of young people in our schools?’ perhaps we should be asking, ‘How can we improve equity, creativity and cohesion?’” (2018)
The challenge of creating more inclusive schools is we cannot promote inclusion without first addressing the fundamental human need of connection. This includes connection to self, connection to others, and connection to the world around us. We need to acknowledge that everyone has universal needs of physical, mental, and emotional safety that need to be met before we can connect. We also need to recognize where our systems and behaviours are in direct opposition to the very norms we are trying to reinforce.
Well-being does not happen in a vacuum. It is largely a social experience as well-being and connection have a reciprocal relationship. When we are positively engaged in an environment, we are more likely to have a healthy sense of well-being. Likewise, when we are feeling supported around our well-being, we are more likely to engage in the world and explore who we are in positive ways. One supports and reinforces the other.
When we put a well-being lens on current school priorities around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), we can begin to understand the challenges we face in making progress on our objectives. The changes we are trying to make in schools to support a more inclusive environment are directly impacted by the collective state of well-being and vice versa. Both students and educators are struggling with mental health issues in unprecedented ways and most principals will tell you that resilience and well-being are at an all-time low. We need to provide a safe space to explore these needs first. Our individual needs being met are then, in turn, closely mirrored in our collective sense of well-being. Street goes further to stress the importance of context when looking at well-being. Sometimes well-being is about expressing negative emotions and identifying what is not working for us. More than ever, we need to create conditions for this to happen in schools.
A similar interplay is seen in the development of a healthy sense of identity. Identity is a result of the complex and ongoing dynamic between what is inside of us yearning to be expressed, what opportunities and/or barriers are present in our environment, how we present ourselves in the world, and how the world responds to us. At any given point in our lives, we are both solo agents and co-creators in every social interaction. We can see this demonstrated in how we each express who we are in different contexts (work, home, the community, etc.) based on the roles we play, our own needs, motivations and aspirations, the expectations of us, the environment and the underlying needs and dynamics of the group.
It becomes increasingly clear that the development of identity and well-being are not entirely separate constructs. Case in point, the rise of trauma-informed approaches illuminates the interplay between lived experience, our sense of identity in the world, our general well-being, and our ability to express ourselves fully and healthily in different social contexts. It follows that inclusion initiatives should not be mutually exclusive from those of well-being. Otherwise, we are presenting schools with the insurmountable challenge of tackling complex issues through a compartmentalized lens. What is needed more than ever is an integrated approach; and the fact is we are all wired for it.
According to Dr. Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, the mind is both embodied and relational. It includes what happens in the whole-body experience as well as how we interact with people and more broadly our world. Siegel’s research in interpersonal biology demonstrates that well-being comes from a state of ‘integration’ whereby we create harmony of our parts within us and extend this relationally by respecting this process in others. With this mindful lens, we can inquire into and honour what is going on inside of us while extending the same to others. By achieving harmony within first we are better able to have empathy for others. We can be attuned to differences in perspective and experience and at the same time ‘link’ to them with compassion. The mind enables us, at once, to hold space for ourselves and others. Well-being can then be described as an integrated self or way of being in the world. This integration of embodied and relational aspects of our experiences then leads to the ability to form deeper relationships that create space for vulnerability, and inspire connection, caring and the desire to help others. Is this not the formula for inclusion?
Looking through this integrated lens, we can begin to understand why taking a purely educational approach to critical DEI conversations is limited. We engage advocacy groups to deliver workshops and keynotes to illuminate the lived experiences of others and inspire us to open our minds to create greater understanding. We resonate with their stories, and we leave inspired only for our institutions to go back to business as usual on Monday. What we aren’t tapping into is the sense of connection that is surfaced in those moments. Without the ability to sustain this connection, our efforts wane and our impact erodes. Until the next year when the cycle repeats.
DEI initiatives aren’t just a top-down initiative and certainly should not be a box-ticking exercise, especially with the limited resources and energy on hand right now. Perhaps what we have been missing all along is that the desire for connection is a free and abundant resource at our disposal. We need to make a shift from informational approaches to inclusion to transformational ones that anchor in our hearts and weave into how we engage each day. Building and then sustaining this bridge between self and others is where we fail. The reality is inclusiveness begins on an individual level. As a result, it is essential we find ways to address and engage those in the room, their own perceived sense of identity and their readiness to connect.
True connection begins from a place of moment-to-moment awareness where we hone and develop who we are in the world, while simultaneously transforming the relationships around us. We can all reap the benefits of living more authentically and cultivating greater connection by leveraging a deeper, broader sense of self in everything we do. At the heart of inclusion initiatives is fostering connection to self while honouring a sense of connection across our differences. The first step we need to take is toward ourselves.
The emergence of self-awareness in human development is both a curse and a gift. It yields the curse of self-consciousness, which inhibits us from being who we are in the moment. But it also gives the gift of self-leadership, which empowers us to make choices about who we want to be in the moment and how we want to show up in the world. Self-awareness enables us to live more fully into our potential – and to support others in doing the same. We all remember those first moments in our young life when we suddenly became self-conscious. We received a subtle or not so subtle cue from our environment that there were aspects of ourselves that weren’t valued or didn’t belong. In that moment, we became fragmented. Our well-being AND our identity were directly impacted. Take a minute to reflect on those defining moments for yourself and who you would be if you had instead received the message that all parts of you matter and are worthy of being seen. How did those defining moments impact who you became in that situation and your happiness over the long-term?
We spend our lives on a journey back to wholeness to reclaim ourselves. We yearn for environments that allow us to find comfort in our own skin and encourage us to be our best, fullest selves. In education, we talk about this in terms of enabling students to reach their full potential, but this is often diminished to academic and strengths-based approaches. What gets missed is the whole child – who we are in all our complexity – as well as how our surrounding social contexts impact us on an individual level. Street reminds us in her book that:
’Flourishing’ is an interplay between our best individual selves and our best environment. This means happiness and success are far more than individual pursuits, or even individual responsibilities. Rather, lasting happiness develops when we form healthy connections in a social context that supports and nurtures us to become the best we can be.
When young people are given opportunities to explore and express who they are and to pursue what is important to them in a safe environment, it results in a healthy sense of identity AND well-being. As educators, we need to be mindful of our responses to students and what messages we are sending about who they are, how much they matter, and what is valued or not valued in them. There are many ways in which we tell students not to bring their full selves. We ask them to get along and when they don’t fit in or retreat from the group we move on with the business of the day. We ask them to conform to rules that have been established presumably to bring cohesion and harmony and when they step outside these lines, we exclude them. Our systems and behaviours are often contradictory to the very inclusive norms we are trying to reinforce. Being in an environment we perceive as safe and supportive of our basic human needs gives us permission to develop an authentic sense of identity. This is key to feeling a sense of connection and belonging.
Inclusion is not an end game and, as a result, the risk of fatigue from existing approaches is high. Instead, it is an ongoing process of intra and inter-personal discovery and dialogue that continues to take us deeper into ourselves, supporting and enabling social change through connection and seeing the we alongside the me. If the human experience is fundamentally about coming back to self again and again, then the journey to self is lifelong. At the core of this journey is self-awareness and the ability to ongoingly connect with the world in new and meaningful ways that have a positive impact on everyone.
So how do we make an integrated approach more accessible in the day-to-day interactions of schools? Educators need foundational strategies to support their own self-awareness in order to support young people in connecting with their own inner experience of identity and well-being. If self-awareness is the path to inclusion, we need to be more present to our role in critical conversations at hand, how the curriculum is delivered, the way we address incidents in the schoolyard, and how we engage with all school stakeholders. And we need to empower the same embodied and relational process with students. Perhaps the greatest opportunity at hand is to find ways to create transformation in our schools starting with kids themselves.
Captains & Poets was created to give students a sense of agency in this process of positively contributing to the social context around them. The premise of the program is that there is a unique Captain and Poet in each of us who, in partnership, enable us to be our best, most authentic selves – and to embrace others in the same spirit. While a simple concept, these archetypes give us deep and ready access to key aspects of who we are and the state we are in. Introducing the Captain and the Poet also provides a neutral language that moves beyond gender and race to the human experience of struggling and striving, creating and thriving to be who we are meant to be.
When we expand our ability to view ourselves, we are better able to see the full human expression in others. This gets us closer to an ‘integrated way of being’ in the world. The message we need to send to educators and students alike is they are whole, resourceful beings who have everything they need inside of them to thrive and that they help create inclusive environments by tuning into their own responses and needs with compassion and curiosity. When we are better able to understand ourselves, we are better able to relate deeply with others.
The phrase we use to help young people embrace and celebrate their uniqueness is, “We are all the same because we are all different.” We all have needs. We all want to be seen, to connect, and to matter. We all have a Captain and Poet inside of us ready to help us be fully expressed in the world. Today, we need Captains and Poets everywhere. Perhaps now is a critical time in education to call upon our collective Poets to hold space for ourselves and others on this journey, and to inspire our collective Captains to create safe spaces that empower us all.
Faith is too often seen as a barrier to LGBT+ inclusion, so we’re launching new resources to change this
Written by Amy Ashenden
Director of Comms and Media/Interim CEO, Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people’s charity.
As the new Interim Chief Executive of Just Like Us, my aim this year is to ensure more schools than ever have the tools they need to support their LGBT+ young people.
For several years now, School Diversity Week has been celebrated by so many incredible educators across the UK, showing young people that being LGBT+ is nothing to be ashamed of. Last summer, more than 5,000 primary and secondary schools took part. This year, 26-30 June, I believe it’s vital that schools with intersecting communities have the resources they need to celebrate School Diversity Week.
From faith schools to Welsh-speaking communities and primary schools, Just Like Us will be providing new sets of resources that cater specifically to the educators that need tailored LGBT+ inclusion tools the most. When half of young people (48%) tell us that their school hasn’t given them positive messaging about being LGBT+, it’s clear to me that we have a long way to go and that to change this, schools need the right kind of resources that speak to their individual ethos and community.
Our new independent research has found a third of teachers (30%) say faith has been a barrier to discussing LGBT+ topics in school. More than 7,000 UK teachers took part in our survey this February, revealing an indisputable need for resources that are both LGBT+ and faith inclusive.
That’s why we’ve launched a new series of faith and LGBT+ inclusive resources for Anglican, CofE, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim school communities. From primary assemblies to worksheets and videos featuring LGBT+ young people talking about their faiths, the resources are designed to give educators the tailored tools they need to celebrate School Diversity Week in a way that makes sense for their community. We have also worked in collaboration with LGBT+ faith-led organisations Keshet, Hidayah, One Body One Faith and Quest to develop these resources in a way that really speaks to the communities they’re designed to support.
In faith schools, the research found that 46% of teachers had previously found faith to be a barrier to talking about LGBT+ topics in the classroom, compared to 25% at non-faith schools. I believe it’s vital that we now provide the tools educators at faith schools need to support their young people who may be LGBT+ or have LGBT+ families.
Interestingly, just 3% of headteachers said that faith has always been a barrier to discussing LGBT+ topics.
A lack of LGBT+ inclusion in schools is so rarely about a lack of willingness but instead due to a historic lack of suitable resources that empower educators to get started on their journey. It’s also important that we remember that LGBT+ and faith communities are never totally separate – as you’ll see in the resources, faith is very important to many LGBT+ young people and to suggest that there’s no overlap just isn’t reality. You can absolutely be LGBT+ or an ally and belong to a faith – being Jewish and a lesbian, I know this reality well.
It’s also really important that we don’t erase the fantastic LGBT+ inclusion work that many faith schools are already doing with their pupils. St Stephen’s CofE Primary School in London is just one example of this. Nicola Collins, who works at the primary school, is a huge advocate for celebrating School Diversity Week and won our LGBT+ Inclusive Teacher of the Year award in 2022. She explained: “As a school, we feel passionate about challenging stereotypes and homophobic language. As a result, the children in our school are well informed and accepting of all people no matter who they are!”
We hope that these new resources will be a gamechanger for schools with faith communities to celebrate School Diversity Week this 26-30 June. We really welcome educators to get in touch with your feedback or any questions you might have about making LGBT+ topics faith inclusive.
Acceptance: Still so much work to be done.
Written by Kelly Richens
Programme Director, BASCITT. BASCITT is proud to celebrate diversity and promote equality and inclusivity (see here)
Applying to train to teach is a daunting enough task; the whole construction of your personal statement and how it defines you, all of your work experience, your qualifications and who will be your referees. All wrapped up in the deep emotions of taking this huge step towards becoming a life-changer for young people.
If this wasn’t searching enough in terms of self-exploration and presenting yourself, there is a section that says ‘Criminal Record and Professional Misconduct’ in which an applicant can make any relevant declaration.
I had an email confirming an application in which there had been such a declaration. Imagine my horror when I opened the webpage to view the application and read: ‘I am unsure whether this is a safeguarding issue, however I feel it necessary to raise and protect myself and others from misunderstanding. I am transgender.’
A flood of emotions ensued: rage that this applicant had felt being transgender could be a safeguarding issue; sadness that whilst she wanted to share this information, she had chosen to include in in a section labelled ‘criminal record’; fear that there are groups of people without the psychological safety to just be who they are without recourse of judgement; and the smallest amount of pride that she had actually been brave to share at all.
So rather than my first conversation with this applicant about her potential qualities as a teacher, I had to have a difficult conversation of reassuring and coaching her that she was in safe hands with us. What a shame that we could not talk instantly about her joy of her subject, or why she was applying to us. Her being transgender was a huge distraction from this and that is wrong.
Whilst I reflect on this, and have since interviewed and offered a training place to this lovely individual, based on her merit, I am still left without an answer of how do we stop this happening again? Keep promoting inclusivity? Keep the courageous conversations going? Keep educating and keep that positive momentum going on how we can continue to aim for a world in which an individual does not fear themselves being viewed through a judgmental lens? Instead a place where everyone can be celebrated for who they are and what they have to offer our pupils.
How about making sure your World Book Day Celebrations have inclusive and representative impact too?
Written by Ndah Mbawa
Ndah runs Happier Every Chapter, a literacy service committed to helping schools and families improve diversity awareness and reading attainment through library diversity audits and the provision of diverse, inclusive and representative bestsellers for children. Her passion for decolonising mindsets within the school-to-workplace pipeline and supercharging the will/skill to read is shared by her teenage daughters, Kirsten & Aiyven.
It’s a little known fact that children start to form biases like racial bias much earlier than we think. For instance, from as early as 3 – 6 months, a baby’s brain can notice racial differences in the people around them. By the time they are 2, most children have soaked up stereotypes about race and may express these with one way or another. By 4, children can directly express race based prejudice or bias by teasing. And, by age 12, many children become set in biased thoughts, actions and decisions. Makes you think about what’s in the school-to-workplace pipeline doesn’t it? One doesn’t need to look further than the Ashford School incident for hard and gravely worrying evidence of such biased actions.
World Book Day provides a great opportunity to be more intentionally inclusive and it doesn’t always have to come down to dressing up. It’s never too early to begin the work of anti-racism & diversity awareness or to help your school setting make progress in conscious equality even as you promote the love of reading. With 34.5% of primary age pupils in the U.K being from minority ethnic backgrounds, diversity will not be the issue for a lot of school settings. How included these pupils feel and consequently how much of a sense of belonging they have will often be the issue. Somewhere in those corridors, a significant amount of pupil engagement is lost. How will you use events like World Book Day to further drive home the message that all are welcome and all belong?
Here are some tips to celebrate World Book Day in a more inclusive way:
📖 Start a book, an anthology and encourage children from different ethnicities or cultures to contribute short stories from their heritage. It will be a great way to uphold this year’s theme of making it ‘your’ World Book Day.
📖 Read stories with a diverse range of characters making sure that these are not limited to ethnic and cultural representations but also include other forms of diversity like gender, ability, neurodiversity, family set-up, sexual orientation etc. When stories featuring diverse characters are told with authenticity, it helps children develop empathy and inclusion giving them an opportunity to see themselves and the world around them in the books they read.
📖 Where possible, ensure the diverse titles selected / included in your World Book Day list are written by own voice authors. As much own voices are not always entirely representative of everyone within that group, it will for the most part foster better connection with the stories as children will not only see themselves in the books but will also be able to relate to the person behind the words thus giving confidence that the worlds created or described are represented in the most genuine light possible. The most powerful advantage of reading own voice books, has got to be that the stories are often told in a way that shines the light on the nuances and subtle differences within that group which can help dispel the stereotypes, generalisations and harmful single stories we may have become so attached to.
📖 For author visits around World Book Day and beyond, engage authors who represent diverse groups or voices. The phrase “We can’t be what we can’t see” will not be new to most of us. Having a face-to-face or virtual encounter with someone we can relate to in one way or the other, is a powerful way to make the right impact.
📖 Promote the use of World Book Day £1 tokens to buy books with diverse characters or books on anti-racism, diversity and inclusion. Being an Ally: Real Talk About Showing Up, Screwing Up, and Trying Again by Shakirah Bourne & Dana Alison Levy is a fabulous choice.
📖 Educate children on how World Book Day is celebrated around the world.
📖 Encourage children to proudly own their heritage by asking them to dress up as their favourite character from one of their cultural folk tales.
Let’s make it a “WORLD” Book Day as the name suggests.
The Time is Now
Written by Matthew Savage
Former international school Principal, proud father of two transgender adult children, Associate Consultant with LSC Education, and founder of #themonalisaeffect.
I write this as a father, and as an educator. I am angry, and I am scared.
Occasionally, partly as an experiment, I will share simultaneously on Facebook a) an innocuous post with a smiling photo of me; and b) a ‘call to action’ in support of my two trans children in an alarmingly transphobic world. The former consistently attracts lots of engagement, and the latter virtually none. My inference, corroborated by conversations I have had, is that a majority of people do not want even to enter what they see as a polarised and toxic debate.
This seems to me to be a victory for transphobia, and the ‘gender-critical’ right wing: that it is now widely accepted that we need to debate this at all, when any debate over the human rights of any other protected characteristic would be widely deemed abhorrent. Therefore, whilst some would argue that now is the time for calm debate, and for pause and reflection, this post is none of these. For I would argue that there is also a time for advocacy and allyship, and for activism and action. And the time is now.
I was young enough to experience the acidic effect of Section 28 as a teenager. Growing up in the 1980s, I was oblivious of the identities and expressions of the LGBTQ+ community: in part, this was due to a cowardly and shameful lack of representation in the media, sport and public life, and, in part, to the ignorance and fear of the blinkered society which tried to bring me up; but it was also due to the inability and incapacity of educators even to talk about those lives, even as so many of those same lives were being decimated by a new, deadly virus.
This violent clause was repealed in Scotland in 2000 (it seems the nation I now call home was ever ahead of its southern neighbours), as one of the earliest pieces of legislation enacted by the nascent Scottish parliament and, eventually, by Westminster in 2003. Peace had defeated violence, and love had vanquished hate. However, violence and hate, it seems, had not been beaten, but had merely lurked, waiting for their renaissance; and a new Section 28 lies on the horizon.
At the time of writing this, just over 205,000 people have signed a parliamentary petition calling for the government to “Remove LGBT content from the Relationships Education curriculum”, and this is now awaiting a date for parliamentary debate. Meanwhile, just over only 92,000 people have signed a counter-petition calling for that same government not to do so, and the government is only obliged to ‘respond’.
That is 120% more hatred than love, and 120% more violence than peace.
There is no debate, when it comes to deciding who has human rights and who does not. There is no calm when some of the most oppressed, attacked and marginalised children, young people and adults in our society are under attack. There is no reflection, when the facts and the statistics instantly destroy the hatred, on the too few occasions they are shared. And there is no pause, when children’s and young people’s very lives are in danger.
I write this as a father, and as an educator. I am angry, and I am scared.
Please give your voice to peace and love, both through this petition, and through literally any other means possible.
The time is now.
“Andrew Tate is a father figure to me” - lessons learned from talking to young people in schools
Written by Bold Voices
Bold Voices is an award-winning social enterprise preparing and empowering school communities to recognise and tackle gender inequality and gender-based violence through the delivery of educational talks, workshops, training and resources for young people, teachers and parents.
On January 3rd, the Bold Voices team arrived for our first staff training of the year. We love delivering staff training in schools, and we were excited to be back, if slightly unprepared for the early start and January rain. The session ran smoothly and the staff were engaged and passionate, all seemed as usual until we asked if there were any questions. Dozens of anxious hands shot up and they all had the same question – “what can we do about Andrew Tate?”
It wasn’t a surprise to any of the team, especially after the most recent news over the Christmas break, but the number of times his name has come up in schools in January has been unprecedented.
Back in July 2022 we began to hear students talk about Tate, and in order to get ahead of what we could see was a growing issue, Bold Voices released our Parent and Staff Toolkits to equip adults with the skills and confidence to have conversations about the ‘King of Toxic Masculinity’ with the young people in their lives. As the education sector catches up with the fact that this popular figure is not going anywhere anytime soon, we have seen a whole range of approaches to dealing with his popularity amongst teenage boys.
One strategy which we’ve seen is the blanket ban – sanctions for anyone who says his name in school. Another approach is whole school assemblies to speak about the harms of his content and messages. The young people we’ve spoken to don’t feel this works; they either say they feel silenced, or that the school is making too much of it. It is completely understandable that this is how many schools are responding. We certainly don’t have all the answers at Bold Voices, and we are always keen to hear back from other educators and parents who have found effective ways to address this issue (please let us know!) but for now we are encouraging schools to focus on one method that we know can have an impact: starting a conversation.
However, the reality is, these conversations are not easy. Here is a snippet of how they normally go:
“Miss, can I ask you a question? What’s your opinion of Andrew Tate?”
“Well, I’m much more interested in your opinion – what do you think of him?”
“He’s a top G miss. He teaches men how to be men. He makes money. He gets females. He’s a fighter. He is a traditionalist. He has four Bugattis. Those trafficking charges are lies. Those things he says? Taken out of context. Miss, it’s the Matrix. He’s a father figure to me.”
These conversations don’t always feel possible, or respectful, because these young people have internalised the message that anyone arguing against Tate is an idiot, hasn’t woken up to the truth, or they’re simply wrong. This makes it much harder to do our jobs – but we have seen success. In a school which had banned any mention of his name amongst pupils, when we opened up a conversation in a classroom, the feedback we received afterwards was: “I thought Andrew Tate was good but I realised what he does and all the hate against women.”
So what can we do to make more of those conversations successful? How can we move from fear of even starting a conversation, and those that go nowhere, to helping young people to choose for themselves if they want to continue to support Tate and his harmful messages?
Our response is three things (and they’re not easy):
STEP 1: TALK ABOUT HIM – BUT DON’T CONDEMN HIM
This can feel extremely difficult when the messages Tate puts forward are so explicitly dangerous and incite violence, but the more we condemn his words, the more we play into a right or wrong binary that pushes defensive teenagers even further away. Narratives around the Matrix incorporate the idea that there is a “great lie” going on, and figures like Tate (and Trump and other populists who brand themselves as anti-establishment) use this condemnation to push the idea: “that’s what they want you to think”. Break out of this binary by opening a dialogue and empowering young people to see all sides and opinions and to have the autonomy to make their own decisions about who they follow and believe. The aim should not be to have our children believe everything we believe because it’s scary when they don’t; we want to raise a generation of critical thinkers who can form their own opinions.
STEP 2 – MAKE ANDREW TATE UNCOOL AGAIN
This ties into avoiding condemnation – when we stand up and tell young people he is dangerous we give him notoriety and power. Andrew Tate has branded himself as the antidote to cancel culture, so his popularity is not tied to his morality. Not only that, his messaging around gender roles mean that he can discredit those who speak out against him with misogynistic myths – case in point, I asked a student if he would stop liking him if Tate was convicted for the trafficking charges and he said “well, the women are probably just lying for money and attention.”
Attempts to laugh at Andrew Tate have been more successful in damaging his reputation than pointing out how dangerous he is. The closest to this that I’ve seen is this twitch streamer’s video and Greta Thunberg’s infamous tweet. What I don’t like about these tactics is that they use old tropes of emasculation to put a pin in his puffed up performance of masculinity. Relying on his tools to tear him down won’t create meaningful change in the long run (we’ll just see a newer version of him spring up to his place).
STEP 3 – ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
This brings us to the most important point – we need to change what questions we’re asking about Andrew Tate – instead of asking “what can we do about him?” we need to ask “what is it about him?” And “what is it about this current climate that allows his version of masculinity to thrive?”
His brand of masculinity is what draws people towards him: words like traditional, realist, role model for how to be a man. To most adults he looks like a cartoon of all the most ridiculous tropes of toxic masculinity; the cars, the money, the ideas about mental health. The alleged trafficking of women, the misogyny. So when we’ve looked at why he’s so popular the next question needs to be, what is the context and climate that means he is appealing?
When having these conversations I like to zoom right in, then all the way out. Instead of arguing his actual points with evidence or debating his intentions, I ask questions about what he represents, then look at the bigger picture, and ask why is that appealing right now?
The context in which boys are gravitating towards Andrew Tate is one in which they feel victimised and powerless. As an educator in the gender-based violence sector this can feel frustrating. But ignoring it and saying, “suck it up”, men have had power since the beginning of time, is not helping anyone.
Conversations around violence against women have completely transformed since I was at school less than 10 years ago. In a way that we can see paralleled with the movement for racial justice, conversations around gender-based violence have been radically shifted by events of the past decade: The #MeToo movement, Everyone’s Invited, Ofsted investigations, Sarah Everard’s death and many more. It’s confusing for young people.
Girls, trans and non-binary pupils have more awareness and knowledge than ever (thank you TikTok) about the ways in which they are victimised within a culture of gender-based violence. And they still suffer many different forms of this. But boys feel under siege too. They feel more under threat of being falsely accused than ever. Andrew Tate offers them a different narrative from the one in which they feel they’ve been cast as the baddies. There are no alternative models of masculinity on offer. We go into schools and tell young people that what Andrew Tate puts forward is an unrealistic stereotype of masculinity that ultimately harms everyone. Sometimes they see that, but when we exist in a system that punishes those who don’t fit a stereotype, we construct a reality where it is preferable to be an Andrew Tate rather than a man who can express his emotions and show weakness and vulnerability.
The quote at the beginning says it all. “Andrew Tate is a father figure”. This is how teenage boys feel when there aren’t any other role models for masculinity that seem valuable in today’s world.
The options are; see the problem with masculinity and try your best to not embody it, or go sit with Andrew, the realist, who can show you how to stop apologising for being a man in a world where stereotypes are just ‘the way things are supposed to be’.
As educators on this subject we can tell you that having these conversations on the ground is hard work. It’s a painful slog that feels unrelenting and sometimes futile. Watching boys copy his physical stance, treat me with suspicion, shout down my logic and questions and cling to their idolisation of him makes me realise something; they are clinging tightly because he makes them feel safe and understood. And taking that away is difficult and can feel cruel when we aren’t offering good enough alternatives. If it was anybody but Tate, I would never question a vulnerable year 9 boy’s father figure and role model. I’m so glad he has that. I wish it wasn’t one who would teach him that depression isn’t real, that he should value women as possessions, and that his worth is measured in what he can win, and how dominating he can be. I want to give him a hug.
LET’S COME BACK NOW TO OUR THREE SOLUTIONS.
1- Talk about him, don’t condemn him. At Bold Voices we will keep going into schools and having these conversations. And if you have young people in your life please use our toolkits to start having these conversations too. This part is the intervention and it’s more necessary than ever. The aim is not to condemn and create a right or wrong, it’s to open a dialogue where there is more than one narrative to choose from.
2- Make Tate uncool – but not him specifically and not through emasculation. Instead through promoting other role models of masculinity who seem more appealing than Tate. We look to people like Marcus Rashford, Stormzy, and Steph Curry (get in touch if you have others you promote!)
3- Look at the conditions that make Tate popular. Ask questions and don’t stop asking.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
- Toolkit: How to Talk to Young People About Andrew Tate – Bold Voices
- Article: (7 minute read) How to respond to boys inspired by Andrew Tate Mark Roberts – TES
- Article: (5 minute read) Andrew Tate: How schools are tackling his influence Alice Evans – BBC
- Article: (6 minute read) What is going on with this Andrew Tate hand gesture? Sophia Smith Galer – Vice
HOW CAN WE HELP?
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Decolonising educational spaces: Lunar New Year 2023 reflections
Written by Isabelle Pan
Isabelle Pan is a secondary teacher. She is of Chinese heritage, grew up in France and England, and has studied in Scotland and California. She is from besea.n, Britain’s East and South East Asian Network, and is also working for MA Consultancy. Her interests are in equity in education, promoting books by authors of marginalised backgrounds to young people, and dance. She can be found at @readingwith.misspan (Instagram), and @mspanlanguages (Twitter)
For 3 of the 5 East and South East Asian Lunar New Year festivals, New Year’s Day was on Sunday 22 January this year (Spring Festival, Seollal and Tet), with some countries celebrating for 2 weeks until the Lantern Festival. To bring awareness to the festivals, besea.n (Britain’s East and South East Asian Network) published some Lunar New Year school resources which are culturally sensitive and accurate, and include lesson plans, assemblies, reading lists and form time resources to schools.
In my own school, I presented 3 assemblies, to Years 7, 8 and 9. These were my 1st assemblies ever in my teaching career. Needless to say, I was terrified in the leadup to them.
I had thought about doing assemblies on East and South East Asian (ESEA) cultures before, but though I may be a teacher who presents to 28 students a lesson 5 times a day, and a dancer who has often got up on stage in front of hundreds, speaking to a room of 300 young people for ten minutes was a little too daunting. I avoided materialising this idea, for fear of students being disengaged, or worse, racist.
Naturally, I was hugely nervous on the day. But what surprised me was how, as soon as I spoke into the mic, my nerves faded away. Being able to stand in front of an accumulated total of 900 students, to share with them the traditions of the 5 LNY festivals as well as my own family’s celebrations, and to see students engaging with the topic – this has been such a joy.
The assembly talked through the similarities between the 5 festivals as well as the unique traditions of each festival. Lunar New Year festivals in East and South East Asia mainly come under the following five types:
- Spring Festival – China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei, Macau
- Tết (Tết Nguyên Đán) – Vietnam
- Seollal – South Korea, North Korea
- Losar – Tibet
- Tsagaan Sar – Mongolia
In the assembly I also spoke about the growing tendency for the festivals to be more inclusively referred to as Lunar New Year (rather than just Chinese New Year) as an umbrella name for the five festivals, and to reflect just how many communities celebrate the festival. In addition, I featured photos and videos of my family celebrating in London but also my uncles, aunts, and cousins celebrating in China. There are many misconceptions about LNY and so the goal of my assembly was to give a fuller, clearer, and more sensitive view of the five festivals.
I was touched by the positive reception these assemblies had. Afterwards, students and staff congratulated me on the assembly, told me what they learnt, asked me more questions about LNY, and students I didn’t know greeted me and wished me a happy Lunar New Year in the corridor. One colleague told me ‘thank you for your assembly, it was really informative. I have a Korean guest staying with me and now I know to wish her a happy new year this Sunday’. Children told me ‘Miss now I know we should call it Lunar New Year and not Chinese New Year’.
I staunchly believe in decolonising our education systems, and the way the students (and staff) responded to this assembly is just another piece of evidence that such a change is desired and needed by our students. Young people want to learn more about a variety of cultures – it interests them, it enriches their minds, challenges them to think critically, and builds connection and empathy.
For the students and staff I presented to, this was only 1 assembly. It will not completely overhaul their belief systems. Even on the day I wrote this post, 2 students made ignorant comments with regards to East and South East Asian cultures, in front of me.
The effect such comments have on you does not disappear, but as a teacher you learn to take things less personally. It is still disheartening to hear such comments, but it reflects more on the other person than on you. And it also highlights the fact that education about ESEA cultures and communities is just so dire in this country. The education about ESEA communities in our system needs to exist – I cannot even say it needs to improve, as something needs to exist before it can be improved – in order to challenge anti-ESEA attitudes.
Though schools may occasionally speak on racism in PSHE and assemblies, the nuance is not yet there in many schools. Even when discussing anti-Black racism, I have seen resources that contain traumatic images or videos, triggering Black students who may be in the room. And painfully for me as an ESEA educator, I’ve noticed that issues facing ESEAs are often missing from resources about racism.
I wouldn’t say it’s the duty of ESEA people to speak up, as there shouldn’t be that kind of burden, but I also think change will be so much more powerful with ESEA communities believing we can take up space and speak up for ourselves in schools.
Equally, non-ESEA colleagues are also crucial. A colleague in the Y8 team, who is not ESEA, is the one who had convinced me to do the Y8 assembly, then convinced me to do the Y9 one, and then I thought, ‘I might as well do the Y7 one too’. I’m grateful for her encouragement and her belief that this was an important topic.
Throughout my career, students have always asked me “Miss, where are you from?” I never told them as I didn’t know what they would do with that information, and this fear heightened with every racist experience I had in school. But with these assemblies, I finally very publicly shared stories from my Chinese heritage and family. I was proud of my Chinese heritage.
My nerves which come with talking about ESEA cultures or even showing photos of ESEA faces will not simply fade away with delivering one assembly, because young people (and adults) will continue to make ignorant comments. But I feel increasingly better-equipped, motivated, and empowered to help young people overcome prejudices towards ESEA communities, and hope that there can be a movement to decolonise our education system, so that future ESEA educators and students can be publicly proud when talking about their ESEA heritages.
What are the key educational challenges faced in the classroom by teachers in working-class schools and how much time and space do you have to address them?
Written by Darren Crosdale
English and Media Studies-trained teacher, currently working in a large Liverpool comprehensive
I could list the oh-so-obvious issues faced by teachers in working-class schools but if you’re reading this, it’s likely you have already read similar compilations on a blog or a Twitter thread. So, I decided to do things a little differently.
In over twenty years of teaching, I have had students disclose a wide variety of issues. That they are trans. That their parents are separating. That they had unprotected sex with a neighbour’s lad while their mothers were downstairs chatting. That they were smuggled into the country in the back of a lorry and almost froze to death. The list goes on.
I have never, however, had a student tell me they are poor. That they are hungry. Or that the weight of poverty on their young shoulders was unbearable. Never. And I know from colleagues up and down the country, this situation is replicated.
Occasionally, students ask me to pay for their lunch (and I know I am not the only teacher, sadly.) Every now and again a student will say ‘Those apples look nice sir,’ pointing at the apples on my shelf. (I am known for having a Pink Lady at break time. I will always hand one over.) Never, however, has a student divulged that they are ‘poor’ or ‘struggling’ or ‘disadvantaged’ as our teacher parlance states. There is an immense shame attached to poverty in our society. A shame that is rarely spoken about or directly confronted by staff and students alike.
One of my favourite lessons asks students to think about how much the government thinks their education is worth: not some flimsy philosophical description but raw numbers, please. We start off by discussing the world-famous private school, Eton College. Its fees are approximately £46,000 per year. When students begin to brainstorm how much your average secondary comprehensive receives from the government for each child, you can see lights twinkling in eyes. I sit back and listen carefully.
“I reckon the school gets £50 for us,” a girl said recently.
“Per year?” I reply.
“That can’t be right,” retorts a lad. He’s good at Maths.
“Actually,” another student asks, “Do the teachers’ wages and the leccie bill and glue sticks come out of that money too?” She’s better at Maths.
“Yup,” I reply.
“So, it has to be more than £50!” another student snorts.
And so, the discussion continues. This is one of those lessons all teachers enjoy: the students are teaching each other; they are thinking, critically, about our society; it’s one of those lessons where they question the way in which inequality works. Invariably, the students’ suggestions about how much their education is worth moves up from £50 but they can never settle on a figure. Whatever total they hover around, however, it is far, far away from £46,000.
Because these regular comprehensive students simply feel they are worth less than those who attend Eton.
Because they know Eton and their comp are both schools but that one is so very different from the other.
Twenty of the fifty-seven prime ministers the UK has had, went to Eton, including Boris Johnson. Our illustrious former prime minister is in the news as I write this. He earned £1m in just six weeks for after-dinner speeches. It also turns out he is living, rent free, in a phenomenal London town house as well. (https://www.gbnews.uk/news/boris-johnson-living-for-free-in-20m-home-in-britains-poshest-street-despite-earning-1m-in-six-weeks/422207) Because of course he is.
Parents will tell you that one of the fascinating aspects of raising young people is around their acquisition of language. My young people do not yet have the power to say “the myth of meritocracy makes our lives more difficult”. (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/01/the-myth-of-meritocracy-according-to-michael-sandel/) But they can damned well draw a link between Boris Johnson attending Eton, becoming Mayor of London, failing upwards to prime minister, getting caught bending the truth, time and time again, stepping down, only to earn more in six weeks than they ever will in their lifetimes.
I haven’t even mentioned the pandemic yet. Ask any teacher and they will tell you there is a clear demarcation between Before and After two years of lockdowns. Things may have been tough Before but After is a whole other thing. Lockdowns were damned difficult if you were in a comfortable house, worked from home, took regular exercise and did not lose anyone to the awful disease. For those who were already struggling, however, lockdowns were perhaps a last straw. All inequalities were magnified – health, finances, education. A friend who teaches in London told me he insisted during a lockdown lesson, that everyone in his A-Level Biology class turned their cameras on. He was desperate to boost morale and add that human touch so very missed during those dry, dry lessons. A student reluctantly, finally turned on her camera, only to reveal a tiny bedroom with six other siblings wearing headphones, trying to focus on their own online lessons. “That’s OK everyone,” he said, heartbroken after a few seconds of realisation, “You can turn them off if you want.” She immediately clicked that small camera icon off.
The worst of it is that, although our new normal is acknowledged – poor mental health, widespread substance abuse, clear mobile phone addiction – these issues have simply been tacked onto the other issues the most vulnerable in our society have been fighting with for decades.
So, no, I didn’t discuss list the typical list of problems working class school face – recruitment and retention, teachers’ pay, non-sticky glue sticks and a Michael Gove-created exam system that is clearly linked to British children ranking as some of the most unhappy in the Western world … but all of that is in attendance too.
“New year, new me!”
Written by Andrew McGeehan
Andrew (he/him) is a trainer/consultant based in Singapore that loves talking about anything DEIJ related and/or cats!
A phrase that all of us hear a lot every year right around this time. I know I have said it (and non-ironically!). This year, I’m asking myself (and all of you reading this) – what will actually be new? What am I planning to do differently this year? How am I planning to spend my time, energy, resources, and money? How will I commit to uplifting others, pushing for justice & equity in the world, and naming hurtful behaviour in my community?
And in the end, will the new me take the time to reflect, look inward, and identify the ways in which I also contribute to marginalisation and oppression?
Every time a new year comes, regardless of the calendar that we use to mark it, it is a time for renewal. There is that surge of energy that comes with seeing the whole next year laid out before us and the possibilities fly through our minds. We imagine who we might become, who we might meet, what new opportunities we will have, and a whole new life can flash before our eyes. But before we know it, we are back to work, back in our lives, back to the same old routines we always had, and within a month, we are left wistfully wondering where that excitement for the new year went.
I will challenge you today to not let that happen!
I challenge you to make empathetic, inclusive, and justice-oriented commitments to yourself and others and to follow through on them.
I challenge you to question yourself constantly.
I challenge you to have conversations you’ve never had before that are difficult and nuanced.
I challenge myself too.
I am a queer white cisgender able-bodied man doing diversity, inclusion, and equity work in Asia. There is a lot for me to continuously unpack about my cultural background, my perceptions of reality, my understandings of privilege and power. I am constantly learning and interrogating what it means to be a white person and a cisgender man and talking about these issues. I’m clarifying for myself where and what my role should be.
If you are interested in solidarity work, allyship, advancing racial & gender & orientation & disability & religious (& more!) equity, and seeing the world take more rapid steps towards equity and justice, I’ll invite you to make these commitments along with me.
1.Do the internal work – When we want to work towards justice and equity, our interest and passion for the topics aren’t enough. There is a lot that we need to accept about ourselves, socialisations to try and unlearn, and reflection to be had. I often work with folks who prefer to skip this step – in trainings, someone might say “Can you just tell me what we should be doing to make our organisation more inclusive?” And yes, I could do that. But without any understanding of our own internal worlds, we won’t be effective advocates for justice.
What do I mean by this? Spend time uncovering your own biases, accept that we are all brought up to believe negative stereotypes about people who are different than us, analyse your social circles, identify who you gravitate towards to at work and who you avoid and why. We don’t need to be perfect people in order to engage in justice & equity work, but we do need to be aware of what we are walking into the space with.
2. PLEASE move beyond awareness – Awareness is over. There is so much information out there via mass media, pop culture, research, memoirs, peoples’ lived experiences, surveys, etc etc etc! Awareness isn’t a bad thing; but for many people and organisations, it’s the only thing. Awareness without action doesn’t change anything. Having a work event to celebrate International Women’s Day and share information on the wage gap is fine – but it ultimately rings hollow if there isn’t follow up within the organisation to actually reduce/eliminate it within the organisation.
3. Name harm with your friends, family, & colleagues – It’s time to start doing the hard work and talking about these issues with the people closest to us (or at least those we spend a lot of time with). Especially for those of us with a lot of privilege, it’s necessary to name the racism, heterosexism, ableism, sexism and other harms that we see within our families and friends. Naming it and discussing it doesn’t have to be a big conflict, nor does it mean that the person called out is a bad person. We all do things that are hurtful at times, and if we aren’t held accountable for it, we won’t be able to understand and change our behaviour.
It might be easy to start with something simple, like saying “I don’t think comments like that about gay men are appropriate” or “I don’t think jokes about immigrants are funny.” If feeling generous, we may take more time to explain how the actions might harm us or make us feel or provide more resources for them to do their own learning.
4. Commit to making lasting change – Systemic -isms persist because the systems haven’t changed yet. There is tons of value in changing our internal worlds and educating our friends and family. It’s also extremely powerful to work to change systems. In many cases, our capacity to change a system will be in the workplace. We can advocate for policy changes, required trainings, targets for inclusive leadership. These changes can be difficult to make and sometimes run the risk of seeming “boring”, but they create change that lasts beyond our tenure in any organisation. For instance, an organisation celebrating Trans Day of Remembrance and encouraging staff to share their pronouns is great, but does that same organisation have trans-inclusive and affirming healthcare?
If you are part of an Employee Resource Group/Network Group, this is a great space to start considering what institutional changes need to happen in order to create an environment of affirmation and comfort for all. An easy way to start is by reviewing company policies – is the language gender-inclusive? What is the parental leave policy? Are there flexible arrangements? How are neurodiverse staff supported? Does insurance cover mental health?
5. Read & learn about it from those who know (and believe in their knowledge of their own experiences) – There are many amazing activist writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers out there. Learn about them, learn from them, and buy their products! If you are a majority race person and you don’t know about racism in your country/region, there is surely a book about it written by someone who experiences that racism daily- read it with an open mind. If you want to understand better the experience of a person who lives with a disability, find research that talks about the workplace challenges folks face.
And when you read, listen, and watch about these experiences, believe them. Folks with marginalised identities know what they have experienced. Sometimes we want to dismiss what we hear because it makes us uncomfortable or because we know that we have participated in similar hurtful behaviours. Lean into that discomfort and try to identify where it is coming from without being defensive. I know this is hard and I still struggle with this sometimes, but it is so necessary. Just pause and ask yourself “what about this is making me feel this way?”
Some Singapore-based starting points:
- “What We Inherit: Growing Up Indian” – True stories of Indian women’s experiences in Singapore
- “Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship & Mediate Cultures” – Highlights the complexity of queer existence in Singapore
- https://transformativejusticecollective.org/ — Learn more about the work being done to shift justice away from the death penalty and towards transformation
6. Expand your social circles – So much of my own social justice learning has been through relationships I’ve built with people. I was very lucky to go to graduate school with an extremely diverse cohort and build wonderful relationships across race, gender, religion, and more. Our familiarity with issues brings us greater empathy, and many people care more about issues that affect someone they know. Inclusive access in a city may have never mattered to someone, until their partner becomes wheelchair bound and then they will notice all the ways in which cities are not built for folks with physical disabilities or mobility challenges.
As a word of caution, I do not advocate expanding your social circle in a way that is tokenistic (i.e., I should find a gay friend! I don’t have one of those!). But think about ways that you can expand who you interact with, through social media, connections from other friends, or volunteering. Take a look at who you already know- what is the makeup of the people you spend time with? During my trainings, I always ask people to consider who they go to lunch with at work and who they see other people go to lunch with. My personal experience in Singapore is that many foreigners take lunch together and many locals take lunch together. Could there be unconscious bias at play? Could people be more comfortable sticking only with what is familiar? I don’t have an answer, but it is worth investigating what this looks like for us individually and see what patterns we observe.
7. Try, fail, apologise, and try again – Whenever we engage in work related to justice and equity, we will invariably make mistakes. When someone tells you that you have hurt them, or done something that is racist/sexist/homophobic/etc, apologise for causing harm. If possible, have a conversation to make sure that you understand what it is that was hurtful (but don’t force the other person to share this with you). Think about how you can do better next time and maybe reflect on the experience with a trusted friend.
Maybe you want to become more comfortable naming microaggressions at work – you won’t do it right all the time. But you will be able to refine your technique and enhance your comfort level as you practice. As with any skill, we need to practice it to get better at it. Working towards justice and equity are no different. Do your best and approach this work with a lack of ego and the knowledge that you will make mistakes and that is ok.
8. Understand what you have to gain – Greater justice, equity, and inclusion in the world benefits everyone. People with privilege often feel like they are “losing” something, but that is not the case. There is enough equality to go around. Understand that advocating for gender equity creates new opportunities for people of all genders, including men. We are not diminished when others have the same opportunities that we do; but we are diminished when others are held down by systemic oppression.
Along with this, we have to know and understand our own “why.” Why are you doing this work? Why do you care? I often see organisations and individuals who are doing D&I work because it is seen as trendy or required in the contemporary era. This is a surface level connection to the work that won’t go beyond some token improvements or remain mired in awareness-building. Think for yourself about what your personal commitment is and act from there.
I am pledging myself to the above as well. I am continuously interrogating my place as a White American man in Asia talking about diversity, inclusion, equity and justice. I reflect on how privileged I am to be able to be hired by companies to do this work. I mess up in my trainings and apologise to participants when I’ve cause harm. I work to continue finding research and pedagogies that do not have a US-centric lens and are context-specific to Asia & Singapore. I can and will continue to refine and nuance my approach towards this necessary work.
It’s a journey that we are all on. I hope that you will come along with me in 2023 and consider which of the above items might be part of the “new you.”
Why I pretended my dyslexia wasn’t a big deal - my experiences as a dyslexic teacher.
Written by Catrina Lowri
Catrina Lowri is the founder of Neuroteachers and a neurodivergent teacher, trainer, and coach. As well as having 22 years’ experience of working in education, she also speaks as a dyslexic and bipolar woman, who had her own unique journey through the education system.
When I had already been teaching for about 10 years, I met a pair of grandparents at a friend’s barbecue. They had just received some devastating news; their 9-year-old grandson had been diagnosed with dyslexia.
They told me this in hushed voices, as if they were ashamed.
Although, their reaction was not unusual (97% of respondents in one survey viewed dyslexia negatively *), I was taken aback. Did this mean I should be ashamed or devastated about my own neurodivergence?
I did my best to reassure the couple that their grandson would be fine. I told them lots of successful people, like Richard Branson and Tom Cruise are dyslexic. Although he might need extra support, their grandson could get GCSEs and A levels if he wanted. They seemed reassured. Then I told them I was a dyslexic teacher.
Their reaction astounded me even more than the shamed hush had done previously. They were over the moon at my success! The grandfather toasted my talents, and the grandmother gave me a hug. They both treated me like I had just climbed Mount Everest. I couldn’t fathom why.
Until that point, I had never considered my achievements anything special. Yes, I’m a dyslexic teacher who went on to gain a master’s degree but was that out of the ordinary? I knew no other dyslexic teachers, but they must exist. I’ve always disliked it when people say I’ve ‘overcome’ my dyslexia. I haven’t. I’m still as dyslexic as I was the day I was born ( it’s genetic). I’ve just found ways around it. Most of which involve the use of technology.
I used to downplay my attainment in a matter-of-fact fashion. I disliked people who made ‘ a big deal’ of their dyslexia. My dyslexic friend, and I used to joke that we would write a book called ‘So you’re dyslexic? Just live with it!” As if all you had to do was keep calm and carry on.
I have talked before about my experiences at teacher training, where another student commented that he believed dyslexia was a middle class camouflage of a lack of intelligence. That must have stuck because, up until my chance meeting with these grandparents, I had just shrugged off my neurodiversity (ND) and downplayed my success.
After meeting my fellow barbeque guests, however, I changed my attitude. No, it hasn’t been easy to forge my career, firstly as a schoolteacher and now as a private specialist teacher and trainer. Yes, I do find several aspects of the job harder because of my ND. And yes, I am proud of my achievements.
I’m now 23rd years into my career, I’ve met hundreds of colleagues, yet I know very few ND teachers and even fewer dyslexic ones. My next step is to try and find us all support and recognition so that we can be good role models to ND children. And perhaps inspire the next generation of ND educators.
Reference Dr Kate Griggs ‘ The Creative Brilliance of Dyslexia’ https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_griggs_the_creative_brilliance_of_dyslexia