My personal journey with race definitely affected my leadership – it is a personal journey we do not always pay attention to or examine in order to understand the impact it can have on the trusted relationships in our school communities.
The current landscape is challenging for us all and we recognise more than ever the importance of creating the right conditions for our community to thrive. Being in a trusted environment is what ensures your community feels like they belong and know they are valued.
This is just as important for your staff and parents/carers as it is for your pupils. Our own personal journey with race will also affect our ability to confront race – and racism – to ensure all of our black and global majority community members feel seen and valued; to ensure they believe that they can trust us to challenge systemic inequalities, to challenge racism, and to have a positive impact on their lived experiences.
My own journey
My own journey was framed by the systemic barriers I faced due to my own intersectionalities, the majority of them being characteristics I was born into.
Intersectionality is the lens through which you can see the concentration of power, how it presents and where it collides. I was not only black. I was not only female. There were a number of characteristics that collided to ensure I was locked into systemic bias and racism.
I was black, a girl, from a lower socio-economic background and lived in an economically deprived London borough. Being the only black girl in my year group for a number of years we had limited lenses through which our teachers viewed us – often viewed as either a black child with behavioural issues or a black child who is average (irrespective of academic outcomes).
I vividly remember my parents being told that I talked too much. No celebrating being the winner of the spelling bee regularly, without fail. The focus was talking. No opportunities to be celebrated for effort, persistence or achievement at school.
Thank goodness for home. My experiences were rooted within the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. This meant I was exposed to the experience of combined oppressions that were multi-layered. The intersectional lens highlighting that my experiences of racism, gendered bias, ageism and classism were experienced simultaneously. And often emitted by those who were paid to ensure I thrived at school.
Our own journeys
We have all had a journey with race, whether we pay attention to it or not. This journey will impact on our relationships today – those that we value, those that are of importance, and those that we must work hard to deepen for the benefit of our community and ourselves.
As a senior leader if every child in our school thrives, we thrive. Our roles are juxtaposed against the socialisation many of us grew up in and around – the fear of openly talking about race, the fear of confronting inequality.
Being taught that to notice differences in public is a cardinal sin, the language of race – don’t talk about it. The need to ascribe to being colour-blind at all times; not discussing why we may only engage with people of the same race, being in a vacuum of similar experiences, similar voices, and similar thinking.
Working in a diverse school doesn’t mean our socialisation no longer has impact on our relationships. We must engage with our history, our perceptions, and our own biases to understand how they impact on the relationships we build.
Are you a trusted leader?
So, are you the trusted leader that your diverse community has a right to expect?
Your candid engagement with your early experiences with race can only positively impact on your role today. Having developed your own racial literacy, you will be aware of the negative experiences the black and global majority have experienced in education in the UK.
Understanding the impact of the educationally subnormal schools and the negative impact on those who are black; understanding the promises made to the those from the Windrush generation, only to be broken decades later; understanding the atrocity of what Child Q and many other children who are black and global majority have experienced as a result of racism cumulatively provides the context for why the black and global majority community can have difficulty trusting and engaging with the school community.
How does this knowledge impact your relationships? How does it impact on what you provide? How do you ensure that any decisions you take for the community are fully cognisant of the historical racism endured by that community and the part it plays today?
Are you paying attention to this? Or ignoring it? We cannot convince ourselves that there is “no problem here” as that only satisfies our own safety, not that of our communities and the systemic inequalities they endure daily.
Our community cannot thrive if they cannot trust
It is impossible for anyone to thrive in an environment they do not trust. To be continually fearful of limited opportunities, lower expectations and continued, personal negative impact can affect our ability to learn, to engage, and to form solid relationships.
These factors can have been at play prior to our arrival or can be in existence now. It is important to address that in every meeting, encounter and conversation we have, we must consider the historical context for those we are engaging with.
To remember that many of the parents who are black and global majority in your school, if educated there, may well have endured systemic racism in the education system. And they have to leave their child with us every day and trust that we will ensure that their experience challenges what their experiences were.
When we are considering how much our black and global majority community trusts us, there are some crucial questions we can ask ourselves. And what if we don’t know the answers? Well, who can we ask and how do we find out?
- Do we understand that their lived experience might be outside of our consciousness?
- Do we believe their experiences and seek to create change?
- Do we always keep their children safe?
- Do we safeguard their children against racism inside and outside of our school?
- Do we value their contributions?
- Do we seek to dismantle systemic racism in our school?
- Are we their advocate, ally and champion? How do they know?
We must use our privilege and power to impact on our communities in a positive way and in a way that dismantles some of the systemic racism they experience across society.
What senior leaders do to build trust
Having considered the questions above, it is important that we think about what action can look like as we seek to build and deepen trust with all of our community, not just those who are familiar to our own lived experience.
Do consider the following possible actions – there may be many more ideas that you would add, this is all about developing our learning.
Speak to your parents: Many parents/carers tell me that they hear murmurings in the school about work on race equality but no-one ever tells them what is happening and therefore they have no idea about any commitments being made by the school. If we have done any work on equality and equity for our pupils, we must ensure we share this with our parents. They must know the journey we are embarking on, how far we have come, and what is left to do.
Meet with your parents: Ensure you meet with your black and global majority parents/carers so that they can tell you what they think the next steps for the school and community could be. They will have had first-hand experience of systemic barriers in society and likely in our schools. While other parents may feel isolated that they have not been invited, it is about them understanding that we need to create a safe space to hear those who are typically unheard. The journey may mean that eventually you can have a whole community meeting too that ensures we all understand one another’s experiences.
Power and responsibility: Be aware of the power of even one staff member to disrupt the trust of the community. We must ensure that all staff have a responsibility to build trust with pupils, parents, supporters and external agencies. It is important to hold staff to account when they are not supporting this need for trust. A good place to start is deepening their racial literacy to support relationship building.
Reviewing policies: It is important to review all of our policies with an anti-racist lens. Do our policies pay attention to those most systemically disadvantaged? Do they speak to the experiences of all of our pupils and build trust? As an example, does our hair policy unfairly affect certain pupils because of the natural way that their hair grows? Does your safeguarding policy consider the impact of living with racism and safeguarding children against that?
What would a behaviour policy that builds trust look like? Perhaps it would indicate that where there are characteristics that seem to experience more consequences within your policy, there is a review carried out by staff (at various levels) and governors to identify next steps. It may also include pupil voice by those most impacted to understand their views/experiences.
Final thoughts
Ensuring we engage the voices of our most systemically disadvantaged community is imperative to building trust. Hearing their lived expertise, understanding the barriers in place societally as well as in our schools, and “listening to understand” are all key components.
But beware: asking our black and global majority community for their views with no action is traumatic. They have probably repeatedly been asked to speak of their experience and share their challenges to deepen our learning. This creates harm if there is no action as a result. Therefore, do not ask for feedback if you have no intention of responding to their needs/challenges.
Understanding cultural heritage and understanding experiences that may be different to our own is important for challenging inequality and building communities that understand all experiences.
Finally, a key way to consider how we build trust in our schools is the approach we take when dealing with racist incidents. I discuss the best approach in more depth in my book, How to Build Your Antiracist Classroom. It includes examples that provide a consistent approach in which all children are able to learn and feel safe as a result of well-trained staff and clear processes.
- Orlene Badu is a former primary school headteacher who also has experience working in alternative provision. She is the author of How to Build Your Anti Racist Classroom (due June 2023 – visit https://bit.ly/3YXRDrz) and now works across London as a leadership and management advisor supporting schools and local authorities. She is also a school improvement advisor. She is the curator of Hackney’s Diverse Curriculum. Visit https://orlenebaduconsulting.co.uk/ and find her previous articles for Headteacher Update via https://bit.ly/htu-badu
Headteacher Update Summer Term Edition 2023
This article first appeared in Headteacher Update's Summer Term Edition 2023. This edition was sent free of charge to every primary school in the country. A digital edition is also available via www.headteacher-update.com/digital-editions/