Race, Ethnicity and Education... What do you believe?

A very controversial topic was on the agenda of today’s lecture... if you couldn’t tell from the title it was about Race and Ethnicity in the classroom and how our personal views can affect how we teach or even if we teach children about other races and ethnic values!

Rachael Boyle (a lecturer at Edge Hill University) challenged the 3rd years to think of black sports men and women and musicians... How many could you think of? Between 5-10 altogether... I could think of the likes of Kanye West and Jessica Hill, just to name a few. Now, how many black scientists and mathematicians do you know? Much to my ignorance I could only name a one mathematician... Katherine Johnson. The lady who worked for NASA, calculating trajectories for the space missions. (I am embarrassed to admit that I only know this because I watched the film Hidden Figures).

Tactfully, Rachael asked these questions to highlight the latest research, how there is an 'absence of presence' in our primary curriculum. This means the absence of black history such as: inventors, travellers and mathematicians in our curriculum.

SO the question is, if you consider yourself an inclusive practitioner... how do you embrace race and ethnicity in your classroom?

I hope to make my classroom inclusive by adding quality but diverse literature (The Journey by Francesca Sanna is the latest book to be added to my collection) to my reading area and by celebrating the different languages already in the class by learning phrases such as Hello and My name is.

In our seminar we further explored how we could make our curriculum more inclusive to black history, not just white brits. We considered teaching children about:

• Science- Garett Morgan

• Maths- Benjamin Banneker

• English- Maya Angelou (Poet)

• Art- Anish Kapoor

• History- Mary Seacole

By doing this I feel like I will be giving children the knowledge and the skills necessary to make their own (very important) decisions and opinions about different matters regarding race and ethnicity (not just forming opinions based on other people opinions). All in all, fulfilling my role as an educator of all things.

#TS8