[Intro Music]

00:00:08:27 – 00:01:04:26
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 its successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series two of the Diverse Educators Podcast, we have ten episodes. In each episode our co-hosts, Mahlon Evans-Sinclair and Jess Boyd, 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.

00:01:04:28 – 00:01:20:13
Jess
Hello and welcome to series two of the Diverse Ed podcast. I’m Jess Boyd and I’m a former head of music and currently writing my PhD in culturally relevant pedagogy. I work in initial teacher training and I also run an open access community music project.

00:01:20:16 – 00:01:39:25
Mahlon
My name is Mahlon Evans-Sinclair and I’m the founder of Educating While Black podcast. I’m currently the director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at a girl-focused school in Toronto, Canada. In this episode, we will be talking to Anjum Peerbacos from the Religion chapter. Morning, Anjum. Can you introduce yourself in one sentence to our audience?

00:01:39:27 – 00:02:13:26
Anjum
One sentence. My name is Anjum and I’ve been teaching in London schools for over 25 years now in a variety of capacities, and I’m currently a radio presenter for Teacher Hug Radio on a show called Teacher Soundbites. I’m also a writer and write regularly for the Times Education Supplement, the Daily Mirror, the Metro, Huffington Post, and currently I’m a freelance assistant producer at Times Radio.

00:02:13:29 – 00:02:28:12
Jess
Amazing. You do so much I’ve got so many questions, but I’m going to start by asking more about the intersections of your own identity. So can you tell us a bit more about how that has contributed or inspired you to write the chapter that you did in the book?

00:02:28:14 – 00:04:58:24
Anjum
So the chapter came about because I felt like I’d suddenly arrived in a school, an education setting that I had never predicted, envisaged myself in being. I’d always worked in inner city London schools, where the demographic has always been very varied and had a large proportion of Muslim students, something like 70 to 80% would generally be Muslim students, and that had been my teaching background. And then suddenly I’ve arrived in this north London leafy suburban boys Catholic school, and it was a real shock to the system, but not in a negative way. And what I very quickly realised that even though it was in London, so one of the most diverse cities in the world, it became really apparent that students and staff had very little understanding of Islam or Muslims other than what they would have read or heard in mainstream media. And to me, that posed quite a big problem, because what you see in mainstream media and the narrative around Muslims and Islam following what really changed the landscape was 9/11. It was predominantly negative and negative stories, negative representation and misconceptions around the faith. And, you know, there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, we’re not all carrying a bomb in our backpack. So I just wanted to be able to use that platform within that school setting to challenge those narratives and those misconceptions. And it kind of mushroomed. It grew and grew into various things that have then since come up in terms of the media narrative and how you go about changing that. And I think it is about educating people, but being able to challenge people’s perceptions and misconceptions and that work is ongoing and I think there’s a lot of work still to be done. Despite living in London, lots of people might not have actually experienced or understood that, you know, Muslims or Muslim women in particular can articulate themselves, can have opinions, are educated, can hold various professional jobs, are entrepreneurs, and do amazing things because the perception is such and so far removed from that.

00:04:58:26 – 00:06:31:23
Mahlon
First of all, that’s a lot and it’s a lot, but it’s a lot insofar as that ask and this is what we’re coming to in this podcast the ask is different, right? That if you’re thinking about the chapter that you contributed to on the idea of religion, I can imagine that there are some for perhaps for whom it’s more of a flavour of, you know, that the state’s institutionalised Christianity hegemony, if you like, where we’re pulling out strands of that and kind of shading in the grey verses being asked to talk about religion, which has got so much in terms of assumptions, negative assumptions, but not a lot of knowledge, not a lot of content knowledge with regards to how Islam works, how people practice Islam as Muslims. And so I wonder for yourself within that chapter that you are contributing to what was the strand that you wanted to pull out from the noise, as it were, within the Religion chapter? What were the things that you wanted to make sure that readers understood the idea of perhaps, you know, where Muslims find themselves, which is everywhere. One given the number of Muslims globally, but and also to the diversity of human nature, is that I happen to be Muslim and I go about my life like this. So I wonder, you know, for yourself, what is it that you wanted to really spotlight with regards to how the intersection of religion and particularly religion that doesn’t always get air time before it’s misunderstood? I wonder what you wanted to add to that conversation.

00:06:31:26 – 00:08:45:06
Anjum
I think I really wanted to highlight the commonality between human beings and human nature. And the reality is all world faiths will have so many shared values and principles by which they will lead their lives. And for me, it’s understanding and focusing and spotlighting the commonality and the shared humanity. And going to teach in a faith school actually really resonated with me in a way that I didn’t know very much about Catholic faith other than what I had studied at A-level in A-level history. And going see to faith in practice. There were so many moments. I was like, oh my God, it’s just like us, oh my God. It was, even going to my first mass. And when they all turn to each other at the end and say, peace be with you, I nearly fell off my chair. I was like, oh my God, that’s just, oh my God, this can’t be real. I suddenly just thought, there’s so much focus on the difference. But the volume of what is the same, in essence, is so much more vast. And it’s a particular group of people that like to highlight the difference and use that as a means of driving discord, but also the othering and I think that’s what we need to be able to get past. And I think that the reason I wrote the chapter was hopefully so people could understand and empathise with actually, I’m just a normal human being going about my day, doing my job. And yes, I practice my faith, but actually my faith is very similar to probably what you hold dear to you and what you believe are your values of humanity, of compassion, of acceptance, of kindness. So I hope for anybody that has read the chapter that comes out for them. And if they haven’t, there’s load of other stuff I’ve written.

00:08:45:06 – 00:09:30:06
Jess
No, it really did come through. Like I put a love heart next to two anecdotes that you shared in your chapter. One was that one when you went to mass because they’re all saying the same thing, but also the cute one, another cute one, I love the way you trickled the stories in rather than like we are similar because of this. There was no list. There was these stories. But the story, where you said, one of the teachers said that you like a nun. Yeah. I thought that was funny. Yeah. Yeah. Another great similarity. But can you tell us a little bit about the key frustrations and challenges that anyone with this protected characteristic often faces and how you wanted to acknowledge that in your chapter too?

00:09:31:05 – 00:13:06:22
Anjum
I think it’s, in my school, I feel like I’m in a bit of a bubble. Firstly, because you’re in a situation where everybody knows you, it’s like going, it’s like being a celebrity isn’t it, going to school where you walk in, 1500 people know you and they’re all able to say hello and ask you about how you’re doing. It’s lovely, but the moment you step out of that kind of comfort zone and I remember a time when I was just going up the road to pick up a friend of mine who’d passed their driving test and I’m just going to pick them up a card from the local Tescos that was up the road from school. And I remember being, er, just taking a moment to read some of the stuff on the side and a woman pushed passed me, she used the f word and then proceeded by saying I’ll f-ing dog. And then I started getting really panicked. I’m actually really scared of dogs. So I was worried that there was a dog in the store and I was a bit worried and I was looking around and there’s no dog. I couldn’t see a dog. And I was, then it sort of dawned on me that she was talking to me. And to be really honest, I was just absolutely stunned and shocked and silent because I mean, all right, I’m not like a Miss Universe or anything, but I’m not like, I mean, I wouldn’t say I was like an animal, a kind of a creature that you would describe as an animal. I just thought, wow, you think it’s okay to go and hurl abuse at somebody that you don’t have any contact with in a public space and refer to them in that manner? And I was absolutely taken aback. And this is literally up the road from my school, and I just suddenly realised how much of a bubble I am in when I’m at school and in my workspace and where people know me. And the minute you step out of that, there’s something else happening. There’s somebody writing my story for me somewhere else. And determining the outcome and the impact of that story is then very lived and very real and raw for me. So I think the work I’m trying to constantly do is dispel that story that somebody else is writing and try to write my own so that doesn’t happen to Muslim women. And we’ve heard of numerous situations where Muslim women have been abused, attacked. There was a few years ago a man pushed a Muslim woman on a platform into an oncoming train. And I just think it doesn’t necessarily get the air time that you probably would if it was like a white blonde woman who had been pushed into the, you know, oncoming train and the manner in which certain stories gain much more traction than others is because the media decide to make those choices. And so I think what, it makes me realise that there’s a lot of work still to be done. And for me and for my daughter, who has chosen to wear a hijab, a headscarf, I can’t ever be complacent because even if I’m not having the desired impact, if I’m making an iota of difference, then it’s moving in the right direction. So that’s the kind of premise, I think, in which I’m operating and working.

00:13:06:24 – 00:16:30:13
Mahlon
I just wanted to say, first of all, thank you for sharing that. Because anyone who experiences an occurrence like that, like it, it hijacks wherever you currently are back to that moment where you’ve had a similar experience and all the emotions come through, right? And as you called it, the only signifying factor when you break it down, because like, that’s not normal. It’s not that it’s not normal human behaviour, it’s not what a cognisant person would do as normal human behaviour. So when you break it down, you have to do the mental gymnastics to be like, no, I wonder why that, is it because. And then when you break it down and then you get that realisation to say, oh, it’s because of this, it strips you, like it strips you apart because I’m like, what am I supposed to do with this now, after the occurrence? So thank you for sharing that. And it’s, I don’t always like saying I’m really sorry that it happened to you because that to me is a wasted phraseology of an emotion. I’m annoyed that it happened to you. I’m vexed that it happened to you. I’m po’d for you that it happened to you. I wanted to, like you alluded to it more so on the podcast so far, and perhaps that’s where I want to take the conversation afterwards. It’s the idea of, you know, that what was it that you wanted the readers to take away from the essay that you wrote? And I also think that perhaps this is coming alive in what you’re speaking about to the idea of, and I’ll give you an example, I used to listen to a gospel song called, from Kirk Franklin, and the song was called The Last Jesus, and it was basically talking about for some people, you are the last Jesus that they might see, right? So you are the last embodiment of all the faith that Jesus is supposed to be coming through you to other people. And what would they say about you and what they say about Jesus if you are seen as being, you know, the last embodiment or the last version of that? And sometimes I do walk into spaces where I think to myself, if I call myself a Christian, I don’t. But if I was to be more into that faith and I call myself a Christian, what would it look like for me to embody what the message is supposed to be for people to be able to see Jesus in me carrying myself about? And I think from what you’ve just described, the schools that you’re in, the experiences that you’ve had and I think the part that really speaks to me is the juxtaposition of being a celebrity who’s well known, well valued. And of course, you have to build that trust of the celebrity status within the school. And then when you leave the school, you’re just anybody. That kind of intersection perhaps, is where religious identity that’s visible is a different game than religious identity that’s more internal kind of perhaps reflected everywhere around. And so I just wonder, like in terms of your takeaways with regards to being a person who is visible with their faith and understanding that that intersection can give you a headwind when sometimes where you are pushed back, it can give you a tailwind sometimes where the curiosity of the difference might invite conversation. I just wonder what your key takeaways might be with regards to those who practice their religion in a more visible way and also perhaps the allyship of those who don’t practice it in a more visible way. What they can also do to support those who choose to practice their religion in a more visible way.

00:16:30:15 – 00:20:32:03
Anjum
So I think that obviously for me, my faith is very personal to me. But I do choose to wear a headscarf, which is, the hijab is part of my faith and my religion. So although it’s externally visible, it’s still a very personal choice. It’s something that is personal to me. And therefore I understand that there is a curiosity around, a genuine curiosity that doesn’t have any malice. It doesn’t have any intended ill will. I appreciate that completely. And there have been times where I’m more than happy to have those conversations and share that. And one of the things I’ve done, pre-COVID I did this annually. We used to have a massive, we’d have a whole year group in the hall, and this is where I was able to use my platform in my school setting to be able to educate young people. And I do a session where we just do a quick intro and I talk about the commonality of the Abrahamic faiths, which they would be able to understand being in a Catholic school and having been raised Catholic, and then I would discuss with them the similarities with Judaism and Islam, and then I’ll just open up to the floor. And they would all have post-it notes, the students. And if they didn’t want to ask the question themselves, they felt shy or whatever, They could just pass the post it along and it would filter through and I would be happy to take those questions. And in that forum, absolutely. And I did. I’m able to put myself in a situation, and I’m very appreciative that not everybody, every Muslim wants to do this, but I’m in a situation where I am an educator and I am in that particular setting. So I wanted to be able to dispel misconceptions where possible. So students would ask questions and some of them would be funny. And yeah, you get a giggle and a laugh. But some of them were genuine questions and that was absolutely fine. And in that role, in that moment, I’m happy to share. But if you are in a situation where you are an adult and you are in a situation where you feel like it’s okay to go up to a Muslim woman and just ask why she wears headscarf, that’s not okay. That is not okay. And we live in an age where information is so readily available and knowledge is so readily available. It’s not my responsibility to educate you as an adult in a non education setting where I’m not being recompensed for my expertise, skills, experience. So there are times where I’m happy to share and I’ve written about that and I’ve talked about that. But actually it’s exhausting because if you’re constantly being asked to fill in these gaps of knowledge in other people’s knowledge when they’ve just been either wilfully ignorant or lazy or apathetic up until that point that, oh, I’ve seen that woman, I’m going to just ask her, no, that’s not okay. And it’s not my responsibility to educate you as an adult. So I think there is a kind of a, there’s a spectrum there of where it’s appropriate, where it’s inappropriate. And if you have a genuine curiosity, then we have a wealth of information at our disposal, you know. And I think that if you’re looking for direction, yes, absolutely. There is information out there, enough people out there who can guide you and use those avenues. But just going up to somebody because they happen to wear a headscarf, actually, that’s personal to them. And for me, it’s really personal. My spiritual journey, my religiosity and the way I feel about my faith is really personal to me. And I will share it with you if I want to. It’s not because I’m publicly Muslim, it doesn’t mean that you can just, you can expect that I will share that with you. I hope that makes sense.

00:20:32:05 – 00:22:47:27
Mahlon
It really does. And I guess my follow up then, or just thinking about from what you said, it’s not that the onus is on anybody else, but it just seems to me because I feel similar with regards to race. Right. And as, I was going to say an openly black person, that’s dumb, I’m black, you see, it is what it is. But I feel like there are times where in those school settings that you’re speaking to in those open forums, those town halls, there are other adults in the room who are hearing the same answer as the kids are hearing in real time. And so sometimes it feels to me as though the next time that that question comes up intercept as the adult like, you know what the answer is or what it could be because you’ve just heard it. So there’s an opportunity for you as the adult in the space to do me a favour instead of waiting for it to come all the way downstream, where you’ve got a very personal question being asked to me in my visible identity, where you’ve heard the same answer to the question and you could say, well, I don’t know for everybody, but from one answer that I’ve had has been X, and that might do enough to stem the conversation or to, you know, to kind of take the curiosity somewhere else. And perhaps even as a person who doesn’t visibly identify as that, the centre of that, the curiosity, it also shows that, oh, we can be interested in things that are around us, versus the sole responsibility being on the person who is nominally different to explain their difference, we can be more inclusive of difference in our space and have answers to questions that people can have. And I think that that’s probably, from what you’ve just said, does come to my mind the idea that adults in the space take the responsibility too. That when you hear an answer being given by a person who is the quote unquote hotseat note it so that the next time it comes up, you use it. And just as you might say in that space, I am but one representative of Islam or I’m but one Muslim, it’s the same thing as like I’m hearing one answer that might help this conversation, knowing that there are multiple different answers that might contradict something different but here’s one at least that I know versus I’m just going to step back and let the person who has that identity do all the heavy lifting of explaining every single time.

00:22:47:29 – 00:23:41:03
Anjum
So the other thing that happened as the, that kind of forum became more of a reoccurrence, adults started coming. And that was interesting because it became really apparent that there was a void in the knowledge. So they wanted to equip themselves with answers. And I think that’s a really positive, huge step forward. If people understand that I’ve got a gap in my knowledge and here’s an opportunity for me to be able to fill that gap, then why not? You know, and I was in that situation. I was happy to have students and adults in the room. And it was really interesting to see an increasing number of adults joining that conversation because they want to learn. And I never think that can be a bad thing.

00:23:41:06 – 00:23:41:24
Mahlon
Not at all. Thank you

00:23:42:02 – 00:24:56:18
Jess
So, on that, then. Right, to the genuine person listening to our conversation and reading this book and I’m hearing some great feedback from different schools and communities really kind of taking their time through this book, where do they start in being more inclusive, which is obviously a very basic, genuine question. I don’t want to assume that people know where to start. Right? So what I love about your chapter as well is that you gave us snippets of relationships and your relationship with your head teacher and the journey that they went on to be more inclusive of your faith. And my number one baseline for people to be more inclusive of everybody is relationships. You are only, the teachers that came to your forums, it’s because they know you as a colleague right, it’s not that you’re a cold stranger of the street coming into randomly give them some facts so what other than that relational or as well as that relational intention, what would your advice be for a school community who regardless of the make up and the diversity of their community, want to be more inclusive of different faiths? Where would someone start?

00:24:56:18 – 00:25:26:17
Anjum
I think there’s a real multifaceted answer to that question. Because there are different, schools are made up of such and so many factors and so many layers, and I think in each section of each layer, there is work that can be done. So you could look at your curriculum. So one of the things that we did at our school just really basic stuff was looking at the maths department. They looked at the history of maths. White old men do not own maths. Just for the record.

00:25:26:20 – 00:25:29:25
Jess
[laughs] Can you just repeat that just in case someone missed it.

00:25:29:26 – 00:25:39:20
Anjum
White old men do not own maths. They also don’t own English literature. Just saying.

00:25:39:23 – 00:25:47:06
Jess
I mean can we get into the sciences and the arts and language.

00:25:47:08 – 00:31:00:05
Anjum
Exactly. You get the point. But one thing our maths department did was they looked at mathematics over centuries and how pioneering mathematicians came from Arabia and being able to celebrate them, know their names and know what they contributed to mathematics as a science. And then other departments followed suit. And that was something that was really simple to do. It was a really quick win and a quick fix, if you like. And in the curriculum, there are so many things you can do. We in the history department where you’ve got capacity to do this, and the other thing is the exam boards are clearly all white men but if you look at the history curriculum in key stage 3 where you have got some capacity, they did a whole project on whether Muhammad Ali was a politician, activist or an athlete. And I think something as simple as that, start that discussion, acknowledge that there is recent history which you can unpick to make people understand history is not about, it’s not all Eurocentric, you know, and I think that’s really important. So there’s things you can do in the curriculum and the other thing you can do is the critical thinking skills that I mean, in the English curriculum, they kind of did away with that, but we need to kind of bring that back in swathes in order to ask students to critique and question everything they consume in their media diet. So from TikTok to Snapchat to YouTube to whatever platform they’re on next, I can’t keep up. But actually being able to question and critique and criticise the person that is spewing whatever they are spewing, because if you are just absorbing it, then you’re accepting of it. And that’s the worry because there are people out there who would very happily be divisive and sow discord and disunity because it furthers their agenda. Stop the boats. I’m sorry, I can’t, I mean, I don’t know when this podcast will be aired, but the immigration bill that has just recently passed in Parliament, it’s not a coincidence that it has come alongside this media narrative that’s been spinning for several years now. And if our young people are just consuming that without question, then there is a real danger there that society is going to continue becoming increasingly polarised. So people like me in the street are going to be abused and attacked and are not safe. So the critical thinking skills are huge. I think that wherever we can embed those, it’s really important. And you can always have me into your school, relaunch and reignite that conversation, because a lot of students, even though they might live in really diverse areas, they might not have access to someone who’s willing to talk about their faith. They may not have the ability to be able to ask questions, to have a conversation, to even listen. They might think that if she’s wearing a headscarf she’s not allowed to talk to me. There’s all sorts of misconceptions there. Yeah, and I think, yeah, I mean, if that’s something that you’re interested in and doing and reach out. But I just think that even though in London there are a million Muslims, a perfect example is when I worked in Forest Gate, the neighbouring borough, so I was in Newham, the neighbouring boroughs were tower hamlets, and there’s the other one the Isle of Dogs. I can’t remember the borough. Jess you might be able to help me out. [Jess: That’s Newham as well] so that’s within Newham, but you never went to the Isle of Dogs. [Jess: Oh, no, no] Oh, my God, I was like, where is the Isle of Dogs? When I first moved to east London I was so green. [Jess: I think it’s Tower Hamlets] It might just be within one of those boroughs. Yeah, but were literally. Oh, Anjum you can’t go there. Why? Are there lots of dogs there? [Jess: No, no, they are going to call you dogs again] Exactly. Yeah. It’s also listen, it’s not safe for you to go. I just felt like, were literally neighbours with, you know, the huge Bengali community in east London. How can you say to me that, it just didn’t make sense. So but it might be that the children in that particular part of London are never going to have access to speak to a Muslim woman or Muslim person and ask them questions like, why do you go to the mosque five times a day? Why is it that you fast for Ramadan? Why do you wear a headscarf? Any of those questions, perfectly legitimate questions. These children are children, they are learning. They have curiosity. Yeah, it’s that availability of being able to have those conversations and then listen and understand that there’s so much more in common than there is that sets us apart.

00:31:00:07 – 00:32:02:10
Jess
I love that. And also, I think I mean, I’m only talking about London now, but any diverse city, don’t assume, we said this off the recording didn’t we, don’t assume that people know what they’re doing. Well, they should have less excuse because of the nature of the diversity of our community. But that to me, like you said, several London schools don’t directly learn about each other’s lifestyles and still segregate by choice subconsciously. Right. And so I love that advice and wisdom. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing, Anjum. We could be, we could be going for ages. Yeah, I’m going to pause us there and say thank you. Just maybe in a nutshell, if you could hope and not even wish. But all of this grassroots work that we are all differently a part of and Diverse Ed is a huge lever for that. What is going to look different in our education system in the next five, ten, 20 years for us to be more inclusive because of all of this work, these open conversations we’re having.

00:32:02:13 – 00:33:20:00
Anjum
I’ll be really realistic. I think if real change is to take place, then policy and legislation needs to change at government level. So it’s not optional. At the moment everything is optional and until that statutory change about the curriculum that’s being delivered and the style of education system we have in this country, it will be very inconsistent. You have school leaders that are brilliant and are open to change and are open to these conversations and dialog. But there are also people who will be happy doing what they’re doing, where they’re doing it, and they don’t see a need for change. So yes, we carry on moving forward. Absolutely. We keep making those steps, however big, however small. But the real change will come when you have government led change that makes it statutory for schools to sit up and listen and to make sure every young person, regardless of colour, race, religion, heritage, background, is acknowledged and has a sense of belonging wherever they are in this country.

00:33:20:03 – 00:35:01:19
Mahlon
I think that’s really important. And where my mind is going in closing is you made the point just before around critical thinking and stop the boats. And if you wanted to just anagram those letters and change those letters to build the wall, it’s the same thing. And so if we were to think about policy, criticality, where are the narratives the same, how are they dressed up in slightly different variations of the same thing, And I guess we kind of end where we started, which is that the idea around there is still more that is common, even when that commonality is not great than there is different. And I think one of the things that we could get fooled into thinking in Britain is that we are so uniquely different in our experience about how we treat difference. But we do have an opportunity to actually be different in how we treat difference and how we treat similarity. But we have to get over the fact that we don’t critically think enough about how things are similar or similarly dressed up in that way. And on that, definitely, I think we’ve had a great episode where lots of people can take a lot from, and I hope that they listen back to different segments over and over again because there are gems in there to take away. And for that, I definitely want to thank you so much for your contributions, Anjum. It’s been great. It’s been great conversation. We’ve learned a lot from you and I hope the listeners also learn a lot too. So with that, we’ve been Mahlon Evans-Sinclair, Jess Boyd and Anjum Peerbacos, the co-hosts and the guest of another episode of season two of the Diverse Ed podcast. See you next time.

00:35:01:21 – 00:35:05:02
Jess
Bye.

00:35:05:04 – 00:35:19:23
Hannah
[Outro Music] 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.