Nayana and Himani had a great afternoon working with the other GDST schools and key people at Trust Head Office at the first cross-schools Student Council meeting on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
All schools were allowed to share one idea from their school. Nayana and Himani enjoyed sharing the visual displays in Howell’s, in particular the Black Lives Matter display and the images and information on black sports people in the Pavilion. Nayana also shared a list with Mrs Chyba of other initiatives happening in schools. Here are some of them.
Initiatives that other GDST schools shared:
- Having surveys on student ideas
- Pride celebrations with charity events e.g. selling rainbow accessories and information about figures in history and assemblies celebrating LBGTQ+ history
- Ramadan assembly for students to understand e.g. stalls of information
- Big celebration of Eid and everyone’s individuality for students
- Assemblies with former black students
- Diversity groups in different year groups
- Creating a vote on what they want to do e.g. Black History Month, LGBTQ+ history month
- Anti-racism society topical issues, white privilege, media representation
- African dance classes and assemblies, celebrate Stephen Lawrence Day (Black History Month)
- Teachers had unconscious bias training
- Education on women’s struggles in society
- Assemblies to educate LGBTQ+, given money to a LGBT charity, rainbow accessories
- PSHE lessons on black history
- Having a LGBTQ+ society
- Safe environments to discuss race where students talk about their experiences but white people and younger students can also attend as well as teachers and listen to experiences
- Safe spaces (so people don’t have to worry about saying something offensive)
- Learning about other students’ background, heritage and culture, having the halo code. Highlighted the importance of different cultures’ festivals
At the end of the conference the school-wide GDST survey results were discussed and were shown in different groups e.g. religion, race etc. and what the outcome of it means. For example, how certain groups should be represented more. One thing that came up was gender identity and how this is an area to work on. In addition to this, towards the end of the meeting the idea that students have unconscious bias training was also discussed and what the benefits of this would be.
It was great to see that many ideas are already actions we are putting in place at Howell’s. Thank you to both Nayana and Himani for attending and representing Howell’s so well.
