Teach Wellbeing; Teach the Truth
Hello,
I am Curmiah and one of the ways I show up in this life is as Deputy Head of English in an Inner London Secondary School. I am, evidently, an African woman teaching in the belly of the coloniser. I am also a creative healing facilitator and have been engaged in many staff meetings and conversations about returning to school. Many of the conversations have been centred around wellbeing and it has led me to this point that -
Teaching wellbeing begins with teaching the truth: yes, a ‘recovery’ curriculum is necessary, but also, the whole national curriculum needs a shape up (the kind you can only really get from a black barber).
How will our children recover from such times of global urgency and social change?
Several of us will currently be in conversation about how to successfully reintegrate our students back into schools post-pandemic. If you are teaching in the British education system, then you understand that hierarchy and elitism remain ever-present in academia. We know that the shape of education still supports the model of capitalism. Sadly even for those in deprived areas where many of us teach - where a child’s education is a family’s only saving grace; where they are invested in and banking on the future earnings of their children, we push our students to grow and earn well-paying jobs to support themselves and their families. If you are teaching in areas like this then you will understand that teaching wellbeing begins with teaching the truth. That when we are lied to, this too is injustice and it accosts our spirit. You will know this if you have ever seen a young person argue being wrongfully accused by a teacher. Hence, if we want our children to be well, we must begin by feeding and teaching them the truth because only that is freedom. And if we are honest about the lessons of Covid-19 alone and the communities it has greatly affected, even then we understand that intersectionality is very real and that a fight for one injustice is inclusive of a fight for many more. If we are planning to care for student wellbeing, we must also care to decolonise the national curriculum.
As educators, I urge you to think. Aside from grading, how do top universities select final choices from their excess of applicants? And the job roles we have been reminded that the world relies on? Those of public service, the doctors and nurses and teachers and artists and scientists and healers. How are they selected for such essential roles? In both of these scenarios, they are finely selected after looking at character, worldly interests, a sense of social justice, an eye to transform the world (before you question that consider the advice you may give to a student vying for a place at Oxbridge who is writing a personal statement). In the same manner, these universities look for World Changers - people who will look good on their resume, as part of their alumni, people they can brag about to represent them well. If we do our jobs correctly then these aforementioned qualities of good moral code are what we strive to ignite in our students, and if we place these qualities at the forefront of teaching, we facilitate room for both learning and personal development as well as boost our students with the kind of culture that should be capital; a culture that begins with themselves.
If yourself, or a student are presently worried about what education they might have missed during this global pandemic, this pinnacle in time and movement for civil rights, or worried about how far it may have kept them behind from getting into one of these ‘prestigious’ corporations (corporations, because their grounds alone scream empire just as their lawns say freshly mowed. Lest we forget than in a Guardian article in 2018 it was stated that Oxbridge held 21bn in riches), remind your student, or yourself, that appropriators (much like academia) will stay on anything that is trending; anything to maintain relevance, anything to capitalise on numbers. Tell your student not to worry, ease their mind in letting them know there are other races to be won in this life. Like being a good human. Tell them that if they remain present in time and in moments of transformation then they win in all worlds, and don’t we all live in the same one?
When character becomes an unchangeable thing (what we refer to in education as having a fixed mindset), this is where our influence as educators becomes less able to infiltrate and help the spiritual and moral upbringing of our students; where we lose the opportunity to do what many of us set out to do when we joined the profession – to contribute to the development of a better future. Grief, loss and injustice are, in their own right, numbing and hardening feelings that can derail a person’s character if needs are not met to restore balance in your life after an encounter with either of these emotions. Not to mention if you are a student from said deprived areas I have referenced that are caught at the intersection of all of these blows. Just imagine that on top of all the elders in your community dying, you are subject to watching the repeated deaths of black and brown bodies, people who look like you, through your primary source of media education – your phone screen. How can we expect children and young people – those at the age where character is truly taking form, not to need long-term, ongoing support from being rooted in this kind of global grief and shift? It is them that we are building the world for and so a lot of them will have felt both the weight of grief, perhaps even guilt and responsibility, during this time.
Being inclusive in education does not simply mean making space for and accepting difference. It also means caring for the wellbeing and specific requirements for differences to co-exist harmoniously in the same space. This includes respect for the narratives, practices and customs of other cultures. Even if we only have one student requiring wheelchair access in our school, the entire building must be wheelchair accessible. The same accessibility should extend to our students – not just in what they are taught, but in how they are taught it. This is why I say that teaching wellbeing is not separate from teaching the truth, from decolonising our curriculums.
As well as increased experiences of trauma, many students will also be returning to school with alarming perceptions of how the world views them and/or a sense of defeat (given that we’d had an approximate average of 30% of students accessing online provision during this time). Some may also return more confident in using their voices and in their individual learning styles and practices. If we are safeguarding correctly, we must find means to meet every student where they are as opposed to expecting them to all fold back into the creases of an archaic school structure. This is traumatic in itself and triggers anxiety. On return to school the security of student wellbeing, ideally, will require most of (but is not limited to) the following:
A Wellness department (one that the behavioural department can fall under) with its own curriculum
The Creative Arts, Humanities, Physical Education, the specific study of botany, media literacy and financial education spearheading said curriculum
More resident artist-educators in schools
Physical education inclusive of yoga for children, movement and meditation and the study of energy and metaphysics
A revision of school canteen provision to ensure students brains and bodies are receiving adequate, healthy, natural nutrition
A pastoral structure that is inclusive of mentors and counsellors (not to be added to or taken away from the roles of teaching/learning assistants) and a trauma response team
A restorative behavioural system that centres on the practices of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
More than one adult presence in the classroom; this should be inclusive of a balanced representation (if you’ve ever had to go, every day, to a space where there is no reflection of yourself or someone you can identify with then you will understand what it’s like to feel alien and lose your sense of self)
A peer-mentor system
A flexible timetable or means of learning (meaning adequate technologies for students to partake in remote learning if required)
Adequate staff flexibility and job security for departments to govern the management of their teacher timetables (inclusive of PPA time and time available for remote learning)
Meditation and mindfulness embedded into each and every day
access to green space as a multi-use space – for both breaks and learning; in fact, classroom spaces with more comfort (we do not have to replicate Victorian London, not even to socially distance)
PSHE as a space for students to reflect on themselves and their learning – both academically and socially, at least every month
Accountability circles made up of their peers
Grief counselling for staff
Guidance/Training for staff on how to facilitate positive conversations and positive self-talk in and among students
Cycle/swim training/boxing – training in a sport (at least for KS3)
Community outreach projects throughout the academic year that keep the students active and connected to the politics and the socio-economic climate of the school’s local community
Some of us have made a start on some of these. I do not claim to know how to deliver all of these, but I know that without suggestion or open dialogue there cannot be conversation around them. I know that if the efforts are collective and united, then every item I listed is, in fact, possible. It is possible for us to teach our students the truth – that the world, and language, and learning is much broader than white, western intelligence. Yes, teach them Dickens but also teach the truth of his context – that his plight for social justice was not inclusive and that he too was a product of the era he lived in; teach them the word ‘colonisers’ in place of ‘explorers’; show them how we are all interconnected and that there is only really one history - one with many faces.
England has been a vulture. One that has capitalised on the world with the weight of her language yet speaks in politically correct metaphor while sinking the weightiest of knees on the necks of her BAME citizens. Even as I say BAME there is a strain in my neck that, if you’ve ever read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’, you will understand. See this is what an anti-racist curriculum does - it is a bridge that allows us to understand each other. I also say citizens because as residents of the world, whether documented or undocumented, we have every right to be here, every right to equal opportunity and fair treatment. It should not matter how many of us there are or that we are a minority in this country or in classrooms. What matters is that the labour of Africa and her diaspora has and continues to build the foundation of this country. It has never been a fair trade because we are always exploited, always at a loss. If there are no reparations, at least teach the children the truth because the whole world knows England’s lies. It is a burden to grow up manipulated or hated. This is not what we want for our students; for them to be stuck at this intersection.
Some small steps to start:
Do not remain ignorant. The global tension right now will not simply go away if unresolved. This movement, for many, is their life’s work and if you choose to ignore you are setting your children up for illness with the burden of it all, because it will come again. Stay educated and set expectations in your schools that require the same from all staff; create reading lists for staff that ensure they engage with understanding diverse experiences.
Send The Black Curriculum’s letter of protest to Gavin Williamson (Secretary of State for Education); equally buy their schemes of work and get them in your schools.
Sign the petition to Parliament to teach Britain’s colonial past as compulsory education and remind them to give minority voices a hand at writing this new curriculum - https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/324092
Sign the change.org petition for an update of the GCSE reading list.
Embed education of the UK civil rights movement and their leaders in your school curriculums (push to have this in the National Curriculum).
Support organisations like @KnowYourCaribbean and get them in your school – not just in assemblies, black history month or as guest speakers.
Do not let up off the Government’s necks in the fight for more funding for schools.
As teachers, it has always been a prerequisite to the role to remain on the frontline for social justice. I’ll leave you with this quote from a personal great – Maya Angelou:
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
Be present. Act now.
Further Reading