[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 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, show the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:25 – 00:01:18:11
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.

00:01:18:26 – 00:01:29:09
Yamina
And I’m Yamina Bibi and I’m an assistant headteacher also at Sarah Bonnell school. I’m also a network leader for Women Ed in London. In this episode, we talk to Shaun from the Sexual Orientation chapter.

00:01:30:09 – 00:01:34:21
Nick
Okay, so Shaun, could you please introduce yourself to the audience in one sentence?

00:01:35:15 – 00:01:50:11
Shaun
Hello, everyone. I’m Shaun Dellenty. Dr. Shaun Dellenty now, I’m a teacher, school leader and international advocate for LGBTQ+ inclusive learning communities. And I also wrote the Bloomsbury book Celebrating Difference: A Whole School Approach to LGBTQ+ Inclusion.

00:01:51:21 – 00:01:54:11
Yamina
Oh, I love that. Congratulations, Dr. Shaun.

00:01:54:21 – 00:01:55:11
Shaun
Thank you.

00:01:55:26 – 00:01:59:24
Yamina
What inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto?

00:02:01:03 – 00:03:32:04
Shaun
I guess what inspired me to write was really reflecting upon where we are right now and kind of where we’ve come to. Since I finished writing my own book in 2009, it was a great privilege to be invited to write for the book, but I guess I kind of wanted to put up a bit of a red flag really, because with my work around the UK and internationally it’s become very apparent that there is pushback from some quarters on LGBT+ inclusive education. And when you are, when you’re kind of working across a range of territories, like I do, very early on in my journey, I started to attract unpleasantness, hate, death threats sometimes and repeatedly was labeled as a pedophile and a groomer simply for wanting all young people to be safe in all schools and indeed all teachers and parents and carers. And what became apparent through my international work was that that was really starting to boil up. Particularly in places like Hungary and the United States. And I guess I wanted to put a red flag up with this chapter and say, look, I’m not saying this is going to happen, but it could happen. And we need to look to the past at the times of Section 28 to learn lessons and to consider where we all stand. If at some point in the future, we are told we are not allowed to support LGBT+ young people, which I hope we won’t be. But what if we were? So that really inspired my contribution to the book.

00:03:33:22 – 00:04:18:28
Nick
And thank you very much for that, Shaun. That’s really powerful. And I don’t want to say shocking actually, because I’m not really shocked, to be honest with you. I think that some of that stuff is out there and obviously it’s happening and people are, you know, having to experience that. So I’m sorry that you’re doing that. But in terms of the work you’re doing, I know what a positive impact it’s having. And I’m very grateful that you do what you do. And it’s really, really powerful. And also, from my point of view, I’d like to congratulate you on becoming a doctor. Well done. We wanted to broaden it out and tothink about the overall chapter, sexual orientation. So could you tell us from your perspective a little bit about some of the different themes that the overall chapter wanted to explore?

00:04:19:14 – 00:10:10:16
Shaun
Yes, of course. I mean, it’s a lovely, vibrant chapter with multiple perspectives, which is what we want. I think the tone is set very nicely by Professor Jonathan Glazzard. His introduction really looks at the context around the Equality Act 2010, which of course we can’t assume will always be in place, but right now it is, and relates that directly to the toxic legacy of Section 28. And interestingly, that’s a theme that emerges throughout a number of the chapters, including my own, and it really does serve, I think, his introduction serves as a very prescient reminder that we shouldn’t take our current freedoms for granted and that progress can go backwards. It’s not always linear. He also introduces the concept of minority stress, and on that link, I think, that we all hold dear between LGBT+ inclusion and social justice more widely. Now, Amy Ferguson’s chapter really touches on the power of authenticity and the power of being empowered to be able to bring our whole selves to work should we choose to. And how that can then enable stronger relationships. And of course, as we know learning communities are built on strong relationships. So it’s about nurturing stronger, authentic relationships and fostering academic success. But of course, that really important sense of well-being and belonging. And Andrew Moffat and his chapter builds very much from his No Outsiders work and uses some really nice practical examples from his books and his texts in terms of how books and texts can be used to explore personal development strategies, for RSE and citizenship. So that’s really practical chapter. Daniel Tomlinson-Gray, founder of LGBT Ted, I think that’s how you say it. I always say it like it’s a teddy bear. I like saying it like that, so I’m going to say LGBT Ted, there we go. It’s kind of cuddly in that way. He very much comes at, approaches his chapter from the point of view of running a charity that has had funding from the government, which was then pulled away and the challenges that it brings. He also reflects upon, you know, as I’ve alluded to, the kind of shift in the political landscape over the last few years and where that might go in the future. But most significantly, the fact that any strategy in education needs resources and funding. Carly Hind’s chapter, I think is really powerful. It moves on to thinking about how we can avoid tokenism. And I think as we get further down the road with LGBT+ inclusion and education, you know, things like LGBT+ history month are fabulous, but they are a starting point really. And, and what we don’t want to be doing is kind of tick boxing and doing tokenistic affairs. So Carly really touches on the need for whole school approaches to LGBT+ inclusion and representation, but really informed by rich opportunities to listen and learn from young people. And I think that’s such powerful advice. And that leads very nicely to Jac Bastian from Diversity Role Models, who again looks at the power of sharing lived experiences and personal stories, and how that can build empathy, how that can build connection and again, forge stronger relationships. Lisa Jordan, her contribution, I think is really powerful in terms of exploring how we can, if we’re allowed to be and we want to be, serve as LGBT+ role models in schools and in workplaces, but that could also bring challenges and that we might not all be ready to step into that place or want to step in that place. And if we do, what do school leadership teams do to support us as professionals? Mahlon Evans-Sinclair, I found this particular chapter really, really exciting and really interesting and thought provoking. It really explores the themes in an intersectional way, themes of sexuality, of masculinity, and of blackness. Looking at the complex connections between sexual orientation, gender expression, gender stereotyping and race, and really encourages us, and I think this is so important, encourages all of us to kind of check our own bias, our own prejudices, not just in terms of non-LGBT+ people, but also in terms of being LGBT+ ourselves and how complex and layered our identities can be, but also our interactions with other members of a school community. Mayur Gupta brings the notion of career pathways and raising aspiration and I think this is something perhaps we don’t talk enough about because historically I think we’ve been so focused on kind of anti-bullying and visibility and not actually kind of thinking what happens to our LGBT+ students when they leave us, when they go out there into the workplace. So his contribution is really powerful about preparation for life, work and career development. And there’s some practical tips in that, making links to successful LGBT+ individuals and businesses and diversity networks in order to spin successful narratives. And then there’s a contribution from somebody called Nick Kitchener-Bentley, you know, and again, what I loved about this is it really does emphasise some of my kind of favourite themes from this work, really the power of sharing stories, the support we might need to do that because not everybody is ready to stand up and share that story. And actually, when we do stand up and share our stories, we don’t know how that’s going to affect us and affect other people. And what I love about this contribution, particularly as an equity card member and as somebody that trained and worked as a professional actor, is the power of theatre and drama and assemblies and public speaking in terms of sharing stories and collaborating and all of that building back into that theme we talked about earlier on social justice, LGBT+ inclusion, diversity, equity and inclusion. That’s what it’s all about.

00:10:11:21 – 00:10:38:14
Yamina
I love that Shaun and you summarised that so well. And yes, we know our lovely Nick has contributed to that chapter. And personally working with Nick, I’ve seen that work come to life and how powerful it’s been as well. And with all of those voices in the sexual orientation chapter, those voices are so powerful in helping things change. We’re also curious about what some of the key challenges are for people within this protected characteristic that your team really wants to address?

00:10:39:24 – 00:14:52:09
Shaun
Yeah, I think what was really interesting, what struck me immediately and again, it was, it’s shocking how often we find ourselves going – it’s not a surprise to me, you know, that tells you something in itself. So it wasn’t a surprise to me to see how often Section 28 came up. You know, it came up in the introduction. It came up in my section and it comes up in a number of other sections, that shadow of section 28, of course, it was a long shadow. It was a toxic shadow. And I still think in some respects it’s still there. Of course, what’s at the edges of that shadow now is the possibility that something like it could come back. And I don’t think we expect it to be quite there so quickly again, that’s shocking, frightening concerning in itself. And we need to be ready for that, however much we can be ready for that. But also things like the failure of the LGBT+ Action PLan. You know, I was there in 2018, I think it was, you know, at the launch of the action plan and heard various MPs spouting rhetoric which they’ve now gone backwards on and failed to act on, you know, and I just think that’s such a waste of public funds, but it’s also incredibly disappointing and again, was I surprised? Sadly, I wasn’t. So a lack of resources, you know, withdrawal of funds and an inconsistency, I think, that came over as a strong theme, and inconsistency in terms of teacher training and readiness, not just for teachers, but for anybody that goes to work in a learning community. You know, when I’m out training around the UK and around the world, I always ask for a show of hands at the start of my training sessions, you know, hands up. Did you ever have any training on LGBT+ lives, histories, experience, societal contributions when you were at school yourself and rarely do people put their hands up. And of course, I never put my hand up because I didn’t either. But then I will ask the same about initial teacher training. And yeah, we get a few hands up now, but the majority of people just kind of sit there looking a bit awkward through no fault of their own. So we know that there’s still a huge deficit. We know that there is some great practice out there, but it’s very inconsistent. And I think that notion of inconsistency of preparation, but also inconsistency in terms of delivery of whole school approaches to LGBT+ inclusion, really came out strongly from a number of the chapters. And this notion of authenticity and kind of almost feeling, particularly as we’ve had more out teachers, almost like a bit of a peer pressure really to kind of come out and serve as an authentic role model in school. And not everybody wants to do that and not everybody’s ready to do that, and not everybody feels supported to do that. And sadly, sometimes people can’t do it and it can go wrong for them. So what happens then? So I think, you know, I could really feel those concerns within this chapter as well. And I think linked to that, some of their contributions, I think there was a sense of their awareness that we are really still trying to play catch up and actually in the space we are trying to play catch up in now is becoming much more of a challenging space. So we acquired it kind of playing Whac-A-Mole, if you like, but actually now we’re kind of being whacked a bit harder from external forces as well. And often, you know, if you think about this work, often in schools, it can be landed or left to one person, one passionate individual or one steering group, one department, when actually it’s something that involves everybody within a school community. So when push back happens, you know, when we’ve got culture wars in inverted commas, when we’ve got the toxic discourse about trends going on, on social media and in the media itself and from some of our politicians, if you’ve just got one passionate individual or steering group trying to take this work forward, which is safeguarding, let’s state what is, it’s safeguarding. It’s keeping people safe. Then that puts a huge load on that individual or that steering group. So it’s got to be a load shared by everybody.

00:14:52:09 – 00:17:17:16
Nick
Shaun, I’m really, really struck by how clearly you’ve been able to put the state of play and how clearly you’ve been able to put the way that it feels right now to be someone who is LGBTQ+ in education, I think you’re describing it very, very accurately. And that really resonates with me in a way that does feel challenging. And I, like you said before, the red flag that you’ve waved in your chapter makes it very, very clear. And some of that has grown, hasn’t it, since actually the book itself was written. So I find it really, really powerful from your response there. What you do, though, I think it’s really helpful and your own contribution is you talk about how we can therefore take positive steps and what needs to happen. And there are some really, really valuable things that I think that everyone needs to hear. And so what I’m going to do, Shaun, if it’s okay, is just read out your key takeaways for the reader. I think they are really powerful and once I’ve read them, I would love to hear a little bit about what they meant to you or why that’s important, if that’s okay. You wrote, Shaun, while whole school approaches to LGBT+ inclusion should explore with all stakeholders the intersections between protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010, whilst also exploring the intersections between LGBT+ and non-LGBT+ identities and experiences, school leadership teams must establish a moral rationale for LGBT+ inclusion, in addition to educating all stakeholders as to the statutory rationale and communicate it upfront and on an ongoing basis. Legislation can change, schools must be courageous in riding out changes in societal attitudes to minority groups by culture, ethos and policies, meet everyone in the school community as they are with compassionate listening and amplify lived experience to develop empathy across school culture, use of up to date bullying and attitudinal data is vital, knowing with precision how biases and prejudice exist within schools, and sadly they do, grounds your aims and lived experience and affords you a robust moral arguments for your ongoing diversity and inclusion work. I mean to me when I read that, I think, wow, you really saw things coming. But I think that you put it very clearly, what people can do in a positive way. Could you just expand a little bit on some of those takeaways and explain why you consider them to be so vital?

00:17:18:13 – 00:23:22:24
Shaun
Yeah, I think let me start with the rationale first, because that was already kind of leaping into my head as we were talking earlier. You know, if you think about, you know, if the Equality Act was compromised around sexual orientation or gender reassignment or if it was taken away completely, what would we have to justify LGBT+ education? Actually, let’s take that label away and let’s replace it with safeguarding because that’s what it is. And actually, if you look at the latest version of keeping children safe in education, you know, it directly refers to the actions that schools take to prevent prejudice and discriminatory bullying, which I think is a positive step that it’s in there. But to me, you know, as far back as 2009 / 2010 when I started my own work in my own school as a result of data around homophobic bullying, I looked at that data and went, this is a safeguarding issue. Children are suffering – not on our watch. And really, for me that was, that was it. So to me that was the only justification and the rationale that we needed to go on a journey. Now what I’ve encountered along the way through my work, I’ve seen lots of brilliant practice. I’ve seen some patchy practice, some inconsistent practice, and I’ve seen, sadly, some times where it’s gone wrong and often where it’s gone wrong, the school didn’t take the time to kind of lock down the rationale and from a moral point of view, it’s around safeguarding, around kindness, compassion, inclusion, anti-bullying, and also from a statutory point of view and kind of do that as a whole staff and then express that, communicate that with clarity and transparency at the outset of the journey to all of the stakeholders and inevitably, if you don’t take the time to do that, you’ll have people in your own staff who might have their own prejudices and biases, who just don’t get what you’re trying to do. We don’t get that it’s safeguarding. And that creates a space in which their own prejudices and biases might grow and foster, and that can cause problems further down the line, similarly with parents and carers and colleagues. So the more time, the more strategic we are at the very outset and going let’s look at the problem, let’s look at why it happens, let’s look at what we’ve got in our arsenal to justify our journey and then essentially go on a PR journey. For me, it’s about PR, it’s about absolute crystal clarity. This is why we’re doing this work and this is why we’re not doing this work. And actually, if you take time to explore the nots, you can actually take each of the kind of top ten standard challenges, barriers that people put up. You know, you’re sexualising my children. You’re trying to groom them, you’re trying to turn them. You know, it’s about knowing that that’s out there and then working with that in advance to kind of disempower those and I think what it does is it gives you as a school, as a school leader, a kind of grounding. And we really need that grounding now more than ever in terms of we’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do and it’s safeguarding. If we haven’t taken that time to communicate that to all stakeholders, we really can’t then blame them because they probably won’t have had an education themselves about LGBT+ people. We can’t then blame them when their own prejudices and fears and misconceptions and myths start to come into play. So I think now more than ever, that initial step is more vital than ever. And I think intersectionality, you know, I didn’t even know what that word was until about five or six years ago. But what it did do was it really forced me to kind of look at people as people, because I think I’ve been forced into sort of looking at gay people and looking at trans people and looking at black people, looking at Muslims and wheelchair users. There’s something about a diversity journey that kind of forces you to do that in the initial stages. But for me, I always bring it back to being a school leader. For me it was always about being present with who was in front of me and meeting them as they are. And that means that there are multiple aspects of their identity and that I have to try and meet those needs with equity. That’s why we became educators, isn’t it? But I think the language of diversity and inclusion, as it was a few years ago, kind of forced us all into silos. And the great thing about the Diverse Educators book, a manifesto and why I kind of alluded to it in my kind of follow up tips, if you like, was that I think people don’t understand, through no fault of their own, that diverse experiences in terms of privileges, in terms of discrimination, that one individual can face. You know, when I’m out training, I share a story that happened quite recently to me where I was attacked in the street and held up against the wall of the Houses of Parliament by Britain First protesters and got accused of being a Muslim terrorist who was going to bomb parliament purely because I’ve got a beard. And, you know, I never expected to experience that particular kind of prejudice in my life. But it happened. And actually, you know, when it happened, it was quite scary. But after it happened, I was very grateful for that experience because then when I got back on the tube and was surrounded by people of lots of different cultures and faiths, you know, I just sat there and thought, is this how it is? Is this how it is when you’re wearing a symbol that’s associated with your religion or you’re wearing a headscarf, whatever it is, is this how it feels? So it opened my eyes. It connected. You know, it was an empathetic moment. Had that not happened, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to feel, which kind of brings us back to the power of stories, the power of empathy, the power of lived experience. And I do think, you know, even for somebody like me that works in this field, it’s hard to empathise with people that are very different from us. So we need to build those connections, those strong relationships that I keep banging on about.

00:23:22:24 – 00:23:53:15
Yamina
I just yeah, I’m completely moved by it. I think today I’ve just been crying a lot, but in a positive way, I promise. I’m just so moved by what you’re saying, and I think I have to tell you, because I talked to Nick about this all the time. There was this one session. It was the first ever Diverse Educators conference up in West Oxfordshire where we got lost. And I remember Nick and I going to your session and it just changed me. It was the moment when I realised that it was so much about the whole child. I’m going to be cry again. Sorry, guys.

00:23:53:15 – 00:23:53:26
Shaun
Now you’re setting me off.

00:23:55:03 – 00:24:37:12
Yamina
You changed me, the way I looked at this. I’m going to stop now. But I genuinely changed the way in which I thought about inclusion. And so much of my story had been, yes, I’m a hijabi Muslim woman. And that’s really hard. And then actually going, hold on, there are so many people out there with intersectional identities who are really struggling as well. And that’s where we are so similar. So I love the idea of meeting people where they are because, you know, we’ve since then tried to do a lot of work around inclusive allyship. And that’s the reason why, because you started that Shaun and I wouldn’t be, and that’s an inner work I’ve done for a very long time. So I’m sorry.

00:24:37:21 – 00:24:38:17
Shaun
Thank you. Don’t, don’t apologise.

00:24:39:04 – 00:24:40:27
Yamina
And I’ve actually got a question to ask.

00:24:41:14 – 00:25:11:08
Shaun
Thank you. We’ll get to that in a minute. I’ll just dry my eyes. Thank you so much. Yeah, I remember that day very well and yeah, I remember that day. It’s yeah, it’s such a privilege when people share their personal story with you. And I’m very, very moved and very grateful to you. But most of all, I’m really excited to hear what you’ve been doing and how you’re changing the world, because that’s what it’s all about. So love, gratitude, respect and solidarity with you.

00:25:11:10 – 00:25:21:05
Nick
I have to say, it has done so much and it is helping within our school and our journey and to be honest it means a lot.

00:25:21:17 – 00:25:42:13
Shaun
I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you. You know, both of you. I’m so proud of, you know, the whole Diverse Educators network. You know, I kind of wish you had been around when I first started my own work, really, because it was lonely, really. That was the word. I kept coming home and thinking, this is really lonely. So it’s wonderful now that we have these networks and these connections.

00:25:42:13 – 00:27:51:04
Yamina
It always reminds me of my, so when I was working in my NQT school, I was the only kind of teacher who was essentially a hijab wearing Muslim. But I remember a student coming up to me and saying, you know, he was a student in my year 10 class who I absolutely adored and just sat one day and just said, oh, this is who I am. And I remember the day before his head of year saying to me, I think something special is going to happen. Just be aware of it. And I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about and I hadn’t expected it because I just built this relationship with this wonderful student of mine. And when he told me, I was like, oh, okay. Well, you know, it’s who you are, great, you know, for me it wasn’t a big deal, but I could understand why. And I remember going and speaking to the deputy head teacher at the time, and she said to me, how much of a privilege is that for you, particularly being you? And I didn’t really understand. So it’s like I’m just human. And I guess what she was saying is, as a visibly Muslim woman, you know, a lot of people might not see that and see you as an ally and see you as somebody safe to talk to. And I thought that moment was like, oh, okay. And I hadn’t realised that was a big deal because I’d been facing a lot of Islamophobia in that school myself from parents. And I think that was what connected me and that student because he’d clearly felt something, an affiliation, it’s just wonderful. But yeah that’s like with you Shaun and with Nick obviously but you know, the question, so we were really interested in your commitment to the manifesto where you said, I’m just going to read this out to you, if that’s okay. Learning communities, without exception, must pledge to support and represent all their diverse stakeholders, including those currently failing or falling within the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010. They must pledge to continue to do so should the Equality Act 2010 be part or fully repealed. Schools must stand for their diverse stakeholders not because of political direction, but because it is the compassionate and humane approach, respecting human rights and the right to an education, safe, free from bullying and discrimination. What a wonderful commitment to the manifesto, but could you tell us more about that and how you want to galvanise action from readers of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto, but also from our listeners today?

00:27:51:28 – 00:31:19:28
Shaun
Yeah, I think, you know, my advice would be, you know, if you haven’t done it already as a school community, you know, do sit down, come up with your, come up with your rationale, know why you’re doing it, communicate, make sure it’s on your website. But then imagine, you know, imagine, think ahead, think six months ahead, think a year ahead, think five years ahead. And hopefully this will never happen, but it might, imagine that the Equality Act goes. Imagine that something like Section 28 comes in and sit down and come up with your ten bullet points. This is why we do LGBT+ inclusive education in our school, and obviously that can be linked to your vision, your aims, to your ethos statement. And obviously, I mean, I say obviously it might not be obvious, that’s probably not the right thing to say. But, you know, it’s linked to safeguarding. It’s linked to compassion. It’s linked to preventing bullying. It’s linked to authenticity. It links back to all of those themes that these wonderful contributions have made to this chapter. But I think right now what we can all do is a little history. We can all look back to the story and the time and the experience and the learning of the Section 28 experience, and really steep ourselves in that and understand why that happened, where it came from, and how people challenged it, how people challenged it in schools, how they challenged it in networks, how they challenged it by forming connections and networks, by writing to Members of Parliament, by meeting with members of the House of Lords, by speaking out in the media and through trade unions. We may, for any number of reasons in the future, not just this particular issue, might have to make our voices heard to effect the change that we want to see and the compassion and kindness, inclusion that we want to see in schools, in education. So I think these are useful strategies for any of us working in schools across our entire education careers. And, you know, back in 2008, I was working as a class teacher and as a deputy head. I really didn’t value my own voice, particularly at that point. And I have to say, and believe it or not, I’m quite naturally shy. A lot of what you see publicly, I’ve kind of had to learn by watching other people, if I’m honest, and I never thought that by speaking out I could make any difference whatsoever. But what I learned was once you’ve got your data, you know, if you’ve got your data as a starting point and you’ve got your rationale clear and communicated that grounds you, that gives you that grounding and that enables you to weather storms. And some of those storms can be really, really hard, but it gives you a place to go back to. This is why we’re doing it. This is our data. This is what’s going on nationally. This is what’s going on internationally. And what happens through that, in the same way that school policies and parent home school agreements, they can be used to depersonalise conflict. And that’s really one of my major learning points. I guess the root of my advocacy is it’s not about falling into personal conflict. It’s about finding strategies that we can use as a starting point, as a grounding point for conversation and expectations. You know, and in all of those, all of our schools, are basics. Expectation should be kindness, compassion, safeguarding and inclusion.

00:31:21:09 – 00:32:03:22
Nick
And it should be. But it isn’t always because you actually wrote and we noted in this chapter, you said, educators can choose to validate, celebrate, educate and keep safe some school stakeholders or all school stakeholders. And they can go either way. And we, you know, it’s really interesting because you’ve done an inordinate amount of work professionally to support LGBTQ+ equality in education. I was just wondering about the impact that that work has had and why, when safe, successful, positive environments are created for young people and indeed for staff, what does that do for them?

00:32:03:22 – 00:34:15:17
Shaun
I think well, any number of things. I think it helps things like attendance. I think it helps reduce bullying. You know, it helps in terms of just being able to focus on your learning. You know, just the old saying, you know, I don’t have to think about, I don’t have to feel nervous about walking through the school gate or looking at my mobile phone or coming into the school. Because I know we’re cool here with being an LGBT+ person, being whoever you want to be. That means I can focus on my learning and focus on my studies, and that hopefully means I’ll have the best chance of life. And I think the most successful manifestation of LGBT+ inclusion that I see is where it’s really led by young people, you know, and as one of the contributions writes in this chapter, you know, the value and the power of listening to young people and valuing their lived experience. But more importantly noticing when it doesn’t align to our own experience, you know, I’ve got an LGBT+ youth group at my own school and often their experiences are very different from my own and the experiences that I had growing up. When I hear them, I’ve got a choice of kind of challenging them and kind of going, oh, you know, that can’t be true. Or I don’t, you know, I’m getting a bit funny about it. Or going, that’s really interesting. Yeah, my experience was different from that, but I’m interested in your experience. Tell me more. It’s that kind of open, more open mind and open heart, isn’t it? And that kind, compassionate curiosity to their experiences. But then being able to kind of translate those experiences into messages that can be taken to the whole school community. So again, we’re building those connections, those strong relationships and building empathy. So for me, it’s where it becomes student led. And I think it’s also where, you know, quite rightly students are going, no, we don’t want to do Black History Month, we don’t want to do LGBT+ history month. We should be doing that in every minute of every day, in every single lesson, policy, assembly and strategy, and they’re dead right. That’s how it should be. So that for me is kind of the, you know, that’s where we’re getting to in some contexts, where we go to then, who knows? That’s the really exciting bit if we’re allowed to get there, but we might have to kind of fight to get there.

00:34:16:17 – 00:34:35:27
Yamina
I love that. And I think something I really picked up on is when you talked about, in the chapter, when you first piloted your LGBT+ inclusion training and how a minority of parents really interpreted that, as you called it, as an agenda. And I was really curious about that, actually, about how you challenged it and how others could go about challenging it, too.

00:34:37:04 – 00:38:39:22
Shaun
By establishing and writing down what our agenda was and not being frightened of having those conversations, because it was very clear that the majority of the parents, I don’t think any of them ever had any education themselves about LGBT+ inclusion. And that’s not their fault. That’s just the education systems that they went through. And that creates a vacuum. And into that vacuum comes misinformation, fake news, prejudice, intergenerational prejudice, faith based prejudice. And I don’t apportion any blame for that or judgment. And actually, because I don’t, that makes it easy to kind of sit down with people and go, I can see that you’ve got concerns and thank you for coming and sharing them. Now let’s talk about what we’re actually doing and why we’re doing it and what the potential impact of that is going to be on mental health, on levels of bullying and so on. And so on. So again, it’s almost, you know, if I look back now, I seem to remember sitting down as a leadership team and I’m sure we kind of came up with a four-page document that was basically going to be our response if it blew up in the press or parents complained, and actually we never had to use it. But the very fact that we sat in a room for half a day talking all of that stuff out meant that we had a consistent grounding in terms of being able to justify it from a moral and statutory point of view. But it also meant that when we, because I did a bit of training with them as well, when parents did come in and kind of spout some of the myths and misconceptions, we were empowered to kind of notice and kind of be able to go, okay, you know where that’s coming from, we can work with that one rather than kind of getting drawn into it on an emotional level, if that makes sense. So we kind of just saw the justification, the logic for it, if you like, and took out that judgment and then were able to take it back to our policies. And actually, the day that I came out in an assembly in January 2010, wherever it was, the next morning, I had a group of parents knocking at my door that wanted to come and talk to me. And I kind of automatically went on the defensive. And it was a group of Muslim parents and they, and they said, we want to talk to you. And we just want to say to you, oh, I’ll get emotional again. We want to say to you, thanks for what you did yesterday, because what you’ve done is sent a clear message that whoever you are in the school, you’re welcome and you’re loved and you can be yourself. And that will keep children like you safe. But it will also keep our children safe as well. And that’s the kind of school that we want to go to. And that was, you know, that was my kind of first experience with parents. After I’d come out and it hit the press. And to me, I will never forget that. And I’m very grateful to them. That was such a joyful moment of acceptance and it was so important. It was always important, but it underlined the importance and for those of you who’ve got to know my work for a long time, it used to be called inclusion for all. And that was because it was not, my work was never about making a school safer for one group of people, a minority group. It was always about making it safer for everybody because that’s my job, you know, as a teacher, as a school leader, it’s all or nothing. And if it isn’t, go and find another job, you know, in my opinion. So I couldn’t just come up with a strategy that just flew a rainbow flag, although we did have a specific issue that needed that to be done, but that flag also then needed to broaden out to have every unique, diverse human individual that would ever walk through the school doors, represented and validated within it so that everybody knew that they were loved and they were accepted, but that sometimes there might be aspects of their personality or their culture or their faith or their appearance that some people might not get. And we understand that, and we’re going to work with it positively. And for me, that’s always been the bigger picture and always been the bigger, bigger win. It’s about being kind to everybody.

00:38:41:00 – 00:38:48:06
Nick
You are such a trailblazer, Shaun, honestly. I can see Yamina is crying over there.

00:38:48:06 – 00:38:51:07
Shaun
Sorry, Yamina.

00:38:51:07 – 00:39:30:27
Nick
In all seriousness, so much work that has gone on from you has had impacts far, far beyond your own immediate context. And so many of us, myself included, couldn’t have done some of the work without you doing some of that. So thank you so, so much. And I’m really, really grateful. And the last thing I wanted to ask about was something we spoke about before in terms of the current context, but we wanted to think about what changes need to happen in a positive light. So in an ideal world, what changes would you like to see happen in the school system and in wider society regarding our protected characteristic?

00:39:31:24 – 00:42:32:28
Shaun
Okay. So I think the notion of training comes out strongly from the chapter, but you know, it’s been an ongoing kind of comment that I’ve made over the years. You know, I think if we had high quality, regularly updated training for everybody around LGBT+ identities and added more broadly for anybody entering education, but also, you know, for people like school governors, management boards, dioceses, all of that and that it’s, you know, it’s strategic, it’s ongoing. It’s good quality, it’s consistent. There’s the word coming up in the chapter, you know, the inconsistency. So I think that would be high on the agenda. I think schools could benefit from making greater links to business diversity networks. There’s lots of business networks now, diversity networks, affinity networks that are full of role models. And, you know, they’re not just LGBT+, you know, I worked in Parliament until quite recently and we had Parly out, which was the LGBT+ network. We had the race network, women’s network, disability and so on and so on, you know, and often they are out to work with community projects and schools. So do research and do reach out to them. I think we’re all kind of crying out for a clearer playing field in terms of trans and non-binary inclusion. Will we get it from the current executive? I’m not holding my breath. So therefore again, we need to keep going back to safeguarding, to meeting the needs of young people with equity, but also remembering that, you know, gender reassignment is a protected characteristic of equality still to this day, I think we need a curriculum that explores human potential for prejudice and bias from the outset by exposing us all to multiple perspectives, identities, cultures and faiths from the very beginning, but then using things like philosophy for children to kind of unpick that in terms of how we respond, react to that. And I think the big mistake maybe the education systems make is just by going in our school, we’re a lovely inclusive school, we’re not racist, we’re not sexist and kind of instructing us not to be those things when underneath it we’re human beings and of course, we all are. So I think it’s much more honest to go, this is who we are as human beings. Let’s learn to notice these things when they arise and work with them positively. And as I’ve kind of alluded to earlier on, I think that kind of move away from themed days over time because for some schools right at the beginning of that journey, they’re really powerful. So I’m not saying wipe out LGBT+ history month, of course I’m not. I’m saying let’s aim high, let’s aspire for better, and let’s aspire for LGBT+ people to be represented and included in every single minute of every single day. And yes, they might be black, they might be Muslim, they might use a wheelchair, they might be neurodiverse, who knows? They could be any number of things because they’re a complex, unique human individual. And that’s a brilliant thing.

00:42:34:18 – 00:42:51:01
Nick
What a point to end on. Dr. Shaun. Fantastic. You’ve made, yeah, you’ve made us feel a lot of emotions today. And I know that we’ll have got a lot from that. And everyone listening will as well. So I just want to say a very, very big thank you.

00:42:51:14 – 00:42:59:24
Shaun
My gratitude to Diverse Educators, my gratitude to you both, my love and my best wishes. And I’m very proud of everything you both do.

00:43:00:23 – 00:43:11:11
Yamina
Thank you very much, Dr. Shaun for being with us today. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi, the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

[Outro Music]

00:43:11:11 – 00:43:27:22
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 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.