[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 Educators 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 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.

00:01:05:12 – 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 am also on the steering group for LGBT ed.

00:01:17:24 – 00:01:27:13
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 WomenEd in London. In this episode, we will talk to Dr. Shrehan from the Race chapter.

00:01:28:07 – 00:01:33:15
Nick
So let’s get straight to it then. Could you please introduce yourself for the audience in one sentence?

00:01:34:10 – 00:01:45:26
Shrehan
Yeah. I am a senior lecturer in teacher education at the University of East London and a co-founder of Phys Equity. And my specialism is PE.

00:01:45:26 – 00:01:52:06
Yamina
And we’d like to start by asking, what inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto?

00:01:52:06 – 00:03:04:28
Shrehan
I think that often PE is neglected from discussions around DEI in schools. People don’t quite know. How does it link? How is it inequitable in the first place? So it’s like an outsider subject and people are often, not through their own fault, like quite ill informed of what physical education is in 2022, what it should be. And they often think back to their own experiences in PE and quite largely they were negative and they think, oh, you know, maybe it’s still fitness testing, maybe it’s still skill drill game, maybe it’s the cross country, segregated sports and the focus on the physical. So I think quite often head teachers and those that are making decisions about, you know, EDI or book chapters and books that are coming out, they’re quite often talking about the other subjects and PE is not involved in that conversation. So I really, myself and my co-author, Laura McBean, we wanted to make sure that we were heard and our voices were heard and the book was the perfect avenue for that.

00:03:05:27 – 00:03:27:18
Nick
I really agree with what you said there. I think you get your voices heard really well and certainly whenever I hear you speak, actually, I think you really communicate what you’re describing there about PE and you make it very, very clear and understandable. So I always find that very helpful. And a question that I was really interested is about the whole chapter. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about the different themes that your whole chapter team wanted to explore?

00:03:28:11 – 00:04:35:06
Shrehan
Yeah, we wanted to explore the Eurocentric nature of PE, so what actually is that? And quite often that is enacted in schools through the sport choice. So very Eurocentric sports and you can see that like rotation of, you know, handball, athletics, etc., etc. But also the pedagogy in which a teacher selects for their instruction, which is really often teacher directed. You know, I say do this and you do it. And, and that’s a very white ideological pedagogy to use. And we really wanted to highlight ways in which you can move away from those things and have an anti-racist practice and include culture within the classroom because we are living, breathing, everything to do with our culture and our heritage. So they are important conversational points that shouldn’t be ignored within any educational space. We’ve just selected PE to explore it.

00:04:35:06 – 00:04:46:24
Yamina
I love that and I can see obviously the impact of that at SB. So that’s great to hear about. We want to also ask what are some of the key challenges for people with the protected characteristic of race that your team really wanted to address?

00:04:47:26 – 00:05:53:15
Shrehan
Yeah, I think often in physical education, people of colour are unheard and ignored, especially, you know, for example in the book we talk about Jamaica. If you’re from Jamaica where in the current, and I’m, I’m generalising here we’ve got spaces and pockets of fantastic practice going on in certain schools. Sarah Bonnell is a really good example where actually culture is, culture is centralised. So students aren’t being ignored because they’re being spoken to and they’re being asked about what they want to do through, you know, a negotiated curriculum or throughout the sports in which, you know, the school have selected for them to do. So, in terms of main takeaways, sorry, key challenges for people with this protected characteristic, it’s hearing people of colour in movement spaces but also a discussion on the Eurocentric activities and anti-racist pedagogical approaches.

00:05:53:20 – 00:06:37:28
Nick
Thank you and really good to talk about those spaces and how we kind of improve them. One thing that you write about in your section was the key takeaways for the reader, and I’m just going to read them out because I love them, and then maybe ask you if you would be able to expand upon them a little bit more and explain why you thought they were so important and what people could do with them. And so you said know your students – likes, dislikes, contextual information, prior learning and experiences. Share your curriculum ideas with students and negotiate delivery and avoid tokenism. Implementing a one off unit does not make your curriculum non Eurocentric. Which I think you were starting to talk about there which is really interesting. Could you maybe just expand for us a little bit please then on those takeaways and why they’re so important?

00:06:39:07 – 00:11:09:20
Shrehan
Yeah, I mean, knowing your students is essential. What I would deliver in East London versus Bournemouth, where I grew up, is totally different because we’ve got different challenges, we’ve got different contexts. Our students come from different places, they’ve grown up in different households, they’ve grown up in different houses actually, because they’re, you know, a flat in Bournemouth versus a flat in London is very different, especially if you’re growing up in Tower Hamlets, you know. So knowing your students is so unbelievably essential. Every single academic year I start with something called a student snapshot and I find out pretty much everything about my students. So next week I will go to Wales with my students. I know that 75% of them, their biggest fear of spiders. I know a large chunk of them, their biggest fear is failing and upsetting their parents. But I also know which religious holidays they celebrate, and I also know that some of them don’t like to be picked out, picked on in class. They don’t like me to direct a question to them. So I already know so much about my students and I haven’t even started teaching them yet. And that is something that everybody can do in any classroom and any tutor group across the country. The first day you meet your students, you can even just show a picture of you and your family or you and your dog or whoever and say, this is me, this is a little bit, you know, here’s the beach and I’m from Bournemouth and let’s learn about about you. Show me a postcard or draw a postcard. Tell me about yourself. And knowing them is so important because John Dewey, and I hate to pick like a white, you know, philosopher and educationalist here, but because it’s not very relevant but, you know, talks about we can’t really have knowledge unless we’ve got some experience. And so if you don’t know that student’s experience and something about their everyday living. How on earth can you even start to try and help them learn some form of content? So knowing your students is so unbelievably important. Before I even talk about, let’s do kinball or let’s do feminist self-defence or whatever. And you know, on the next one about sharing your curriculum ideas with students, negotiating delivery, I think it’s really good that, you know, you say to students, hey, listen, we’re going to do a sport education unit. This is part of something called a models based practice. And you can say it, depending on the year group, in lots of different ways so that they can understand. And you can say, right, this unit is all about responsibility and about being an authentic sports unit. So you’re not going to hear from me much. And that really sets up your unit with the students so that they don’t think that you’re going to be stood at the front all the time telling them. And it’s not going to be teacher directed. And I think that’s an important point as well, because quite often we don’t share that expectation with students. This is what it’s going to look like, and we shouldn’t, some students, they don’t like surprises. And then lastly, I’ve seen it so many times in schools, this tokenism, these like one off units. Oh, well, we’re going to do a Paralympics Day or in wider school, we’re going to do Black History Week or Black History Month. I mean, no, these things should be immersed within the curriculum every single day. And these one off lessons are tokenistic. And they highlight to students that everything else is normal. And on this one day is when we learn about this one topic. And I take the Paralympic Day as an example. If you’re doing a unit of football, why can’t you do goalball? Why can’t students wear blindfolds and they learn about a different game. And it’s, you know, volleyball, you can do seated volleyball at any moment of the unit. It doesn’t have to be in a Paralympic unit necessarily. So, yeah, I think hopefully I’ve given some people some ideas there.

00:11:10:03 – 00:11:36:17
Yamina
I love that. Thank you so much. I think you speak so passionately about that as well, which is really important. Part of your commitment to the manifesto in it, you ask for schools to essentially consider a revision of the PE curriculum, moving away from a focus on sport and competition to focus on movement, joy and culture celebrations. Can you tell us a bit more about your commitment to the manifesto and how you want to galvanise actions from the reader and from our listeners?

00:11:36:17 – 00:12:44:09
Shrehan
Yeah, I think I just want everybody who reads the chapter to think about ways in which they personally like to move because they, people that read the chapter might have had a negative movement experience, whether that be in school or whether that be in, you know, going to the gym. So I think anybody that reads it, I want them to go, oh, there’s other ways that I can move that I might enjoy. And then if they’re a teacher, maybe they can try and find ways that their students enjoy. Because I really think that’s the role of the PE teacher. The role isn’t to create these sculpted bodies or to fight an obesity epidemic in 2 hours a week. I mean, that’s nonsense. But the role of a PE teacher for me personally is to find ways in which young people enjoy moving, they feel a sense of belonging and authenticity within the curriculum and are able to carry that on throughout their life.

00:12:44:09 – 00:13:24:26
Nick
That phrase that you used there was absolutely amazing. You said about the ways that people who read the chapter like to move, and I think that’s such a powerful way of describing it. So thank you very much. Certainly something we should all think about and we noticed one thing in your chapter that you said was the work of recentering marginalised communities, voices and cultures is a process. One that is part of re envisaging a further education for our young people. However, it’s filled with possibility and hope. We know that your own work has been so incredibly powerful. So could you maybe tell us just a little bit about some of the impact that that’s had on some of the learners that you’ve worked with?

00:13:25:19 – 00:14:49:15
Shrehan
Yeah, I think that, you know, when you take this direction and you decide that you’re going to move away from very teacher directed, eurocentric activities. And we’ve given one example of something you can do. But kind of my thing that I always say to my young trainees is, you know, be the change. And I don’t know what that change might be. I don’t know, in the classroom, when students come together and they have a voice within East London versus Nottingham, what the outcome is going to be, and that’s the beauty of education. Every young person is different and the way in which they act and react in certain situations means that education is full of possibilities. So hopefully the impact of that is that we have students and young people that are creative, ambitious, wanting to learn and wanting to move, wanting to know more, can make links to what they’re doing in school, to their life, in society and outside of school. And hopefully everybody can work towards being the change in some kind of way.

00:14:49:15 – 00:15:25:26
Yamina
Thank you. I love that. Education is full of possibilities and I think that’s so key. And, you know, we noticed that you said in the chapter as well that actually, and you talked about it already, but that tokenistic curriculum, it doesn’t make your curriculum diverse. And you argue that our efforts should be seen as a holistic approach, combining anti-racist pedagogical approaches and a decolonising philosophy towards education. And this is with my curriculum leadership and my teaching and learning hat on. But what advice would you give to curriculum leadership teams and senior leadership teams in ensuring that this actually happens?

00:15:25:26 – 00:17:15:15
Shrehan
I think you have to look at the make up of your students and look at the backgrounds in which they’re coming from and the holidays they celebrate and the religions in which they also follow and celebrate and go back to who you’re actually teaching and who you are as an educator. Because what we see in schools is teachers that don’t actually live in the same area as their students, and they come into that area and they teach and then they go back to their nice suburb and their nice big house. So, you know, as a teacher, you need to do work as well. You need to learn who your students are. You need to acknowledge your own identity and whether that’s the same or different to your students, and what cultural negotiations and barriers that you need to come across and do some serious identity work. And then when you’re creating your curriculum, because remember for me, you can’t talk about curriculum unless you’ve explored ourselves and our students, then we can talk about the need. However, the need will always be dictated in some respects by our national curriculum and the things in which we have to teach to the test. Which, by the way, I’m not an advocate for, but hopefully our young students coming through will campaign and you know, they’ll be able to make some changes towards the way in which education, and I guess it’s not really education in many ways, it’s schooling, isn’t it? At the moment students are schooled and what we want is students to be, have education because it’s, school is so much more than teaching to a test.

00:17:16:14 – 00:17:24:24
Nick
I was really interested as you were speaking there about the things that need to happen. Do you think they are happening at the moment?

00:17:25:11 – 00:18:49:14
Shrehan
I think that in some pockets they are. I think there’s fantastic practice going on across the country and it might be in certain subjects. So for example, Sarah Bonnell PE are doing really, really well and I hear, through Phys Equity, other schools that are doing really great work within their PE departments. But I think on the whole teachers are overworked. CPD is often not that targeted or dictated to by heads of departments that might not have thought outside of their approach. And so if we want to make real and radical change, it always has to come from above, top down. And at the moment our national curriculum in PE specifically is very competitive orientated and many people don’t know the bits in brackets are just suggestions. So the bits in brackets say some example sports, for example, badminton, hockey. And what we’ve seen is quite literal interpretation of that. And that’s just happening in schools, the things that are in brackets. So I think work always has to be done from the top and that’s a very hard thing to change.

00:18:50:08 – 00:18:58:01
Nick
And on that, then in an ideal world, what kind of changes would you like to see happen in the school system regarding the protected characteristic of race?

00:18:58:27 – 00:19:34:09
Shrehan
I would like to see young people’s cultures and heritages celebrated throughout the entire academic year. I would like to see all students learning about black history, all students learning about Islam, for example. And I would like young people of all races and heritages to feel a sense of belonging in their school and to see educators that look like them.

00:19:35:06 – 00:19:49:15
Yamina
I love that. Just, I’m really moved by that. And actually, if we take it out, then, you know, we know there’s been quite a focus on race particularly. But in an ideal world, what changes would you like to see happening in wider society?

00:19:49:15 – 00:20:39:15
Shrehan
Well, I am an idealist and I know that we’re time restricted. But, you know, I would love to eradicate all social injustice. Of course I would. Our society is plagued with many socio cultural issues. 30% of our children are living in poverty and are hungry. These are basic needs that aren’t being met, and we can’t really talk about teaching and learning if we’ve got a student in front of us that’s hungry. So in wider society, lots needs to change. But we can start as educators in our classes by just having a packet of biscuits in the back and stop worrying about students eating in class. Because goodness me, there’s more important things in life.

00:20:40:21 – 00:21:01:21
Nick
That’s so good to hear and thank you so much. I completely echo with you with what you’re saying about the connection between wider society and education itself and the importance of those conversations. And so, yeah, I just want to say a really big thank you from my point of view. It’s been really interesting to hear all of your contributions as ever. And really good to speak to you. Thank you very much for that.

00:21:02:10 – 00:21:11:07
Yamina
Thank you. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi, the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

[Outro Music]

00:21:11:07 – 00:21:27:21
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.