By Karen Munro, DHT Lenzie Academy, East Dunbartonshire Council
This post is part of a series of three blogs by educators and activists published in February 2023 and focusing on the Building Racial Literacy (BRL) programme. You can see all the blogs in the series at the link below:
Building Racial Literacy programme blogs
Without a doubt the Building Racial Literacy (BRL) programme has had a huge impact in my role as a secondary teacher/DHT and in my own life. I have the vision for the programme on the wall in my office and I check in with it every day.
Anti-racism is a baseline professional value and educators are empowered to identify and implement anti-racist behaviours and processes in their everyday life.
I start and end my day with this vision in mind. For me, every educator should be racially literate and not ‘race evasive.’ So, I now reflect on What do I need to do today? What have I done today? What do I need to do better tomorrow?
During the BRL programme we were asked to keep a journal and I remember how passionate I was at the start, keen to learn and meet likeminded people. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions and a real learning curve. The inspiring tutors, my course mates and my local authority improvement officer kept me focused and positive that we were all on a journey.
I reviewed how tokenistic my ideas had been in the past and that my professional duty to be an anti-racist educator was every day and not just on ‘Diversity Day’ or Black History Month. One session on racial microaggressions; where a contributor spoke about being repeatedly asked, ‘Where do you come from? Where do your people come from?’ and hearing the phrase, ‘I don’t see race but…’. This made me reflect on my whole career and ask myself: I had not challenged such microagressions enough or been as active as I could have been? But now I had no excuse to sit back and let others do the work.
The BRL programme empowered me to challenge and speak up in a new way. Before I would have hesitated to talk about race as my ‘white fragility’ kept me quiet. Understanding the impact of my whiteness during the BRL programme allowed me to explore that in a safe yet challenging environment. I had never considered the privileges my ‘whiteness’ afforded me in my life and work. It clarified that it was not enough to be just anti-racist but also to be an ally for colleagues of colour.
As part of the programme, we wrote our personal Anti-racist Action Plan, and I was keen to share it with my colleagues and start the conversation about challenging racism and building a more racially literate school community. In my plan, I made a commitment to set up the school’s first Anti-racism group for students to discuss current issues and for them to be the voice of our student body. I also made a commitment to keep reading and researching in the area of racial literacy as part of my professional responsibilities and hopefully become a BRL facilitator. My headteacher and school staff have been so supportive and keen to learn and to begin our racial literacy journey as a school community.
Our students are key, and I now spend Friday lunchtimes with a wonderful group of students who run our Anti-racist club. We discuss news stories, and in October the students organised an anti-racist event in the school. I am about to visit every department in the school to review and support their progress in becoming more racially literate. Collaboration is key on our anti-racist journeys and I have worked with two black students to review our S1 history course and implement changes. I have also run a Building Racial Literacy continuous professional development (CPD) event for staff which overran as they were all so keen to discuss and share experiences and ideas.
As a participant of the BRL programme, I valued speaking with like-minded people who are open and honest and in safe spaces. Listening to people sharing their experiences and traumas, this openness was both a privilege and made me hungry to initiate change. I did not want my BRL journey to stop so I applied to become a BRL facilitator. I felt very strongly that I wanted to continue to work with likeminded individuals and be part of the movement, which supports educators to reflect and represent the real Scotland of the Twenty First century. Ultimately if we can create safer, braver learner experiences where Racial Literacy is front and centre of what we do then as Arundhati Roy states “Another world is not only possible, she’s on the way…if you listen very carefully you can hear her breath.”
