[Intro Music]

00:00:08:11 – 00:01:02:25
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated, in every classroom, in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series one of the Diverse Ed podcast, we have ten episodes. In each episode our co-hosts Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey, and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:21 – 00:01:17:24
Nick
Hello and welcome to the Diverse Ed Podcast. My name is Nick Kitchener-Bentley and I’m a lead practitioner and drama / inclusion teacher at Sarah Bonnell school. I’m also on the steering group for LGBT ed.

00:01:18:05 – 00:01:30:04
Yamina
And I’m Yamina Bibi and I’m an assistant head teacher also at Sarah Bonnell school. I’m also a network lead for Women Ed in London. In this episode, we will be talking to Nicky from the age chapter.

00:01:30:04 – 00:01:56:12
Nicky
I’m Nicky Bright. I’m the former head of an independent school, an independent girl’s boarding school and chair of the Girls’ Schools Association Professional Development Committee. And I’m now a leadership development consultant, facilitator and coach working with schools, games companies, corporates like Rolls-Royce, developing and facilitating leadership programs. And I’m also a menopause awareness advocate.

00:01:56:12 – 00:02:07:01
Yamina
I love that. Thank you so much for that. So, Nick and I were just curious to know what inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto?

00:02:07:01 – 00:06:22:25
Nicky
Well, in my sort of late forties, I stopped sleeping well overnight. I had until then always slept really well. My head hit the pillow at 11:00 after a full day of teaching and so on. And I’d waken at 630 ready to go, maybe not raring and ready to go every morning, but certainly ready to go. But I started waking up at about three or four in the morning with my heart racing, sort of palpitations type stuff. No real reason, you know, usual work, stress, nothing sort of new or different. But I’d put it down to work and so on. And then on one Christmas, after several bouts of antibiotics to shake off this really persistent chest infection, I also then ended up having a trip to A&E with this heart racing one early morning. It was so intense. And I went to see my nurse practitioner and she advised that I saw the GP about the impact of the perimenopause, which was news to me. And my symptoms, she said I could get some support for my lack of sleep. I was quite anxious, quite tearful. You know, several chest infections had done that to me. And she said, you know, I think some support, including HRT, would really help you. And at school, we weren’t really taught about the menopause at all. Certainly not the perimenopause. And we were taught about, you know, how to manage your periods and your cycles and how not to get pregnant and then your periods stop. Hurrah, you know? And I always thought that the menopause affected you in your fifties. A couple of medics had sort of talked about it to me briefly in my forties, but I took no notice really because I’m not in my fifties, you know, and I wish I had because I really would have better supported myself. And so I did actually start to take HRT. It is not for everybody and it doesn’t work for everybody and different things suit everybody. But it meant then that I could also make some lifestyle changes as well, because I had more energy, because I was sleeping and I got rid of the chest infection because the underlying cause was the sleeping, not the chest infection. And you know, I wasn’t self-medicating by eating and so on and drinking. And I was also referred to some CBT for the anxiety, which was really, really helpful. And you know, yes, I was a head at the time and it was really hard, but with the proper support I found my self again and had the energy and mojo back again to do those sort of lifestyle things I should have been doing all along anyway and would have helped anyway. I really thought it was really ridiculous that as somebody who is running a girls’ school and had worked in girls’ education for so much of my working life, not all of it, but lots of it. I hadn’t really heard proper mention of the menopause or the perimenopause and how we can support ourselves properly, and better through that sort of natural phase of our lives. And I wanted the girls to understand what was happening to their mothers, to their aunties, to their grannies, to their teachers as well, so that they could be sympathetic and support. Because I have a little saying, you know, ‘hormones aren’t just the preserve of the teenager,’ and they think they are, don’t they? But they’re not, actually. We’ve got phases of wonky hormones through our lives. And so I really found that I’ve raised awareness for others so that others wouldn’t feel like they were wading through treacle. The way that I felt I had at that time. And so I spoke at the Girls’ Schools Association Heads Conference in 2019 with a little bit of fear and trepidation, I must say, you know, thinking about what people might think, because there’s quite a lot of negativity, I think, around that. And I started to take advantage of opportunities to speak and write about it. And writing for the Women Ed journal and when the opportunities came up to write for the Diverse Ed book and I thought, this is fantastic because, you know, the book will go hopefully into every school in the country. And so that’s why I wanted to be part of it. And that’s what sort of motivated me was the opportunity really which I leapt at.

00:06:23:23 – 00:07:00:26
Nick
And we’re so glad that you did Nicky because it’s an absolutely fascinating chapter, your contribution has been really transformative in terms of my understanding and knowledge of this area. And I think it’s incredibly important that that knowledge is shared, but I would just want to thank you for being so open and really talking about that, because I know that I’ll be very helpful for people. And something that Yamina and I were very interested in was about the entire chapter as well. And I also found it really transformative in terms of my own thinking about age. And I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about some of those different themes that the rest of the chapter team wanted to explore as well?

00:07:01:07 – 00:08:57:10
Nicky
Yeah, absolutely. Well we wanted to look at lots of different aspects of diversity in respect to age because, you know, it’s actually a segment that has the largest number of people who experience problems, you know, in prejudices and so on. I think 26% of people say that they suffer age discrimination in some shape or form. And so there’s a real benefit particularly in education, but in workplaces in general, in having intergenerational working and learning from each other and learning from each other’s experience and so on. So we wanted to talk a bit about this, you know, age, inclusivity and sustainable careers as well, so that people are sustained throughout, throughout their career and valuing that experience and this benefit of age inclusivity, all of us learning from each other and providing those sorts of role models for experience of working through life, because our young people are going to have to work for longer, which is a great thing because it’s exciting. You know, there’s lots of opportunity. You know, they’re going to live for so much longer that actually for them to have a fulfilling enriched part of their working lives is really, really important. So we’re being role models for ourselves as well as for our young people as well. So those are sort of some of the things that we wanted to think about around that, and that links to that raising awareness around the menopause so that, you know, teens better understand their parents, the family, the teachers and so on, and are better prepared for their futures as well. Younger staff understand older staff better, you know, know what’s going on, able to help themselves and so on.

00:08:57:10 – 00:09:11:02
Yamina
Thank you so much. Nick has said it’s really transformed the way in which we’ve both been thinking about age particularly. But we also wanted to ask about some of the key challenges for people with the protected characteristic of age that your team really wants to address.

00:09:11:13 – 00:10:18:26
Nicky
And well, I think to summarise it as something, in my opinion, it’s assumption biases. You know, everybody has a view on what age and ageing means to them. And when you’re younger you can be quite frustrated. And those frustrations can sort of generalise and so the biases are perhaps a bit more emphasised, that there can be a perception that people are tired and old and past it and not receptive to new ideas and so on, perhaps not edgy enough, a bit too cranky and so on. And I think that’s why the mentoring can be so powerful and intergenerational working, because then you can address those, those assumption biases. And I think one challenge is obviously as we get older, there are impacts upon our health. And so there does need to be that sort of support and understanding of those health challenges in order that people can continue to work for that much longer and so on as well. So I think those are the key challenges, assumption biases and really those health challenges, perhaps managing them in a supportive way.

00:10:19:24 – 00:11:43:08
Nick
I love some of the ways that you as a team as well have spoken about the things that can be done, like the mentoring, the intergenerational working and the stuff that can be done. That really is a very powerful chapter and there’s so much there for us to think about. So thank you for all your contributions towards that and we’re interested in everybody’s takeaways and yours were brilliant. So I’m going to read them out and then I wonder if it would just be okay for us, Nicky, to maybe get you to reflect on these takeaways themselves from why that’s important. And so you’ve said that menopausal women are the fastest growing demographic in the workplace and their needs are often ignored or overlooked. As the combination of over forty symptoms is unique to every individual leading many women to leave the profession earlier than they might otherwise, had they been given appropriate support. After decades of stigma and a lack of education or conversation around the menopause, menopausal women themselves often do not realise that symptoms are related to the menopause and that they can be supported. Schools need to go further than they currently do to support menopausal women, raising awareness with students, staff, leaders and governors, enabling empathetic conversations to happen leading to supportive action. It is really, really powerful stuff that you’ve written about there, I would just be interested to hear a little bit more about your ideas on that.

00:11:44:01 – 00:14:44:29
Nicky
Well, the key thing is that there are over 40 symptoms of the perimenopause and the menopause. And if there’s one thing that the listeners take away, it’s that perimenopause can start on average in your forties. And so this isn’t something that we’re putting off until until our fifties. And every woman has a unique combination of symptoms. And whilst 25% of women who go through the menopause, symptoms don’t really affect them terribly much, in a third of women, the symptoms are quite severe. And then there’s everybody else in between for whom some symptoms are quite debilitating, but they’re not so severe that they may well be picked up. So there’s quite a lot of women, I think, who just sort of struggle through when they could get some support. So one key takeaway is, you know, make sure you know what the perimenopause is. Make sure you know what the symptoms are. Make sure that you understand that every woman has a unique combination of those. It isn’t a one size fits all, you know, get the policy off the shelf, sort people out and so on. Actually, there’s a lot women can do to support ourselves, and I’m really passionate about that. One of the reasons that, one of the other key takeaways, I think from this is that actually there’s an economic imperative to this. As far as I’m concerned, around poverty in old age, women live longer and they are poorer in old age. And women’s pension pots in the UK are 55% lower than men’s. And in teaching, women’s pensions are 28% lower than men’s pensions. Now some of that is because they’ve not made as many contributions when they’ve had years out to have children and so on. But some of that is because they finish work earlier or they start working part time sooner because they feel they can’t cope because of the symptoms that they have. And, you know, you quite often hear people saying, oh, it’s all too much. SLT are asking too much and I can’t cope and so on. And sometimes it’s actually not that, it’s sometimes, it’s simply we aren’t in the condition to be resilient enough because we’ve got these other things going on for us. And so I want to help women cope, to thrive and not just to survive and for them to be able to work for longer in a great, you know, resilient state so that they have a really productive work life. And I say that for me that the key takeaway is that if you support yourself well and you are aware of this, you can work for longer and it will impact your family positively in terms of financially as well as you being more positive about work and so on as well. So that’s really important to me actually. You know, financial independence for women and perhaps it’s the being a girls’ schools head, you know, or working in girls’ schools so long, I don’t know. I want to help women to be in a position where they have choice, you know, that’s what it’s about. It’s about them having choice for what they want to do.

00:14:45:07 – 00:15:22:03
Yamina
As two school teachers who also work in a girls’ school, I think that’s really, really important. And especially what you just said really resonated with me and I’m sure with Nick as well. Moving onto your commitment to the manifesto, actually, what you say is you want to raise awareness among students, teachers, leaders and governors of the impact of the menopause upon women in schools and the reasonable adjustments that can be made to create an inclusive environment supporting the retention of menopausal women. Nick and I just wanted to know if you could perhaps expand on that. Tell us more about it and how you want to galvanise actions from the readers as well as the listeners.

00:15:22:03 – 00:17:40:28
Nicky
Yeah, well, I think if you get the perimenopause support right, you will enable a woman to continue to work successfully and contribute this vast experience and wisdom to the profession as well. Plus, as I say, it will support her and her family in old age. So I want to continue to raise awareness. I’m exploring working as an associate with an organisation called Talking Menopause to bring the message more widely than education, but specifically targeting education as well, and help women realise that there is a lot we can do for ourselves if we have the right energy and the mindset to do so and we can get support to help us with that. Sometimes it does take professional help from outside of our friends and family, and there’s no stigma in that. You know, if it helps us and it’ll help the others around us as well. So I want to galvanise action from all our readers and listeners, readers of the book, listeners of the podcast, and to actually just try and understand more about the symptoms of menopause and how they manifest themselves and how people can be supported quite simply, in terms of things like being able to keep your clothes or your sanitary products near the toilet so you don’t have to march through the school with a massive bag, being nearer a toilet. If you are able to move your room during that particular time if you need it. Some women don’t need that, you know. Is there a rest area that’s available for not just menopausal women, but, you know, we make adjustments for parents when they’re new parents, we go, oh, yeah, they must be up all night and so on. Well some women, you know, could just do with a sort of rest moment at lunchtime, whatever, and that would set them up for the rest of day, or perhaps making it easier for people to get to medical appointments as well so that they can get that right support. How difficult is it to get a fan off your boss or your business manager?

00:17:42:07 – 00:18:54:11
Yamina
How easy is it for you to have wellbeing items already in the loo that people can use and which will benefit not just menopausal women but other women as well. Other people. And so, you know, it all relates back to understanding and education, I think, in order that people then can have the right sort of support for them and can talk about, you know, I don’t want menopause to be, that’s something that people sort of go, you know, and when you mention it, that people sort of say, oh, she’s talking about menopause again. I want it to be something that’s just you know, everybody talks about it and and they so that women feel that they will talk to their employer about what they need because it’s something like 70% of women won’t talk to their employer about their symptoms because there’s that stigma taboo and so on around it. So that’s what I want to galvanise action from people that, you know, menopause is just talked about among students and staff and it’s not the sort of, you know, oh, she’s on about it again.

00:18:56:04 – 00:19:54:19
Nick
But you, I think you are galvanising people and certainly raising awareness. You know, and I’ve had a lot of conversations about this and I know that we we’ve taken that to other teams and we’ve discussed it further. And I mean, no doubt that these conversations will be going on and education settings up and down the country. So thank you so much for it. It’s incredibly important. And I love the kind of some of the what I would argue in some cases, incredibly simple solutions that you’ve just provided that can really help people and talking about the individual flexible things that can be done so that’s really helpful. Thank you. And one thing that I really noticed in your chapter was that you made a point that I think is really vital about how important the menopause is to everyone. And you said for every line manager and indeed every person in our school communities, I think it’s really important. And I was just interested, if you could maybe tell us a little bit more about the kinds of things that every single person working in a school can do to better support people affected by the menopause?

00:19:54:19 – 00:20:58:10
Nicky
Well, first of all, I think by making it easy to talk about, as I said, you know, that no one cringes or shrinks or bats an eyelid when people are talking about about it so that they can be supported, that would make it more accessible for people to actually talk about what they need and also to make sure that they realise that there are these forty symptoms or more. That can be a unique combination, the unique cocktail for each woman so that there’s a real understanding that it’s unique and that, you know, what works for one may not work for another. So those are sort of, it goes back to those key things that are really in terms that, I just had a menopausal brain fog moment there Nick, could you repeat the question for me, please, just so that I can just make sure not to miss out any details.

00:20:58:14 – 00:21:10:13
Nick
Would love to. You’re doing a great job of answering anyway, but I’m just really interested about what you think that every single person needs to do in school communities to better support people affected by the menopause.

00:21:10:23 – 00:22:08:10
Nicky
Yeah, it’s basically that, as I’ve already said the talking about it, making it commonplace to talk about and making sure that people are aware of the sorts of things that could be available to them if they needed them. And most women, you know, most women, they don’t want to work part time and they don’t want to necessarily do flexible working. They just want to sort of cope and work well with the symptoms that they’ve got there and continue to do a good job. So it’s, you know, whilst for one person, it might be appropriate to say, you know, okay, you can come in later because I know you’re having a particular problem with your sleep at the moment. For others, it might be okay. You know, we can let you go at three so that you can go home and, you know, rest there. Or it might just be let’s put a rest area in for everybody, you know, that people can can use. So make it commonplace to talk about is really key.

00:22:08:10 – 00:22:56:06
Yamina
And, you know, talking about commonplace, as Nick and I have said, you know, we’ve really started to talk about it in our school. I know lots of my female colleagues have come up to me, actually, and said, oh, this chapter in the book, Nicky, your chapter, you know, it’s really interesting. Oh, my god, yes, this is exactly what’s happening to me. And now I’ve finally got a space to talk about it. And I’ve never in my career, and I’ve not been teaching for very long, but in 13 years never have I ever had anyone talk to me about menopause before. So that’s really important. Change is already happening within our our own organisation and I’m sure in many others, too. But I was curious about what we want to think about is how would we go about perhaps introducing the concept of the menopause and understanding the menopause to our young people? And why do you think it is important that they are taught about it too?

00:22:57:01 – 00:24:55:25
Nicky
Well, what I did was I gave an assembly on it and talked about the menopause and talked about the impact that it had on me and what it might have on them without being too personal, you know, with what it might be having on their parents and their teachers and so on around them. And one of the girls was overheard coming out of the assembly. She was overheard by her tutor saying to her friend, ‘Oh, that’s what’s up with my mum,’ you know? And I think if we can, you know, it’s so the simple things like, you know, in assembly or just talking about in tutor time, you know, I think it is one of those things that does need to be revisited because in the RSE curriculum, it is now mandatory part of the RSE curriculum, which is fantastic, but it is a one word mention on a page. You know, there’s hundreds of pages, so it is in danger of being crowded out by other very, very important things as well. You know, there’s been a lot of talk about consent and so on. And, you know, there are a lot of very important parts to the RSE curriculum. But I just want to make sure that menopause doesn’t get crowded out of it because it isn’t just a sort of one lesson thing that you can do, because what if you’re away for that lesson, you know, and it’s just as important for all our young people, because all young people have got, you know, mothers, aunties, grannies, whatever. So they all need to know, you know, wives, partners, whatever, you know, in the future as well. So I don’t think it’s something that’s just for girls either. It’s it’s important to them all. But simple things like talking about it in tutor time, talking about it in assembly, as well as that normal RSE spiral curriculum where it’s revisited a number of times, I think will really help young people, for it to become common parlance, really.

00:24:56:29 – 00:25:29:03
Nick
Thanks, Nicky. I think it’s really helpful to talk about that. And I’ve found it really interesting to consider how we might be able to have more conversations with young people about how people in their lives might be affected by the menopause. So thank you very much for that it is really interesting. And Yamina and I also wanted to broaden our discussion out a little bit in terms of the changes that we would like to see happen. And this is more to do with the protected characteristic of age. So in an ideal world, what kind of changes would you like to see within the school system regarding that protected characteristic of age?

00:25:30:10 – 00:27:30:24
Nicky
Well, I think a real appreciation of experience that people have and also an understanding that because somebody might have some health challenges that they have in their older age, I’m not just talking about menopause, I’m talking more generally because, you know, the older you get, the more your bones are worn. And, you know, all of that sort of stuff and you’re more likely to have health conditions and so on and develop and so developing an understanding that supporting those conditions isn’t a burden, that actually you can still get a lot of experience and wisdom from those people and that actually you get a more productive environment when you’ve got people working from different generations, there’s a real benefit to the workplace. And so helping young people realise that as well and trying to make sure that the work place is as diverse in terms of its age as is possible really, because it goes back to the fact that, you know, I don’t want people to bat an eyelid when they’re talking to older people about the issues that they are facing and for them to benefit from the experience that there is and to see that you can have a fulfilling, productive later life in the workplace as well, so that they’re going to be encouraged to want to continue to develop themselves. It’s that lifelong learning, isn’t it, engendering that love of lifelong learning with them, because that’s what work is is about. It’s not about work and grind. It’s about learning and developing yourself and fulfilling yourself. So yeah, I think engendering that is really important.

00:27:30:24 – 00:27:45:23
Yamina
I love that, not work and grind, it’s about learning and development, which is so true and then just to broaden out even more. I mean, you kind of touched upon this, but what changes would you like to see happen in wider society regarding the protected characteristic of age?

00:27:46:02 – 00:28:53:16
Nicky
Yeah, it’s interesting because there’s been, you know, touch upon menopause. You know, there’s been a bit of a backlash from the Davina documentaries, you know, in terms of people sort of saying, well, you know, but I don’t understand why we need to be so polarised for and against things. And so it is same with age in general. Why can’t we seek to understand each other rather than have to be in this position or that position and so on, so that we can argue well together and understand each other, rather than sort of having opposing views about things. So yeah, I want people to just really be curious about each other and understand each other and seek to understand for a better life really, you know, that would be great in society. I don’t listen to the news anymore. You know, I dip in and out, so I know what’s going on. So I’m not completely devoid of everything. But, you know, I want a less toxic environment in which to live, you know, in society and I’m going to be part of that.

00:28:54:09 – 00:29:35:04
Nick
And you have been. It’s been so good to hear from you today. I mean, you were talking about seeking to understand each other. And I just know that what you’ve written and what your team has written has done that. I find myself now, after having read the chapter, catching myself in terms of the language that I use and I really am trying to kind of improve the way that I think about and talk about age, because I now realise that some of the things I may have said before haven’t been what I should have said. And I certainly found it very interesting. So I’m really, really grateful to you and your whole team for everything that you’ve done for it. And thank you very much. And yeah, this morning we’ve loved speaking to you and I’ll pass on to Yamina to wrap up for us.

00:29:35:15 – 00:29:43:29
Yamina
Thank you so much, Nicky. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

00:29:43:29 – 00:30:00:13
Hannah
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Ed podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think, so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.

[Intro Music]

00:00:08:11 – 00:01:02:25
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated, in every classroom, in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series one of the Diverse Ed podcast we have ten episodes. In each episode our co-hosts Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey, and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:18 – 00:01:17:07
Nick
Hello and welcome to The Diverse Ed Podcast. My name is Nick Kitchener-Bentley and I’m a lead practitioner and drama / inclusion teacher at Sarah Bonnell School. I’m also on the steering group for LGBT ed.

00:01:17:27 – 00:01:27:28
Yamina
And I’m Yamina Bibi. I’m an assistant head teacher, also at Sarah Bonnell school. I’m also a network leader for Women Ed in London. In this episode, we’ll be talking to Diana from the sex chapter.

00:01:29:10 – 00:01:42:04
Nick
Okay. So thanks for joining us, Diana. It’s really great to have you here. One of the things we like to do, just at the start is to get people joining us to introduce themselves to the audience in one sentence. So do you think you’ll be able to do that for us? Please?

00:01:42:13 – 00:01:51:27
Diana
In one sentence, I am Diana Osagie. I am a courageous leader, and I spend my time creating courageous leaders.

00:01:52:22 – 00:02:01:17
Yamina
I love that because I am one of those, so thank you, Diana. And what inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto?

00:02:01:24 – 00:06:21:07
Diana
It’s one of those things where you say the sex chapter, I didn’t write about sex. Okay? So let’s just, let’s clarify before people and my mother hears this and gets the wrong idea, and says ‘Diana what have you been doing with your life?’ Okay. I wanted to write about females and women in leadership, because I also run the Academy of Women’s Leadership and there is a gap that has to be addressed and that gap is the gap between the competence that a woman has for leadership. Her CV says she has a M.A. She has an NPQH. She has accounting qualifications and she has HR qualifications. She has 20-years’ experience in the sector. So her CV says competence. But her heart often says lack of confidence. So she will look at her CV and say, That is me, but when a job comes along and she wants to apply, she will wait until she fits 99.8% of the person spec and then not apply because it wasn’t 100% because the confidence doesn’t match the competence. There’s a gap between those two things and so, on the Academy and for the book, I wanted to explain why that gap exists and what we should do as society, as leaders, as educational people and those who are in the profession to close that gap. Because if we don’t, then we are losing strategic advantage and nobody, nobody says, I want my organisation to have the least amount of advantage as possible. No one says that. So when you don’t positively, explicitly and intentionally nurture, develop, pursue talent in all its forms, be it from the global majority community, from the LGBTQ community, from the women committee, wherever it is found, if you don’t explicitly pursue it, then you are losing advantage, head over fist in your organisation. And what happens is, where women find this organisation realises the advances that I bring, I will go there. You will find expertise just walking out of your door. You will have your exit interviews in which they may say something, but more likely they’ll be polite and say, oh no, it was a pleasure working for you, but it’s time for me to move to pastures new. She may not even have the vocabulary to express what it is that made me leave. She won’t actually realise what it is that made me leave. But she knew that I had to seek somewhere else that would nurture the greatness in me. And so when we on the Academy, we teach about women closing that gap. And in the chapter that I wrote, I wanted organisations who will read it to understand the gap is there, the gap is real, but the gap is easily closed. But you have to be intentional. And if you’re not intentional, if you are blasé or you add a bit on to your programs or you do something about Women’s Day, we have International Women’s Day, all get the flags out and we all wear something that represents that and then that we got back to normal. She puts air quotes up. Then your organisation is at a disadvantage. It truly is. So you must pursue leadership in all its forms around your leadership tables. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to exclude a group of people from the leadership table. That actually doesn’t make business sense, let alone moral sense. So if you’re not morally minded, but you are business minded, it makes sense for you to include everyone around the table. So that’s why I wrote my chapter. But it’s not about sex, Mom. It is not about sex. I promise.

00:06:22:05 – 00:06:55:12
Nick
Diana, what an absolutely incredible response. I absolutely loved that. I mean, there is so much there that we could unpack and talk about. So, yeah, just thank you. Just absolutely brilliant. And I love that little disclaimer at the end there too. We were really interested, Yamina and I, about the overall chapter as well. So the other contributions of people who wrote about sex in the chapter, including Yamina who wrote in this chapter aswell. I was just really interested if you could maybe tell us about some of the different themes that the whole chapter team explored as part of this.

00:06:56:13 – 00:10:51:11
Diana
So we were looking at gender and how you in your organisation, how you look at that agenda with unbiased eyes. And again, we are asking people to do a very mature thing to think and to operate differently to how you have been trained or how you grew up, or what might be counter to your natural culture. And actually, that is why the book is, it’s special, because when you read something and again and again and you go back and underline and you highlight and you annotate then it has a chance of sinking in, then it has a chance of actually adapting your practice. So we looked at gender, we looked at women, we looked at, you know, all sorts of of differences. And it is about that. We looked at differences. But with the lens of difference is good, difference is powerful, difference brings advantage. And it doesn’t make sense to cut off your own advantage in your own organisation. No leader gets up and says, ‘I’m going to do that to my organisation.’ And so I think each chapter was curated carefully to represent, listen, you can’t do everything we know that. But there are things that you can do better. There are things that you can do very well, and there are some things that you just need to start thinking about because you haven’t even begun that part of your journey. You need to start planning, not doing, just start planning conversations and then planning actions and then planning strategies. So we’re hopeful that the book will give people a toolkit of things to think about, things to plan for, and things to do, you know. And when you bring it all together, I mean, it is a tome. It is a big book. So it’s not meant for bedtime reading, you know, from one end to the other. But it is meant for you to share with your senior teams, to share with your leaders, to share with people who have influence and authority within your organisation. As with everybody else, of course. But let people who have influence and authority have this window that opens their thinking. Good leaders, great leaders are deep, intentional thinkers. And this book challenges thinking, assures you in other areas of your thinking where you’re on the right track, it will make you think, no, that’s not right and that’s good. I like a debate, a bit of healthy, passionate debate. Because when you have a healthy, passionate debate, you have innovation and from innovation, you get new things being born and being birthed in your organisation. So if it challenges you and makes you think, I don’t agree, good, get in touch. Get in touch. If you don’t agree. If it makes you think, oh, my goodness, I’ve been waiting for this, fantastic. Get in touch. It’s a very, very special piece of work. But it is in the right time. This is the age of this piece of work, it’s the right time for organisations to pivot and to take this seriously. But it is a marathon. This is not about you swapping, changing tonight. It’s a marathon. And this book will guide you through the marathon.

00:10:51:26 – 00:11:15:21
Yamina
I love that, that is a marathon. I think sometimes as leaders, we can see something, we see, oh, that’s brilliant. Okay, let’s just do it. And we don’t plan. And that planning is so key from what you’re saying, Diana. And thinking about that then, you’ve kind of touched upon it already. But what would you say are some of the challenges for people with this protected characteristic of sex, let’s say biological sex for my family as well, that the team really wanted to address in the book.

00:11:17:09 – 00:14:16:25
Diana
When I’m thinking about biological sex that comes with baggage. So a woman will bring to the table her experience, her assets, her quality, her skills. But she will also bring to the table her cultural burdens of what it means to be a woman in her culture. She’ll also bring to the table other things, such as she might be looking after elderly parents. She may well be a wife or a partner and have children or have grandchildren or have nieces and nephews and have these other, I call them burdens because that’s how people in the organisation see them. They’re not burdens, they are just a part of her life, but she may well bring to you the potential to have four pregnancies while she’s working for you. If you as a leader are not trained, I do mean this sincerely, you are not trained to think and to see her as an asset, you will see her as a burden. You’ll see it as a difficulty. And as a complication. And it’s easier to employ a white old male, simple as that. And that’s just the reality of it. So when you see her application on the desk and you are shortlisting or whatever and you have it all lined out and you look at her, and you have to fight your internal biases, literally fight. And I’ve done this when I’m shortlisting for my organisation, I’m trying to build a new piece of leadership in my organisation. I am fighting internal biases that say to me, Diana, that represents a complication. Oh, I wonder what that means. And I’m looking at her with a harder lens, with a sharper lens than I would look at somebody who represents simplicity. And that is inherently unfair. We know. But also, what am I doing? I’m potentially cutting off my own advantage because I can’t get over myself. So when the book highlights in a stark but gentle, intellectual but friendly way, and I hope people get that from the book that it was written. Not at you, but for you. From us, with love. I wrote my chapter with love, sincerity and honesty. But I didn’t want people to take away oh I’ve just been shouted at by Diana Osagie, which can be a scary experience. I want people to take away from that, I’ve just had a light shine upon some areas of my thinking. It’s a gentle light, but it’s light nevertheless.

00:14:16:25 – 00:15:24:19
Nick
It’s an amazing light because literally your chapter is just fantastic. Yamina and I were saying earlier about how impressive it was and how much you took from it. And when you’re speaking there, it’s moving, it’s genuinely moving to hear you talk about these things. And it’s so, so important. So thank you. And then what you were talking there about the internal biases as well, and I think is a really important topic that I wanted to touch on because you spoke about it in your key takeaways and I would love you to just expand on these a little bit more and just say why they’re so important. I’m going to read them. I’m going to try and read them quickly because I want to hear more from you and less from me. Limiting beliefs about yourself that make you feel like you cannot do something because something is inherently wrong with you. This is also true if you examine the beliefs you hold about others. Do you have limiting beliefs about others that are inherent in the way that you think, limiting beliefs about the world that make you think that you cannot do something because no one will let you, limiting beliefs about life that make you feel like you cannot do something because it is difficult. Is it just too complicated to be an ally to someone whose pathway is not as straight is yours? I mean, it’s brilliant, but can you tell us more about it?

00:15:24:19 – 00:22:05:22
Diana
When I think about that, if I get personal and become vulnerable in your hands. Let me give you an example where I’m ashamed of it, but it helped me to grow. When I was newly appointed as head, I needed to appoint a new teacher for ICT I think. I had a range of people come and in those days recruiting wasn’t difficult, right. So, you know, I had a good field, let’s put it that way. And I always insist that I see people teach in a class because I knew that that’s what I want you to do. Right? So I want to see, I want to see the practice. And a gentleman came in and he was big, you know, he was it was a big fella. He must have been 25 stone. He was a big guy. And as he was teaching, he’s going around the classroom, delivering a good lesson, my mind wasn’t even on the lesson, this is where I’m ashamed of myself, if you like, because my limiting belief was how will he deal with my year 11s who will take him apart, you know, with their comments about his size. And as he was going around doing the lesson, he was sweating profusely. You know, it was obviously a physical strain for him. So he was wiping his brow, doing the lesson, sweating through his shirt. This was a 20-minute lesson. So I thought, how is he going to get through the day? How is he going to get through the year? He’s going to be off, I just went down this track. In my mind. He’s going to be off sick. The kids are going to think it’s hilarious. They’re going to make fun of him. I’m going to have loads of referrals and exclusions. So I am plotting this negative path with this gentleman who was teaching a good lesson. Why? Because my beliefs limited me as to what he could do. Totally. Totally. So I missed potential advantage. He might have been the best thing since sliced bread. I will never know. Why? Because Diana didn’t get over her own bias. Yeah. So my bias about the world was people who look like that can’t do the job I want them to do. That is inherently wrong. Wrong. But it was innate. It was deep in me. I didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe it as a bias. We’re talking ten or 15 years, 15 years ago now. I just knew that’s how I felt. So I wrote him off completely. Didn’t take him to the second day. Wrote him off. It’s now I’m older and wiser that I understand how my limiting beliefs cut off my own advantage. So let me go back now, to an example, for a woman, I know what I can do. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’m convinced of it. I know the effect I have on people’s lives. The other day, someone said to me, would you become the strategic business person and bring the strategic business ideas to this organisation? So I thought, yes, I can do that. Then the voice came, oh, I’m not really a business person. I’m a, I’m an educationalist, I’m not really that. I’ve got no business qualifications whatsoever. I’m limiting myself because business people have business degrees in my mind, an MBA and all these things. So immediately I could hear that voice trying to rise. Immediately, I have to not just think it away, but speak it away literally. I said to myself out loud leave me alone. I am more than capable of this. You have to tell yourself other stories, your beliefs that you have about your self, about what people like you can do, what people who look like you, who sound like you do or don’t do. You have to take those stories out of your mind and replace them with other stories. Sometimes our stories will serve a purpose in our lives. They keep us safe. Oh, okay. So people like me don’t really stretch out and do that. I will stay here and stay as deputy. For example, I don’t want to become the head and I have a story around that that keeps me safe rather than the story could have many, many, many endings. I’m going to explore headship. I’ll do it for five years and if I’m crap at it I’ll leave, you know, what’s the difference, I’ll leave, I don’t have to stay there. But what if I’m fantastic at it? What if I’m brilliant at it? What if I am the next best thing since sliced bread when it comes to headship? What if? Let me explore that story rather than this one that I keep and it limits my greatness and we think greatness is reserved for people like Michelle Obama or Nelson Mandela or whomever you admire. No, they were all born babies just like you. They have big teams behind them that write their speeches. Don’t get it twisted. You can be the next big Yamina, the next big Nick, you be you. Don’t limit yourself with the stories of old. And that’s what they are. Stories from before, before, before. Stories from your parents, not even yours, it’s your parents story and you are living it. It’s your auntie’s story who said X to you or said Y to you and you are living her ending. Put those stories down. Remove the limits from your life, be explicit and be intentional and decide. I will not be limited by my protected characteristic. I will be liberated into the greatness that that characteristic holds. Now come on, come on.

00:22:06:18 – 00:22:55:01
Yamina
I’m in tears, as always. Whenever Diana speaks or says anything, I, I just cry. But it just resonates so much with me and I’m sure with Nick as well, and with lots of our listeners. And actually I’m just so moved by that because it’s exactly what you did for us in our courageous leadership course. You helped us remove those stories and change the stories. Sorry listeners, but Diana is living and breathing with that and I know your commitment to the manifesto is exactly that. To intentionally choose to relinquish the role of being your own internal enemy, refuse to be confined by your perceptions, make room for a change in your understandings of what is true or false. Nick and I were just wondering, while I cry, if you could tell us more about that commitment to the manifesto and how you want to really galvanise the readers and our listeners today?

00:22:55:27 – 00:26:45:03
Diana
You know, our manifesto, we have a negative connotation of what a manifesto is because politicians take that word and make it dirty, right? Here’s our manifesto. Nobody reads the damn thing. Right? But people get it out a year later. You haven’t done what’s on the manifesto. So let’s just reclaim that word and reframe that. Here is a toolkit, here’s a manifesto for change. But change is an active word. It’s a verb. It’s a doing word. You don’t just sit there. You don’t change. You’ve got to do something now. And if that doing just means from today I will not criticise myself with my mouth. That’s a doing change that will change your life if you stop being your internal critic and start being your internal advocate. Just that internal change, just one where you say from today, I am not going to cut off the advantage that is available to me because I don’t normally talk to people like that. I don’t normally go to dinner with people like that. I’ve got no clue what that means. I was going to walk away from it, so I’m not going to ask questions in case I look stupid. There’s nothing wrong with looking stupid. I do it all the time. Yeah, I ask questions. If you think I look stupid, that’s your problem. Not my problem. I’m asking the question. Answer my question. What are you going to do today that will bring about change in you personally? One in your family life? Because we don’t go to work as leaders and come back and be something else. We’re always family and then in your professional arena, if you decide to be different just by doing two things, stop criticising yourself. Start praising yourself. That’s it. Just start there. You will spark a fire in you that cannot be extinguished unless you do it. You can choose today to be different and take one step into your greatness. Great people have stable minds that don’t allow internal criticism to take over, and I certainly don’t allow other people to criticise me and I take that to a level where I personally condemn myself. You could criticise what I’ve done. You can criticise what I’ve said, take it apart, but I will not internalise that and become your criticism. Do you see the difference? So what are you going to do today? Today, today? There’s no other day looking for change. Swallow that frog. Make a decision. Today I stop doing X and I start doing Y. If you do one thing, listeners do this. Stop paying out royalties on mistakes you’ve made in the past. Such as, you still feel guilty because you did X or you did Y, you still shed tears because of this or that, things you did years ago, things you said ages ago. You are still paying out royalties on it. You didn’t understand then, but you do now. Don’t pay out any more royalties. Close that mistake’s account.

00:26:45:03 – 00:27:08:13
Nick
I hope there are a lot of listeners to this because a lot of people need to hear it. It’s so powerful. Yamina and I wanted to just, I suppose, bring it towards a conclusion, ask about the changes that now need to happen. So with regarding the conversations that we’ve been having today, the protected characteristics that we’ve been talking about, what do you think now needs to happen in education and I suppose beyond to make things better?

00:27:09:28 – 00:29:05:29
Diana
The key thing, lots of things, but the key thing I would say is we need diversity at governance and trustee level throughout education because that is where strategic decision making occurs, which then guides the organisation’s trajectory. And if diverse voices and expertise and experience and perspective is not at that table, you’re always fixing stuff, never starting from a position of strength, but you’re always fixing and having a committee and having a meeting and having a working party. Your working party needs to be at trustee level. So I would say every trustee, every trust, every trust board, every MAT, every governing body of every school in this country needs to pursue diversity with such ferocity, ferocity. Not having one black governor, one gay one and one one woman. Right, we’ve ticked that box. I mean, ferocious diversity. Young, old, black, white, Muslim, Christian, no faith, everyone at these because we have all these young people in our schools and we need to ensure that we are not hindering ourselves by having only a certain kind of voice as strategic level and then diversifying after. That is what I would say. If, if we are serious. I think some people are. I think some are ready to pivot, then talk to your organisation and say, at trustee level this year, by this time next year, we must see change in our trustees so that we truly have advantage in our organisation.

00:29:07:13 – 00:29:23:05
Nick
Thank you so much, Diana. You are absolutely amazing. And I genuinely don’t have the words to respond to how great you’ve been. You’re just fantastic. It’s been so good to hear from you. And I know that Yamina and I are really, really grateful. So thank you so much.

00:29:24:00 – 00:29:33:26
Yamina
Thank you so much, Diana. Thank you. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

[Outro Music]

00:29:33:26 – 00:29:50:07
Hannah
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Educators Podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.

[Intro Music]

00:00:08:11 – 00:01:02:25
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated, in every classroom, in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series one of the Diverse Ed podcast we have ten episodes. In each episode our co-hosts Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey, and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:17 – 00:01:17:29
Nick
Hello everyone and welcome to the Diverse Ed Podcast. My name is Nick Kitchener-Bentley and I’m a lead practitioner and drama / inclusion teacher at Sarah Bonnell School. I’m also on the steering group for LGBT ed.

00:01:18:23 – 00:01:29:14
Yamina
And I’m Yamina Bibi and I’m an assistant head teacher also at Sarah Bonnell School. I’m also a network leader for Women Ed in London. In this episode, we talk to Audrey from the intersectionality chapter.

00:01:30:15 – 00:01:43:12
Nick
Okay, Audrey, something that we like to do at the start is just to ask the people appearing on our show a little bit more about themselves. So would it be okay if you could just introduce yourself to the audience in one sentence, please?

00:01:44:25 – 00:02:04:08
Audrey
No problem at all. Okay. So it’s a long sentence. I am Audrey Pantelis and I am a black female and former head of school. And I’m also a wife, a sister, an auntie, a great auntie, godmother and I’m director of Relation Coaching and Consulting. I said it was long.

00:02:05:01 – 00:02:06:20
Nick
That was a great sentence. I love that.

00:02:07:19 – 00:02:16:19
Yamina
I love that so much. So I want to start by asking you what inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto?

00:02:16:19 – 00:03:21:13
Audrey
Okay. Well, this is a great question, and it’s one that’s been asked of, I’ve asked myself actually in reading when I read the book again, I guess I was inspired by my own and as it was then, a relatively recent experience as a black female leader. And I guess I wanted to share my thoughts, share my experiences. Number two, I wanted to gauge whether my own experiences were common and whether the intersectionality factor was indeed a factor in whether I felt I was being discriminated against. As I kind of perceived it to be. And number three, because intersectionality as a word, as a concept was out there. But I don’t know how well it was understood and catered for in the workplace. So I thought, I’ll put my stuff out there we’ll see where it goes, see how it lands. And yeah, that’s kind of what inspired me to write it. Yes.

00:03:22:16 – 00:03:55:00
Nick
Thanks, Audrey. It’s really interesting to hear what you say there about thinking about your own experiences, but also then connecting that to see how far other people also have those experiences. And then also like that, the extent to which there is an understanding of that term intersectionality as well. It’s a really, really interesting to hear your reflections there, and that kind of brings to mind my next question, which is about the overall chapter and the different people who contributed to the chapter. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about some of those different themes in the whole chapter on intersectionality and that you think the whole team wanted to explore?

00:03:56:12 – 00:05:30:09
Audrey
Yeah, so I think it’s amazing, isn’t it? And maybe this is something we’ll unpack a little bit further on, but the whole idea that this amazing book is all about the protected characteristics, but of course intersectionality is not a protected characteristic, and yet it impacts every single one of us because we are all intersectional, full stop. And I guess it was thinking about the whole idea about what intersectionality is, which is a framework for understanding oppression. So it’s the idea that we, we’ve explored through the nine different protected characteristics throughout the book. And then we talk about the exploration of how they combine and how they impact on a daily basis. So I think it’s really about everyone’s viewpoint, obviously from their own perspective, but then thinking about the fact that these all exist. We know that it started off, you know, from the American lawyer and scholar and activist Kimberly Crenshaw. We know that. And she was looking at it from a feminist point of view and obviously feminism and race. But really what we see as we expand is just just that whole idea that, you know, all of these different interlocking protected characteristics create, if you like, a new perspective, a new lens, a new viewpoint. So I think that’s probably what for me, what I pulled from our chapter really so I love the fact that we are a 10th chapter and we’re not a protected characteristic, but we are, if you like.

00:05:31:26 – 00:05:51:24
Yamina
I love that idea that actually we’re looking at it from a new lens and even though it’s not a protected characteristic it is still a really important part of people’s identity. And so moving into that, then what would you say are some of the key challenges for people who come under the intersectionality protected characteristic and that your team really wanted to address?

00:05:53:12 – 00:07:50:04
Audrey
So yeah, I think I might have touched on it literally in my last answer. So the fact that it’s not a protected characteristic, but because it’s becoming more prevalent, we are noticing, as I said, you know, to highlight the word you’ve highlighted – lens, perspectives because we’re now thinking about that. That’s really key. And so it’s, I think it’s really thinking about the idea that everyone experiences oppression differently or experiences those barriers those challenges differently based on where they are. So you can only start from where you are. And so for me, as a black female, you know, that was where I was thinking about it. And I think the word itself, thinking about intersectionality, where things combine, not so much collide, it’s just about the combination. So I think that’s what we really wanted to address. You know, this is how we see it as a gay Christian man or as a, you know, a menopausal Asian woman or whatever the particular protected characteristics happen to combine and be, intersect at the time. So I think really it’s, I suppose I’m trying to say really when, when our protected characteristics intersect. When they do intersect, it’s multilayered. Things become multilayered and so we have to think about it with those different layers in mind, whether they constrain or constrict or whether they enable, I suppose is partly down to us as individuals, but it’s also partly how society views that. And I guess it’s that recognition piece really, probably, how I see these are some of the key challenges that we have.

00:07:50:19 – 00:09:14:28
Nick
Thank you so much for that, Audrey. It’s fascinating to hear that kind of dichotomy that you drawing out there, whether the intersections either constrain or enable people. And I love that. Yeah, you also kind of reflected on whether or not that’s something that goes on within a person themselves or if it’s more about society as a whole and is a yeah, it’s a really interesting kind of conversation to have, so thank you for that. Something that Yamina and I wanted to do when we were interviewing people was to ask a little bit more about the takeaways that they wrote about towards the end of their contributions. And so, so I’m going to read out your takeaways here and maybe ask you to reflect or expand upon them and why they’re important to you, and yours are great, so you said we can recognise the leadership potential in black female leaders and capture the talent through positive action strategies to encourage leadership candidates to be identified and nurtured. We can make the system less adversarial by genuinely encouraging the diversity that we seek in children and young people in our black female leaders. We can make the system more diverse by looking at the Equality Act and ensuring that we are actively promoting strategies to positive action and living it through scrutiny of data and monitoring. I mean, Audrey, you are so positive. Everything is we can, we can, which I absolutely love in your takeaways. But could you just maybe reflect on some of these for us and explain why they’re so important to you.

00:09:15:25 – 00:11:10:02
Audrey
No problem, so the three takeaways are kind of what I stand for. So the work that I do now and what I was doing then, the work I’m going to be doing in the future all kind of really are based upon positive action because that’s ultimately what we have within the Equality Act to be able to kind of, you know, strengthen black female leaders. So, you know, I’m going to quote for you that, you know, the statistic that I started my contribution to the book with, which is the fact that there are just 55 female, black or black British headteachers from a workforce of just 3784 female, black or black British teachers. That was for 2019, 2020. And of course, sadly, these numbers will be different. And of course, I was part of the statistics at the time, but I’m no longer part of those statistics because I’m no longer in teaching as such. And it’s not great, for me, and from my perspective, there’s a real barrier with regards to black British female teachers and promotion, and we tend to kind of go so far before, we effectively, it feels like we get knocked down. And so in sharing my contribution, what I’ve quickly learned is that I’m not unique. This is not, I’m not the first person this has happened to. And I’m sadly probably not going to be the last. So I’m really thinking about the idea of how we get these positive action strategies out there and how we make them. We nurture and we grow our black female teachers to become leaders and then ultimately school leaders. You know, I just want to, I want to amplify that kind of message. And I want to strengthen it, I want to strengthen it across the board with regards to positive action anyway. But obviously, my particular area of interest is for black female leaders. So that’s really, that’s why they’re important to me.

00:11:10:02 – 00:11:35:18
Yamina
And I think that leads really well into your commitment to the manifesto where you ask your readers to think about this. So you say in order to develop and nurture future generations of resilient leaders recognise the impact of black female leaders in education who continue to overcome race and gender barriers, which is so powerful as a commitment. But we’d love it if you could expand more about your commitment to the manifesto, and how you want to galvanise actions from the reader and from our listeners.

00:11:35:18 – 00:14:39:01
Audrey
Absolutely. So it’s, this is multifaceted. I’m thinking about it from a black female leader perspective. I’m thinking about it from CEOs and directors of trusts and any anyone that has anything to do with welcoming and encouraging black female leaders in school or in education. I mean, we’ve got, they’re amazing. We’ve got strong and highly capable black women in education, and we’ve got to harness that strength and not cap it. So three things for me, support, check and encourage. So support, supporting through the recruitment process, you know, encourage, you know, the use of processes for recruitment, blind recruitment and processes so that you are getting genuinely the talent that you want. And by that, you know, encouraging through your recruitment processes in the advertising and actually stating what you’re looking for as well, which of course you can do through positive action. So the checking bit is the checking middle leaders and senior leadership teams, encourage that diversity. You know, think about progression. And progression doesn’t always mean necessarily money and status. It simply could just be experience as well and making it meaningful. You know, my title was of my particular contribution to the book is called Ceilings and Tears, so really thinking about the ceilings bit, you know, don’t cap the abilities of black female leaders. And then the last one, really my encourage bit is about the encouragement because black female leaders often are seen to be, you know, with one hat on I have to say, on one hand, I do look and think to my self so I can see why this happens, they’re almost seen to be almost like not superhuman, but almost like stronger than the average woman. And that’s not, I’m not trying to boast or anything like that, but it’s just simply that black female leaders are fairly capable and because of that, and again, I could do another podcast just on the reasons for that, there’s an expectation that they can pick up more, carry more, take more, do more. So in one respect, that to be applauded, that’s great. But actually, you know, everyone bleeds the same way everyone has to, you know, we all live the same way. We all feel the same things. So the perception is actually they’re superhuman, they can do it all, means that often they are kind of just left to get on, doing more, carrying more, enduring more. So it’s important that, you know, school leaders, trust leaders, CEOs, etc. don’t leave your black female leaders thinking that, you know, they’re alright, they can do it, they can carry it, they can keep going, they can keep going and heaping lots on them, really thinking about mentoring, thinking about coaching. They are essential for every leader anyway. But don’t forget your black female leaders and don’t just assume that they can just do loads and loads and loads, look after them, nurture them.

00:14:40:11 – 00:15:16:28
Nick
I loved hearing that. And the word ‘nurture’, I think is really powerful there. And hearing about all of those strategies and ideas that can support black female leaders and other leaders within education, just absolutely amazing. Audrey, from your response, I was thinking there’s so much that you’re describing there and there’s so much that can be done. What happens when these things are actually put in place? I mean, clearly, they’re not being put in place enough. We can see that from the statistics that you quoted earlier and the statistics that we know that are going on. But as you are saying, there are things that can be done, when these things are put in place what’s the impact that this actually has on black female leaders?

00:15:18:09 – 00:18:08:18
Audrey
Well, you will see not only the growth and the joy and thriving black female leaders in the education establishments. But you’re also seeing that knock on within the school community itself. And what you will see is a well, well-led. You will see a vibrant, you will see a creative, you will see gosh, I’m just trying to think, what are the words? I mean those words are good for starters anyway aren’t they. But I think what you’re seeing is an environment where young people, especially if you have children and young people from diverse backgrounds, seeing people that look like them, doing amazing things, enabling that environment for them to feel, Yeah, I can do this too. And even if you’re not from a diverse background, and even if the cohort of the students, the children, the young people are predominantly one particular race, it doesn’t even matter either, because what black female leaders are doing are bringing their A-game, able to see things being done in a different way. So everyone wins, everyone wins. And also because you are not stifling black female leaders, you’re enabling them to, you know, to be their best selves. So, you know, it’s not that black female leaders are vibrant all of the time, although mostly are, what you’ll find is that actually there’s the contrast and the ability to contrast and not just being one thing is enabled and so that dimensional aspect and a dimensional approach to school leadership enables others to also feel that they can be the same as well. So, you know, it’s yeah. When it is done well, the school community benefits in so many ways. Parents will also see that role model aspect especially from diverse cohorts of thinking. Yeah, this is great. Personally, just a quick aside, something that definitely happened to me when I was in leadership, parents coming up to me and quietly just saying to me I’m really glad that you’re here and just those small comments, in fact I had an email not that long ago, even though I’ve not been obviously leading a school. And it was just amazing just that this parent had said it was great to have you in the school. It was lovely to know that we could see you. People felt safe and that’s important. So, I mean, there are many, many advantages but school communities just benefit 100%.

00:18:09:06 – 00:18:43:12
Nick
Thank you so much for that. I really, I really feel very impressed by what you said there. And it certainly rings true that that would be like a really positive impact that it would have on members of staff. And equally, like you say, the huge impact that it will have on school communities, the students and the parents and the impact that’s going to have, I think is absolutely wonderful. So I just want to thank you for that response. I think it’s a really good one. And my next question is going to be about the impact of intersectional leaders on your students. I think you did a fabulous job of answering that really nicely so I’m going to hand over to Yamina and you’ve got another question, haven’t you, Yamina.

00:18:44:01 – 00:19:14:05
Yamina
Yeah, I noticed, I think one particular anecdote really stood out to me where you talked about when you had gained the post of head of school and how you essentially were told by your line manager that you were a maverick and then you’d go on to describe how you struggled to see that in a positive light. And I was wondering if you could tell our listeners more about why you struggled with this, because they might not understand why and what impact it had on you particularly and things like that might have on black leaders.

00:19:14:12 – 00:22:02:03
Audrey
Fantastic question, Yamina, I’m yeah, happy to share that one. Yeah. The context that I guess was actually, the full context was that I was trying to internally kind of get promoted and what I was told and the phrase was used maverick was simply that there were certain things that I kind of did my own way, hence the term maverick. So that to me alluded to that I wasn’t following the rules. I wasn’t able to follow the rules almost like I was making a decision not to. I don’t think that was the case. I think it was the intersectionality aspect maybe of thinking about it from a particular lens and applying that lens, which wasn’t the conventional lens. So at the time I didn’t have the language for that. All I saw was it was just a bit of a cuss, really, oh, you’re not doing what you should be doing. And schools are quite punitive in that respect, aren’t they. We try not to do that with our children, and we endeavour to try to encourage and promote, you know, better and more improved behaviours. But ultimately we get told off and I felt like I was being told off. So that’s kind of where it came from. So I couldn’t see it in the way that probably I see it now, which is actually that was my lens, that was what I was bringing. Having said that, let me not forget that, you know, ultimately we have processes and protocols that we need to have in school to make it run smoothly. Otherwise, you know, we’ve got problems if everyone’s kind of just doing their own thing. So I also recognize as well that that’s probably how I took it, that I wasn’t fulfilling what it was that I needed to do in order to make sure that, you know, the school runs smoothly. So I saw it, now I can see it was an intersectional approach and that felt as if it was punitive. But actually I can see where my line manager was coming from, but I didn’t take it particularly favourably at the time. But also I did recognise and I can recognize now that there wasn’t necessarily the appetite or the ability to see that actually this was how I was seeing it. So this is how I was doing it. Ultimately, if I needed to be corrected, I needed to be corrected. You know, the ending of the story was obviously I didn’t stay in the school, but it wasn’t because of that particular line manager actually at the time. But what was interesting was that I don’t think school leaders have that ability to be able to be intersectional in their approach because we are, the nature of the work that we do means that we kind of have to conform. So I think that’s really where that came from. I forgot the second part of the question. Yamina, so you might have to repeat it for me.

00:22:02:03 – 00:22:36:01
Yamina
I think you answered it perfectly. Thank you. I just think it was just such an interesting anecdote. And I know lots of leaders who say they are intersectional in their identity who have perhaps being described in similar ways and not in a positive way, almost like you said, as a cuss and not knowing how to deal with that and actually the implications it then has, an impact it then has on them and how they feel about about themselves, particularly as leaders. And I think you just answered that. So I won’t probe anymore, but thank you, Audrey.

00:22:36:01 – 00:23:31:20
Nick
And it’s a strength, isn’t it? I mean, it’s very easy for me to sit here as a white, cisgender man and say, oh, it’s great. We should have other people be, you know, you have people be mavericks and it’s a great thing. But I also think Yamina when you, when you’re describing that it is maybe bringing to mind kind of leaders that I know and I’ve worked with before that maybe have been described in some of those terms, who I think are among the most wonderful leaders and who would also identify as being intersectional leaders probably. But yeah, it’s just a really powerful thing. And I think the word ‘maverick’, yeah, the way you kind of unpacked it for us there Audrey is just absolutely fantastic. Thank you for that. And we wanted to go on to thinking about kind of broad, a little bit more broadly aswell Audrey, in terms of changes, we’re really interested in an ideal world. What kind of changes would you like to see happen in the school system regarding intersectionality?

00:23:31:26 – 00:25:19:20
Audrey
I guess in a way I think I’ve probably touched on it, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much. But yeah, I think it’s the idea that, number one, we’re able to bring our whole selves, our whole authentic selves to the role. We bring our particular intersectional lens to what we do. It’s recognised, it’s encouraged, it’s nurtured as well. You know, I think that that would be ideal. We’re talking about diversity now across the board, aren’t we, in you know, schools are desperate to embrace it from a time when definitely in education I can remember where we were all told to be the same or, you know, colour blindness was a thing, you know, any any form of blindness was a thing, really. You know, any form of difference was not encouraged unless it was only about excellence. So it’s interesting that we’re now in a time where the more diverse you are, the more we are wanting to celebrate that and not tolerate. So I think really that’s what I would love to see happening, especially for all leaders, now, it’s a slow change. It’s not, it’s not going to be instant. It takes a while to unpack the well, the embedded ways of working, so some people will change quickly. Some organisations will change quickly. Quite a number of them won’t, not because they don’t want to, but it’s just about the understanding aspect of things. So I think that’s really where I think I would love to see that happening and hopefully I’m contributing to that by the work that I do.

00:25:19:20 – 00:25:24:06
Yamina
In an ideal world, Audrey, what changes would you like to see happen in wider society?

00:25:24:06 – 00:27:06:00
Audrey
In the wider society, I think it’s the recognition of those differences. I think that’s the thing that’s probably the biggest thing for me and it’s something that I actually talk about in my training quite extensively. So even though I’m talking about it from an education point of view, what I’m about to say probably is applicable full stop. So I know that the differences that black female leaders have and white female leaders have are completely different. And as I say, I utilise this with regards to the training I do. So I will often say that even though I was a headteacher of a school and I was a black female lead and the head, but usually it is, not always but usually, a female white leader I would say even though we both do the same jobs of leading schools, our experience is 100% different. And they’ll be things that are enabled for my white female colleague. That weren’t afforded to me, and I think that’s across the board. I think regardless of whichever area you work in, I think that’s probably still applicable. So that’s what I would really want to be thinking about now. The recognition of those differences and bridging the gap between those differences. And so they’re minimised. I don’t think we’ll ever eradicate them, unfortunately, but we can minimise them and we can make it so the playing field is far more level again. It’s always going to be about the whole thing of people recognising there’s differences, people understanding those differences, and people doing something about it.

00:27:07:14 – 00:27:24:00
Nick
Love that call to arms at the end, Audrey. Thank you. Doing something about it is so important, isn’t it. You have been absolutely fantastic to talk to this morning. All of your ideas, all of your energy, all of your insightful criticism, but also ideas about positive things that can be done. And it’s just been brilliant to hear.

00:27:24:00 – 00:27:36:03
Nick
And I’m so, so grateful to you for joining us to talk about intersectionality and also your own experience as a black female leader as well. So thank you very much. I just want to say it’s been really wonderful to speak to you this morning. Thank you.

00:27:36:15 – 00:27:45:19
Yamina
Thank you so much, Audrey. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi, the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

[Outro Music]

00:27:45:19 – 00:28:02:00
Hannah
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Educators podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think so do leave us a review. We will be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.

[Intro Music]

00:00:08:11 – 00:01:02:25
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated in every classroom, in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series one of the Diverse Ed podcast, we have ten episodes. In each episode our co-hosts Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey, and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:16 – 00:01:18:19
Nick
Hello and welcome to the Diverse Ed Podcast. My name is Nick Kitchener-Bentley and I’m a lead practitioner and drama / inclusion teacher at Sarah Bonnell School. I’m also on the steering group for LGBT ed.

00:01:19:04 – 00:01:30:10
Yamina
And I’m Yamina Bibi, and I’m an assistant head teacher, also at Sarah Bonnell school. I’m also a network lead for London as part of Women Ed. In this episode, we’ll be talking to Orla from the Religion and Belief chapter.

00:01:31:15 – 00:01:36:18
Nick
Okay, Orla. Can you please introduce yourself to the audience in one sentence?

00:01:37:13 – 00:01:48:23
Orla
I am Orla McKeating. I’m a coach and a mentor and I’m the founder of Still I Rise Diverse Storytelling. So I create trusted learning spaces for all people to feel seen, heard and valued.

00:01:50:10 – 00:01:55:27
Nick
That was perfect. One sentence, very nice. Thanks.

00:01:55:27 – 00:02:03:15
Yamina
Great. So I what to ask you first, what inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto?

00:02:04:17 – 00:02:57:25
Orla
Well, I have been an avid fan of Diverse Educators for a while, I have kind of been watching and reading and using the resources and connecting with people on social media and things. And I just really believe in the power of collaboration and collective voices. I feel like we’re kind of surrounded by all this news. You know, nearly everything around us seems to be so negative and it feels like sometimes are going backwards and how are all these things changing. And then I come into spaces like this where there is so much hope and there’s so much, I suppose, coming together to make change. And that’s really what inspired me in terms of the Religion and Beliefs chapter. I grew up in Belfast, I was educated in the eighties and nineties, which was during the Troubles and then just post Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

00:02:58:06 – 00:03:35:16
Orla
And so my normal has always been segregated education, and it was so normal to me that I suppose whenever I stopped and reflected, it was like actually this is not okay. Because when we even look at the impact of that on the mental health of us as a society in Northern Ireland, I don’t love using that word ‘us’, society as in ‘us’ and ‘them’, but society as a group in Northern Ireland, the mental health, it’s a pandemic. So I suppose it’s keeping myself aware of that and sharing that to the UK and globally, I suppose.

00:03:36:13 – 00:04:29:29
Nick
Orla, you speak so powerfully and you write about it very powerfully as well in your chapter. When Yamina and I were reading it, we were really kind of struck by how much you spoke about the impacts on the mental health of people in Northern Ireland. And I’m sure that there are lots of takeaways for people in other places as well. But yeah, it was really, really quite profound actually to read that. So thank you for writing it. And I was really struck in your comment there as well about why you’ve been involved with the Diverse Educators network as well. You’re talking about like coming together to make change and the idea of connecting with other people too. And I agree. I think that’s a real strength of the network. And on the idea of kind of coming together as well, we would just really be very interested about the overall dynamics and the approach of the people writing the Religion and Beliefs chapter. So could you tell us a little bit about the different themes that your chapter team sought to explore?

00:04:29:29 – 00:05:52:24
Orla
So, we kind of, I kind of looked at the impact of segregated education in Northern Ireland. So I do mention in my chapter that 93% of education here still is segregated. So very often children between the ages of 4 and 18 are not knowing other people from different creeds. And so I feel like this kind of fosters up misunderstanding and fosters fear nearly that can feed into, I mean, different parts of discrimination or aggressions or micro-aggressions and feeds into stereotypes I think as well. And then I also talked then about the mental health literally in our country. There’s such a huge array of transgenerational PTSD and mental health problems and issues that just keep getting past down. And I just feel like even the awareness of knowing that it’s there and being aware that, okay, this is happening. This might be because of this, might be because of this. How can I look at myself? How can I look at my children? How can I look even not being an educator or a parent or a carer or an adult with children at home? How can I have these conversations, I suppose, to make that change in terms of education and in terms of in society as a whole?

00:05:53:12 – 00:06:06:06
Yamina
No, absolutely. And I think you’ve kind of really started to delve into it, but we were also curious to know about some of the key challenges for people under this protected characteristic and that your team really wanted to address through your chapter.

00:06:08:02 – 00:06:51:24
Orla
I suppose the challenges that I was addressing with it is nearly getting kind of stuck in that cycle or that system of it nearly being your norm. So I wonder with me, I am a single mum of a mixed race child. I lived in Belgium for ten years, which is a really, really diverse society and diverse in terms of what you can see but also diverse in terms of the mindset as well. And so I think the key challenge is, I suppose, is allowing people or inviting people to be aware of what impact this might have and how we might be able to make change.

00:06:52:26 – 00:07:58:18
Nick
And you write about that really powerfully and you talk about change quite a bit in your chapter. Whilst you talk about all of those challenges, I think you are very optimistic about what you think can change and some of those changes, so it would be really interesting to talk about that. And we were really struck by your takeaways in terms of what you were suggesting about the society as well. And I’m just going to read it out, but after I’ve read it out it would be really interesting for you to maybe expand upon them a little bit and maybe tell us a little bit about why they’re so important to you, because you wrote that a segregated education system does not foster common understanding, tolerance or equality. The mental health rate has declined and suicide rates increased. While there are other factors to consider, the education system is not benefitting from this. The lack of representation and inclusion within the curriculum has maintained a fixed mentality, halted intellectual curiosity and challenges the basic human rights of equity for all people. I mean, it’s really powerful stuff. But I was just wondering if you wanted to maybe expand on any of this in any way or explain why it’s important to you.

00:07:59:03 – 00:12:23:26
Orla
Yeah, sure. It’s quite bananas when people read back your work to you because I’m reading the back thinking, whoa, that’s actually quite good. And at the time, you don’t know if it is. So I suppose the segregated education system not fostering the understanding, tolerance, equality. It others, like it others. In a Catholic school setting here in Northern Ireland, I have seen where they’re practising sacraments. People who are not in the Christian in the Catholic faith will be put at the back of the room without a book, without any resources. What impact does that have on the child and also what is that saying then to the majority of the classroom that is Catholic and is choosing to do the sacrament. I mean, does that imply that being Catholic makes you better than someone else? And then later on in life, what does that feed in to? So I think that was a major thing for me. And then it’s feeding into the stereotypes. I’m a white cis woman of privilege. I’m like, I really had to unpack and unlearn a lot to kind of see, to open my own eyes. And that’s work that I’ve chosen to do. So those who maybe don’t have the space to reflect, feeding into the stereotypes, I mean, feeding into what we see in society, what we see on the news, the representation in the media, in movies, like how certain groups are represented. It’s kind of feeding into that then in the classroom as well. And it just it normalises grouping different people. So just putting different people in boxes and then that obviously affects the opportunity for growth and for progression and it just leaves underrepresented groups with less. It just does and it’s not enough. It’s, it’s just not enough. And it’s got to change. And I suppose then the mental health rates, how do we integrate mental health into the curriculum? How do we move away from, in Ireland and Northern Ireland our country was run by the church for so long that like it’s really important to me and this is a really personal one for me as well, because whenever I became a single mother, I just felt like I had failed, like that was it. And I was 30 and I mean, I lived away, I had had great experiences. I had friends from different, different faiths and different experiences. You know, whenever I turned 30 and became a single parent, it was like, oh, my life is done now, like it is so ingrained in me that like I had failed. I was a fallen woman. I was like nearly put in this group that if I didn’t have the character that I had, I would have just stayed there. And I know there’s so many other women who end up being single, single parents, and they’re just so massively affected by that. And that has been our upbringing like it just has. And I think I mentioned in the book about the mother and baby homes in Ireland and Northern Ireland, where if you were an unmarried mother, you just got put into and you were just, you were called an inmate, you were institutionalised and there was so much abuse went on there, that that’s nearly, it was normal again, normal in our society. I know people were families that happened to and it was just accepted. So it’s how do we move away from that? How do we have the conversations that are difficult to have where we can accept situations that are ultimately healthier for children, for young people, for adults, and I suppose like language is also a really important thing for me. Like I see quite a lot in the education system here and I don’t know about the UK, but perhaps the same where they’re sending notes home for Mum and Dad. Straight away that’s othering so many groups, same gender families, maybe widowed parents and single parents, people in care. It’s so complex and it just, I suppose, focusing on a more inclusive setting bit by bit, baby step by baby step, and being tolerant and accepting of each other, really being aware that, yes, we’re going to say the wrong thing. Yes, we’re going to mess up. Yes, we need to do the work a little bit ourselves, to look at these underrepresented groups in society and in the classroom and dig deeper on that and move it into the curriculum. And it’s a big task, but I’ve got to stay positive.

00:12:23:26 – 00:12:50:23
Yamina
It’s actually something that you mentioned in your commitment in the manifesto where you say essentially what we need to do is create a more inclusive approach to education where all are valued, respected and have equal opportunity to thrive as well as building a thriving nation. I just love that term, but we were wondering if you could tell us more about that commitment to the manifesto and how you want to galvanise readers and also the listeners here today.

00:12:50:23 – 00:14:41:20
Orla
I suppose, like I’ve said, awareness and merely being compassionate with those around us and ourselves and being aware that we all have the access to knowledge, we have the access to resources. It is not up to marginalised groups to educate us. It’s just not. Like, it’s all there. Get the book. Buy the Manifesto. I use this for a lot of my learning as well and it’s just kind of knowing, right, the system isn’t working. It’s not equal. What’s going to change when we take the steps to make it more inclusive and more diverse, and more accepting? What does this mean for our grandchildren? What are our leaders going to look like? Because the way the world is being led now is not good enough and it’s not enough. So what, and it’s nearly like breaking it down into 20 years. I want our leader to look like this. So ten years it’s got to look like this. Five years, these are our children. Like these are the conversations we can be having with our children and nearly having the conversations about, because my son’s nine, and he will ask questions like whenever, I won’t mention any names, but whenever there is leadership flaws and mishaps, you can call it what you want, mess ups essentially, and letting the big portions of the country down. It’s having those conversations of, well, do you know, do you think this is fair? Do you think that worked? How did it not work? How might It not have worked. And when we look around, you know, when we’re looking at the leaders now, what do they look like? What are their thoughts? What are their beliefs? Listen to the words that they’re using and then just gradually building up that awareness there so that young people and even adults can kind of move forward with that.

00:14:43:04 – 00:15:57:18
Nick
I find it really interesting to hear what you meant about kind of young people and adults moving forward about that. And I think your contribution is a really forward facing one because you as well as reflecting on the current situation, you also talk about potential solutions as well, which I find really, really important. You also spoke quite a bit just now about some of the unpacking that you’ve had to do as somebody who’s a white, cis person. And since that reflects my own identity as well, I completely echo what you’re saying and you know encourage others to make sure that we’re reflecting on that privilege as well. And one of the things that I think you’ve taken from that is talking about the curriculum, and that was really, really interesting to me to think about curriculum, why it’s so important. We noticed in your chapter that one of the questions posed was what might happen if we implemented a curriculum, learning about history and background of all cultures, creeds and ethnicities. I’m really interested to hear about what you think, what might happen, or what has happened when such an inclusive curriculum actually is used. I mean, I know you’ve been talking about examples actually where it hasn’t been used, but I was wondering what you think might happen if it is implemented or any examples that you’ve heard of where it’s been implemented as well.

00:15:58:17 – 00:17:20:17
Orla
So I think if we look at history or share history or stories from the past or change makers of the past that are actually representative of society today, how much is that going to empower underrepresented groups. In fact, I’ll answer that question, it’s going to empower them. It’s going to empower them to do better. It’s going to empower them to know that they can make change, that they can make a difference. And then the majority groups are going to understand, well actually, you know, it’s kind of that subconscious thing as well, I think of, and I’ve definitely experienced it, of my life is going to be easy and then something will happen that’s like a big moment, a big kind of life changing moment. So in my life it was becoming a single parent. I’m thinking, oh my goodness, I’m actually not, you know, there’s going to be barriers, now. So the majority groups in the classroom knowing that actually it wasn’t just people that looked like me that made change and made history and made the world the way it is. It’s other people. And I can see that and I can see people that looked like that in my classroom that can also make change. And I’m going to walk beside them and I’m going to support them and I’m going to help them break down those barriers and they’re going to help us work together to make change. And it just would I mean, to me, it’s a no brainer. It’s just a no brainer. Like the way it has worked isn’t working at all or the way it has been isn’t working at all.

00:17:20:17 – 00:18:03:06
Nick
So I just had a question that just struck me is, sometimes when these conversations happen, you see people say things like, oh, but that’s narrowing the curriculum offer. Like, you know, there’s a lot of conversation. I don’t know if this is just something that’s in the English curriculum. It might be relevant as well in Northern Ireland, but people say, oh, but you’re canceling Shakespeare, you’re getting rid of that rich cultural heritage that people deserve. And you know, my opinion is that I think that those arguments are massively overblown and unhelpful. But what kind of comments would you make if you were to hear somebody that would make that kind of a suggestion about the fact that what you’re suggesting is making a curriculum more diverse and more progressive?

00:18:04:03 – 00:18:28:22
Orla
Well, I think there’s enough stars in the sky for everyone. It doesn’t mean that we need to cancel or remove or change. It’s adding more to it. So add more experiences, adding more voices to it, add more fascination and curiosity for our children. So I don’t think it’s this or that. I think it’s kind of integrating more and more variety.

00:18:29:28 – 00:19:02:28
Yamina
Yeah. Thank you so much for that. And I think the idea of mapping it out perhaps and really planning how we do that is really, really important. So we’ve got that representation. But what really struck me from your chapter, Orla, was that you inform us that Northern Ireland has the highest rate of PTSD of any studied country in the world. I didn’t know that until I read your chapter. It’s shocking. You specifically mentioned that stigma is essentially still the major deterrent for people seeking out help. And we were curious to know what suggestions you had about what we could do to tackle this.

00:19:04:14 – 00:20:51:26
Orla
I think creating trusted spaces where we can have conversations, where it’s not attacking people, where it’s not judging people, where it’s, you know, creating a culture nearly of mental health wise, do you know what, I’m actually not okay today. Like I feel like this. I’m going to work through it. I’m going to find the tools to do that. I’m not joking about it, like I feel like and I do it too still whenever I’m a bit lost, but there’s a lot of a narrative of like lots of banter or lots of craic, like trauma, let’s make a joke out of this. Sometimes it’s kind of like, you know what? Let’s just maybe unpack it. Let’s, let’s look and let’s see and let’s accept and know that it’s not normal to be happy and productive all of the time. And I think we have access to, everything’s always on, like it’s not 9 to 5 any more. It’s answering emails, it’s contacting, it’s meetings, it’s zoom meetings in the evening, on the weekend and everything. So it’s nearly accepting, accepting ourselves as we are and accepting everyone else as they are. And for creating those spaces for conversation and for raising that awareness. I just think that conversation and communication is one of the most powerful ways for reducing stigma. Like it’s why I do the work that I do and I do see an impact I really do, and I see an impact in my own personal life, on my own kind of mental health struggles that I kind of deal with quite regularly. So yeah.

00:20:51:26 – 00:21:21:18
Nick
I find that really powerful and it certainly resonates with me as well. It’s so, so important that those conversations have happened and in your chapter you write quite a bit about this as well. You also talk about how we need to reframe the curriculum so that young people are supported in terms of their mental health. And you also, obviously in your own work, have done a great deal to support educators as well. I was just wondering, where you have done that work to support educators regarding their mental health, what kind of impact have you seen? How has that really helped people?

00:21:21:18 – 00:22:08:05
Orla
In terms of the educators and the adults, it’s much more of a slow burner than with children and young people. But I suppose it’s met like with curiosity and nearly there’s a bit of shock there. It’s kind of like, what, we can do our job and talk about the things that aren’t typically talked about and nearly accept them. And I think there’s, there’s positive impact. Like I think it’s kind of allowing or inviting people to be transparent with children and with young people and be transparent with themselves and with the people that they work with and their peers and know that that’s okay.

00:22:08:05 – 00:22:23:25
Nick
Thank you. Moving forward to considering the way that things can be better then, Yamina and I were really interested to consider in an ideal world what kind of changes would you like to see happen in the school system regarding the protected characteristic of religion and belief?

00:22:25:07 – 00:24:03:20
Orla
I want to see representation across the board like I want my child, I want young people in our society to be learning about every different religion and not a tick box of random like, oh, this is this and we’ll move on. This is, you know, not homing in on Christianity. I want to see them learn it about, and celebrating, all of the different aspects of different religion and different beliefs and moving away nearly from that fear factor. And not knowing and having those trusted spaces where questions can be asked and where it’s okay to do that. And also, I would love to see, I know that Halal food, this is an example, Halal food is served in all the schools in the UK. Do the staff actually know what Halal food is? Because my son keeps getting given halal food and I know why, but I know that it’s the staff aren’t being educated in it. So they see a child with brown skin and automatically think that he eats Halal food. Not only is that a micro-aggression, but what message is that giving to his Muslim peers in the dinner hall. So it’s nearly just digging deep on that and spending more time on it. Like it shouldn’t just be like an hour a week. It should be an ongoing thing where you’re learning from, in Northern Ireland it’s P1 to P7 so age 4 to 11, and maybe dig in a bit deeper, seeing what those beliefs are and where they come from and what the cultures are and why we could celebrate them and maybe have those culture days again moving away from the tick box, but having people come and share that culture and celebrate it in the school setting.

00:24:05:09 – 00:24:15:23
Yamina
Thank you so much. And then, Nick and I were really curious to kind of broaden it out. So if you had your ideal situation, or in an ideal world, what changes would you like to see happen in wider society then?

00:24:16:20 – 00:24:36:12
Orla
Representation. I want to see it everywhere. Like I want to see every marginalised group represented across the board. Like I want to see diverse leaders, I want to see diverse conversations. I want to see, like I want to see curiosity. I want to see representation.

00:24:38:02 – 00:25:13:26
Nick
I think that is a really, really important point and a really good one to end on as well. The idea of representation being so, so important and in your chapter you talk about that so much and in the conversation today you’ve done that as well. So I just wanted to say really, really big thank you for your contributions. You’ve spoken so powerfully in a way that I’m certain will resonate within and beyond your own context and for many others as well. And on behalf of Yamina and myself, I just want to say a huge thank you. You’ve given us a lot to think about, but I think it’s important that we think about it. And I know that we will all be really grateful for it. So, yeah, a huge thank you.

00:25:14:18 – 00:25:15:20
Orla
Thank you so much.

00:25:15:25 – 00:25:25:12
Yamina
Thank you so much, Orla. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

[Outro Music]

00:25:25:12 – 00:25:40:25
Hannah
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Educators Podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think, so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto