Image: The Ardnish Path on the Isle of Skye, soon to be wheelchair accessible from Lower Breakish to the sea.

 

In this article, Matthew Savage reflects upon his experience as a disabled, wheelchair user, of a world which was neither designed nor built by or for him; and why every physical space, including our schools, is in need of liberation.

 

On a coaching call recently, my dog, Luna, and I were surprised by a sudden knocking at our front door. I apologised to my coachee, grabbed my crutches and went to investigate. Our house is at the remotest edge of a small crofting township on the Isle of Skye, in north west Scotland, and so doorstep visitors are extremely rare. Usually, Luna alerts us when anyone appears even on the horizon, but her guard was clearly down, and the knocking made us both jump.

We moved to Skye in the summer of 2021, post-lockdowns and having recently returned to the UK after a decade working in the international schools sector, our two children soon to fly our family nest. Like so many itinerant educators, enriching and mind-opening though the experience had definitely been, we were determined to find roots, and this was, we hoped, to be our ‘forever home’.

It offered a remoteness that appealed strongly to my inner introvert, and with nature at its absolute grandest at our finger- and toetips, I would be able to do some of the things I loved the most, every single day, hiking, trailrunning or losing myself in Luna-exhausting walks. In fact, there was a footpath from the end of our drive, snaking across the moors to a colony of harbour seals, but one jewel on a rugged coastline I longed to explore from the rocks, a kayak, or even, if I could brave the temperature, the waters themselves.

However, the weekend before our move, I began to fall ill. A complex neurological disorder would, within just a few months, confine me to a wheelchair, completely unable to walk. Swapping two legs for four wheels, my life would change unrecognisably. Two years on, try as I might and despite the ‘disability pride’ badge occupying pride of place below my computer monitor, I am struggling to be proud of my disability, even though – with each passing day, week, month – the lines between my disability and me are disappearing completely.

Many of my everyday symptoms – the allodynia that secretly burns my skin, the angry twitches that shock my muscles, the stammer that silently benights my speech, the spasticity which tugs my shrinking legs – are invisible to others. But everyone can see that I cannot walk, and learning to navigate an able-bodied world with a disabled body has taught me so much. About our bodies and all the things we take for granted; about a world designed and built by and for those who can walk; and about the power perpetuated by that design and construction, the tyranny of physical space.

I am privileged to be engaged in a project, with tp bennett architects and in association with ECIS, in which we aim directly to challenge that power and to seek what we are calling ‘liberated school spaces’. Teams of educators, architects and students will explore how the different spaces in our schools – circulation, classroom, sustenance, personal and outdoor – can too easily exclude, marginalise and oppress the very, marginalised groups they should most seek to include. A school campus, like the world beyond its gates, is, in so many ways, an instrument of power, and that has to change.

But it is beyond the school gates that I have most experienced this tyranny myself, and I share here some small windows into my story. These snippets are about planes, trains and automobiles; about bathrooms, doors, and bathroom doors; and about curb cuts, actual and metaphorical. Because all of these have, in their own way, kept me on the margins of society; because I know that my ‘protected’ characteristic is unprotected, tyrannised even; and because each of these spaces could, and should, be liberated.

Beyond the safe and known confines of our Highlands bungalow, I navigate any internal or external space in my electric wheelchair. The ‘door’ is a convenient metaphor for the portal to any community of power (we talk about getting our ‘foot in the door’, for example); but that portal, for me, is literal. If I want to enter or exit any building, or room therein, I am typically faced with a heavy, handled, hinged, outward-opening door, despite the fact that the only door that is easy and safe to open in a wheelchair is a sliding door, manual or, better still, mechanised.

This challenge is everywhere, in many an ‘accessible’ hotel bedroom, and especially so when I want to enter an ‘accessible’ bathroom. Almost every time I have wanted to use a public bathroom, I have had to ask a stranger if they would open it for me. As someone who does not believe students should have to ask for permission to use the bathroom, I certainly do not think I should have to do so myself. To add insult to injury, many an accessible bathroom does not provide sufficient turning space either; and flying out of one airport recently, I was told there was no accessible bathroom available at all.

As a consequence, I commonly try to minimise my fluid intake when out of my house, so that I do not have to suffer the indignity of a bathroom whose ‘accessibility’ is but a mirage, a performative badge that may tick boxes but does not liberate the disabled user. This is not to mention the bizarre requirement in many a public space that a wheelchair user report to a cashier in a nearby shop to collect, and return, the special bathroom key. I recognise this is to ensure able-bodied users do not occupy this targeted space – but, again, the design, much as it may seek to liberate, does anything but.

Whilst I love the success with which Zoom masks my disability, I love my face-to-face work. Norah Bateson calls this aphanipoiesis, the communing and commingling of multiple stories in a submerged, liminal space from which could eventually emerge a seedling of hope. And for me, professionally, nothing compares to this; how fortunate am I that the pandemic lifted its pall such that I can safely travel around the world again. And yet each flight, or succession thereof, treads on my agency and dignity, and my comfort and safety, at every juncture.

The system through which one requests special assistance when booking a flight varies between airlines in all but one thing: its complexity. Even airlines which build it into the booking process rarely pass this information on to the check-in staff, leaving me having to explain my medical condition and requirements again, all in earshot of an increasing, and increasingly irritated queue. And most airlines require persistent and repeated phonecalls and emails to secure a promise only that they will endeavour to provide said assistance.

I used to rely on the airport wheelchairs, but the understaffing of the privatised assistance teams, combined with the fact that most airport wheelchairs are not self-propelling, left me, too often, stranded in a corner, facing a wall, without access to food, water or a bathroom for several hours. Therefore, I invested in a foldable, electric wheelchair, which is now, to all intents and purposes, my legs. Just as I manage, despite numerous objections, to take it to the plane door, I am always promised that it will be returned to the door on landing; but, on landing, I am commonly told that it has been “lost”, panic setting in until it is discovered again, somewhere in the baggage hall.

Going through security is, at best, undignified and, at worst, invasive; on only one occasion have I been permitted to take my wheelchair onboard, and so my agency is taken away with it; boarding is a spectacle, whether or not I manage to avoid being forcibly strapped into the onboard wheelchair; the safety instructions, written or spoken, never mention someone like me; my crutches are routinely confiscated, and retrieving them, should I need the (inaccessible) bathroom, is laboursome.

And, on landing, it is not uncommon for me to remain on board for up to an hour after everyone else has disembarked, the crew for the following flight patiently caring for me until assistance has arrived. Every flight I take takes away a little part of me, and I am lesser forever thereafter. And yet, with intentionality, consultation and compassion, air travel is a space that could easily be liberated. The likes of Sophie Morgan fight this fight on my behalf; I used to give feedback myself, but nothing ever changed, and it is hard then not to give up on feedback altogether.

I love curb cuts. Designed in California by Ed Roberts and others in the 1950s and 1960s, they took one of the discriminating spikes of hostile architecture, and literally excised it to create a ramp that directly benefits people like me, but from which everyone else also benefits. Such a powerful idea is this that I use its metaphorical equivalent as one of the instruments of equity and justice through which every aspect of the school experience can be adapted for universal belonging.

However, whenever I navigate the pavements of a city, I have learned not to depend upon the existence of the actual curb cuts which would enable me to move, unencumbered, through those built environments. The only city where I have not faced this difficulty was Amsterdam, but this is because of the prevalence, far further up the food chain, of the bicycle; the wheelchair was an afterthought. I often talk to schools about the tussle, in any practice, between coincidence and consistency, and this is, fundamentally, an equity issue. The same is true for the humble curb cut.

In London recently, I selected a restaurant based on its social media and website having declared it fully accessible, only to arrive and find there was a step to enter the premises. This is not just frustrating; it is humiliating, distressing, and infuriating. The step may as well be a brick wall. Then there is the construction work which has temporarily diverted pedestrians on to the road, but without a ramp to cut that curb. And on a recent train journey, a step-free station was closed, which meant I had to ask several strangers to lift me, on my wheelchair, from the train at the next station.

Which brings me to the ramps, installed or designed with the best intentions, deliberate acts of inclusion, whose gradient is simply too steep to carry my wheelchair safely upwards. On at least three occasions this year, it is only the sharpest reflexes of a group of adults coincidentally nearby that prevented my wheelchair tipping backwards and sending me tumbling to likely serious injury below. Or the promised ramps which, for whatever reason, did not materialise, leaving me depending, again, on others, this time to lift me up the steps to the upper level.

I share none of these stories, any more than I would the myriad other stories I kept back, to elicit pity. No disabled person I know wants that. I only aim to offer a window into the tyranny, intentional or otherwise, of the able-bodied over those whose body is disabled, but one example of the power exerted by physical spaces over those for whom said power is but a pipe dream.

Too often, the burden of fighting for accessibility, equity and justice falls to those on the margins. Some schools I visit thank me for shedding a light on the inaccessibility of their campus; it is not uncommon for a school to ask a queer educator (or student) to educate the school on the harm of a cis-/hetero-normative curriculum, culture and climate; and many a school will finally seek to adapt to the needs of the minoritized only when an educator or student happens to inhabit that particular minority. And yet, as my own story epitomises, disability is a characteristic that could suddenly strike any one of us, temporarily or permanently, at any point of our life.

Consequently, I have had no choice but to adapt myself and my life to a world which has not, nor will it, adapt to me. The crutches offered to me, by default, collapsing bruisingly beneath my faceward-falling body too many times, I commissioned bespoke crutches which not only could bear my full weight but also came with attachments for mud, sand and even snow. And I invested in a disability-adapted, fully recumbent, motorised trike, on which I can now explore the lanes and byways of rural Skye, without depending upon anybody else.

Meanwhile, let us return to our unexpected visitor, knocking to the surprise of Luna and me in the midst of my coaching call. He was part of a team, funded by the charity, Paths for All, who were rendering fully wheelchair-accessible the entire footpath from the end of our drive to the rocky shore in the distance. And he wanted to inspect my trike, to make sure that the sharpest bend in the new path could accommodate its particular turning cycle.

I may cry easily these days, but I was moved to tears by this gesture. The view from my front room, until now teasing me with a landscape that I could only watch and imagine, was soon to be liberated. Both natural and built environment were bending to my needs, and the power was shifting. Very soon, I would be able to cycle to the sea, for the first time since we moved here. The seals may not have missed me, but I have certainly missed them; and, in this space, for the first time, I would finally feel free. I have yet to manage kayaking, and I cannot swim any more, but still, in a small but significant way, the sea belongs to me again.

The “Liberated School Spaces” conference, a collaboration between tp bennett, ECIS and The Mona Lisa Effect®️, will take place in London on 10 November 2023. Learn more and register here

 

A proud member of ECIS’ DEIJ team, Matthew Savage is an experienced, international school principal, governor, speaker, coach and consultant, helping leaders, educators and students worldwide, through The Mona Lisa Effect^®, help ensure that every child, without condition or exception, can “be seen, be heard, be known and belong”. He lives on the Isle of Skye, with his wonderful wife and atypical dog.

INCLUSION, LANGUAGE, LABELLING, NEEDS and BELONGING

An illuminating interview with the founder of Global Inclusion Consultancy, Inclusion Expert, author and trainer, Daniel Sobel, who himself has ADHD and has turned it into his ‘superpower’.

 

At a time when ECIS has been reflecting deeply on inclusion from an international perspective and reflecting on its own practice, it felt opportune to discuss the topic with Inclusion Expert, Daniel Sobel to learn more about how his work connects with the work of UNESCO, ECIS and its membership community.

 

In this interview, Daniel openly shares his thoughts around some focused questions asked by Leo Thompson, an education consultant who designed the widely used Inclusion Umbrella and specialises in international school development and accreditation for a leading agency.

 

 

Q1: Daniel, besides your global inclusion consultancy, you have written a number of very successful books on the topic of inclusion in schools, but I wondered what this well-travelled word means for you. Is there a concise way of grasping the essence of the concept?

 

My team and I have been privileged to work with thousands of schools and I am fortunate to run an organization that supports inclusion in schools in approximately 130 countries. If there is one thing I can say for absolute certainty about inclusion it is that the word itself is hardly very inclusive. No two schools or two regions or two countries really agree on what inclusion actually means in reality – or even in theory for that matter.

 

‘Inclusion’ is a broad a spectrum that involves anything from physical issues to social, emotional and mental health issues and through all the neurological and cognitive aspects to gender, race and cultural issues – and the list goes on. Because this list is intimidatingly long, schools generally home in on the specific issues affecting them. 

 

For many, the term inclusion implies more work, effort, more money and resources and possibly admitting to facets of our responsibility we have failed at.

 

To sidestep all of the big issues above, there is one thing that inclusion as a verb brings about and that is a sense of ‘belonging’. This is something that all of us humans can relate to – it is inherent to the way we have evolved as beings who require a group. The group gives us safety and hope and all things nice. Unfortunately, the group can also be something like out of Lord of the Flies, or very subtly maligning or marginalising, something I experienced painfully as a child.

 

But effective inclusion brings us all to a sense of feeling like we belong just like everyone else does. This bypasses the need for any labels, expensive programmes or extreme shifts. It unites all of us humans regardless of where we may or may not be on a spectrum, disfigurement or skin colour.

 

Q2: You lead an organisation that has worked with thousands of schools in supporting inclusion and another organisation that supports inclusion in numerous countries. What are the biggest challenges and barriers to inclusion the world over and are there any catch-all starting points for all schools?

 

The biggest barriers to inclusion are the money, time and stress it presents to people as I describe above. There’s another barrier which is harder to describe because it always rubs up against an ill-defined ceiling. There’s a video I show of people with Down’s Syndrome who have university degrees, run a business, are married with children and have professions. It’s not that they were so unusual. It’s their teachers who believed in them that were. Belief-in is always fettered by assumptions and genuine limitations.

 

Where is that balance?

 

That’s the hard bit – to be aspirational and realistic.

 

The starting point is always to know your students as individuals. It is easy to say this and of course every school in the world will tell you they do already. But there is knowing and there is knowing, in its fullest sense, and some schools are oriented and more equipped to capture and utilise the soft data that tells the story behind the hard data that most schools use to track progress. Nearly all effective practices are through the doorway of this soft data and I wrote a whole book on this very theme. I think many schools I come across haemorrhage money on interventions and staffing which are surplus to requirement because they are led by the hard data results and sadly not what the child actually needs.

 

Q3: You recently launched the Global inclusive Teaching Initiative which is an online course for millions of teachers all over the world to enable all teachers to teach all children. Adapting the classroom to meet the needs covers a broad range of issues. How did you go about deciding what to include? What do you prioritise for teachers?

 

That was the juiciest, nerdiest and most enjoyable process for me and my co-authors, who included the renowned Professor Carol Tomlinson, and Scandinavian expert, Helena Wahlberg. We loved every moment of that series of discussions and debates. We had all written books and between us we are privileged to have worked with thousands of schools the world over. Actually, our debates were more nuanced and sometimes about what we should leave out. We all agreed on the phases of planning the lesson, delivering the lesson and understanding children. If we’d had to have completed the exercise in 10 minutes, I think we would have been able to easily, because there is broader consensus on what good inclusive teaching looks like nowadays than before.

 

Q4: Can you share 5 of the most effective practical inclusion strategies or approaches that educators can use in their classrooms and say when and in what situations they may be useful?

 

There are 5 most common fault lines where lessons can go wrong and they are often due to a lack of understanding and engaging the student effectively. These are easily preventable and just being aware of these can be really helpful. The majority of behavioural issues have something to do with these fault lines and that does make us rethink the whole topic of behaviour.

 

1) How a child enters a lesson has everything to do with how they settle. How do you make them feel and how do you know? Feelings of nervousness, dread or discomfort will lead to a lack of engagement. It is important to check in informally and listen to students here at an individual level.

 

2) Inevitably the teacher will engage with the class and this is nearly always initially done in a verbal delivery. But do all students fully understand the verbal delivery? This point is where students will get lost and simply checking and using other visual aids will help engagement.

 

3) Splitting into group work is an under-researched topic and it can lead to isolation and hiding within the group, avoidant and fractious behaviours. This group scenario is more easily managed through a framework of roles and checking children with variable profiles all can contribute equally and are welcomed into the group.

 

4) Similarly, when setting work for quiet, individual time, children may simply be too afraid to clarify or declare they do not understand and are not sure what is going on and what they need to do. Many students would prefer to appear naughty and thus avoid the work than appear ‘stupid’ in front of their peers.

 

5) One of the most neglected parts of the lesson is the very end. Interestingly, this can not only have a serious knock-on effect to the next teacher but actually, to how the child perceives the whole class and their anticipation of their next time with you. So, just as they enter the classroom with positivity, so they should leave it with a feeling of success.

 

The above focus is on understanding of the child, but it relies on the understanding and awareness of the teacher about what is going on for the child and their capacity to quickly notice and adapt. Underlying this is the relationship between teacher and child and that, I hope unsurprisingly, is the key to inclusive learning.

 

Some people may think that inclusive teaching is about elaborate scaffolding and differentiated work sheets. Actually, it is more about how a child feels, the relationships and the aspiration that is born out of this cocktail. Cumbersome technical additions are nowhere near as valuable as simple tweaks, checking of understanding and reinforcement based on genuine care.

 

Q6: What role does school culture, or atmosphere, play in inclusion, and do you have any tips for how to prevent marginalisation?

 

School culture is a very important issue and one which most educationalists are simply not trained in, and neither was I when I was in schools. I wrote a chapter about this issue in my second book comparing how out of touch we are compared with many other sectors and industries about the culture of our organisation down to the granular details of how it feels to step into your school.

 

For instance, banks and supermarkets usually think a huge amount about layout and design of their buildings, the processes customers go through as they engage with the organisation and they know this hugely effects their bottom line. This is also true of schools and yet not enough of them invest time and money into this. Banks and supermarkets also think about their staff culture – from uniform to language they use, to protocols and all manner of communications which will again, be carefully aligned to meet the needs of their bottom-line aspirations.

 

This is often not taken seriously by some schools and is thought of being peripheral. However, something that becomes obvious when you visit hundreds of schools is that like any other organisation, you feel the culture in the air the moment you walk through the door. Culture is ignored at a school’s peril.

 

Q6: Schools and their teachers differ hugely in their level of access to resources and training globally and yet everyone is expected to educate inclusively around very diverse needs. Are there any lessons from you work with UNESCO, that may be valuable to international schools?

 

Let me say two symbiotic things which may cause significant financial relief to some schools and cause others to scratch their heads. As a general rule, nothing does inclusion better than great teaching. You can reduce most interventions that cost time and money – aside from the ones that help the social and emotional aspects of children’s lives, keep those! Many of the withdrawal and remedial interventions are often just a distraction away from good teaching, and I say that noting their very positive intent.

 

So, this is a blanket approach which, when my team and I have carried out SEN audits with hundreds of schools, we find in general savings of many tens of thousands of pounds as well as an uptick in outcomes.

 

However, and here is the kicker, teachers need to be up to scratch on how to effectively teach all kinds of students in their classroom at the same time. Is it possible? Of course, and it is not even as hard as it sounds. But I wouldn’t want to be in charge of building a bridge if I was a chemical engineer and similarly, I don’t think it is fair to ask teachers to teach children they are not qualified or capable of teaching because they have not been supported by effective professional development.

 

It was because of this very skills gap that we noticed all over the world that we produced the Global Inclusive Teaching Initiative. As we are rolling this out for millions of teachers across 130 countries, also in support of UNESCO, we hope this will not only have a huge impact on children and their outcomes but also on the classroom lives of our teachers.

 

Q7: One of the topics picked up all in your latest book (The Inclusive Classroom) is the use of language and labels, and this goes back to stigma, glass ceilings and limitations, perhaps the unintended consequence of positive intent around inclusion. In this context, where is language useful and where is it not in inclusion for belonging work and for supporting student needs and enhancing their self-belief and independence?

 

I find that in general, adults who struggled at school and parents who struggle with their children are relieved to get some sort of diagnosis because they feel that one term explains so much to them and they can share it with others.

 

I am very quick to tell people that I am ADHD, I am proud of it and I think of it as a super power in many ways. But here is where it can go very wrong. Some people think that a label means something limiting or negative. The word ‘disorder’ and all of the problems associated with it usually accompanies such descriptors rather than the many gifts that these labels can imply.

 

But more than that, I think there is a risky sloppiness that comes into play when we teachers use labels. Just to state the obvious, Psychologists and medical professionals diagnose and treat and therefore they need a specific label as an identifier for a course of action. Teachers don’t diagnose or treat, they teach and create environments where purposeful learning can happen. In this circumstance, a label is actually a decoy and often hides the real issues.

 

For example, 3 children in a class may have Autism but each can present extremely differently – one being loud and disruptive, the other quiet and distant, the other being a model student who is extremely studious to the point of gifted. Similarly, you can have 3 completely different diagnoses, for example one child with Speech and Language issues, one with inattentive ADHD and one with Asperger’s and they all present very similarly to the classroom teacher.

 

So, the label doesn’t help here, it actually eclipses the real truth – which is that the only thing that helps the teacher adapt the classroom well for students is to personalise to meet the needs of individuals – and this means knowing the child; their quirks, strengths, hobbies and interests and their frustrations. I often say that we have been through one phase, which is to help all teachers understand the basics of things like Dyslexia and Trauma and the like and now we need to move on to a new epoch where we ditch the labels in the classroom and think about individual children.

 

I opened my latest book with a chapter on this issue going through all the research and practical issues that come up in classrooms and the publishers and advisors around me were expecting a backlash. In fact, I am very pleased to say that there have been no complaints or comments so far. I am glad to have stuck to my guns on this point and I make it a talking point wherever I go.

 

Daniel Sobel will be a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator at the ECIS Inclusive Education conference in Athens in March 2023. His recorded conversation with Sarah Kupke can be seen on the ECIS YouTube Archive. Daniel has written books, founded the Global Inclusion Consultancy, developed the Global Inclusive Teaching Initiative and is hosting the Global Inclusive Schools Summit, with UNESCO in September 2023.

 

Leo Thompson works closely with Daniel Sobel. He is an educational consultant whose “Inclusion Umbrella” graphic has become something of an icon for visualising how discriminatory catagorisation of difference can be converted into strengths if we embrace diversity and truly strive towards creating cultures of belonging for every child.

 

Escaping our confines of fear: a call to develop courageous learning communities

Nunana Nyomi

“I’ve been worryin’ that we all live our lives in the confines of fear”, the refrain of Ben Howard’s song, The Fear, kept insistently echoing in my ear. As the song played, I had to put it on repeat as I reflected on the fears I see on display when attempting to further diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) efforts within my profession of international education. Often these fears are expressed in the form of questions. “What if the students say something controversial?”, “What if our institution goes viral on social media?”, “What if we offend an influential parent?”, “What if we fail?”, “What if…”.

These ‘what ifs’ have become like walls, fencing us in and paralysing us in the face of our responsibility to develop equitable and inclusive communities.

Psychologists say we experience fear in order to protect ourselves from threats. Does this accurately describe the fear that my colleagues and I are experiencing? If so, then we have to take a critical look at ourselves and what we view as threats. If DEIJ efforts are meant to create environments where all can thrive as their full selves, then why do we find it so hard to act? Why do we feel threatened? Perhaps we know, deep down, that taking action requires us to hold ourselves accountable for our part in perpetuating and benefiting from inequities in our communities. Perhaps we worry that standing up for justice may cost us the relatively modest trappings we have worked so hard to obtain. This zero-sum thinking blinds us from the cost of our inaction.

 

The cost of our fear

 

The opportunity cost of maintaining our status quo is a misguided generation of students within our care. According to ISC Research, our international schools now serve a much more diverse population than the Western expatriates many were originally designed to serve. However, our curricula are still largely dominated by eurocentrist perspectives, our teachers and leaders are mostly white and western, and many of our schools still serve a narrow group of wealthy elites. Yet, many of our mission statements proudly proclaim that we are developing internationally-minded global citizens. Our empty statements and shallow focus on food, flags, and festivals, are not enough to prepare our students to engage with our dynamic world.

We have a tremendous responsibility to get past our inhibitions and act now. All we have to do is watch our daily news headlines to notice the growing trend that we live in an increasingly polarized world which is facing looming existential threats. Climate change, military conflicts, and the resulting mass migration which we are already witnessing are all potential harbingers of what is to come. Furthermore, some in our care face daily abuse and discrimination due to their race, sexuality, ability, and other forms of identity. We fail our most vulnerable students and staff when we remain too afraid to explicitly address the harm they experience. Given the urgency of our challenges, we must ensure that this generation of students can feel seen and can develop the agency necessary to bridge differences in order to address our world’s problems. How might we break out of our fearful funk to create more inclusive and equitable communities to address these challenges?

My quest for strategies to address our fear-based crisis of inaction led me to borrow from the field of psychology, where strategies abound to help individuals overcome emotions of fear. While the semantics might be different, there are many DEIJ strategies that are very similar in approach to the world of psychology. Therefore, psychology provides another potential access point for DEIJ concepts. Just as there has been greater acceptance of therapy as important for wellbeing, I believe we are in need of therapeutic approaches to transform ourselves and our communities to become places of flourishing. In my own exploration, I came across two of these strategies which can be adapted to our contexts as international educators: cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy.

 

Borrowing from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

 

CBT was developed to help individuals conquer unhelpful ways of thinking that can lead to psychological distress. One of the CBT strategies is to address the underlying beliefs that impact the emotional responses we have. Often, the cause of our fears can be found in irrational beliefs or expectations of ourselves. For example, in our largely white-western educational cultures, perfectionism has become an intoxicating drug. We are always striving to do more, be better, and push ourselves to never fail, because we have been socialised to falsely accept flawless performance as the standard. Whether it is perfectionism, eurocentrism, ableist thinking, heteronormativity, or something else that afflicts us, we have to be introspective about the beliefs that underpin our unwillingness to take action.

CBT can interrupt the negative spirals of ‘what if’ thinking that often halts DEIJ work. This therapy invites us to challenge our idiosyncratic beliefs by teaching us that we are worthy of self-acceptance when we struggle or make mistakes; that others are worthy of acceptance even when they behave differently to what we may expect; and that sometimes life has challenges but that does not mean that we are facing utter disaster. This shift away from perfectionism and other irrational beliefs makes room for the diverse perspectives that we find in our international communities. Thus, allowing us to build up the courage we need to truly give voice to the voiceless, even if it may mean opening ourselves up to criticism. From this courageous stance, free from irrational beliefs, we can make positive changes towards equity and inclusion.

 

Exposure Therapy Strategies

 

As the name suggests, exposure therapy aims to desensitise individuals from their fears by having them confront them in a safe environment. This can be done through a variety of methods from having individuals use their imagination, using virtual reality, or using live confrontation. Admittedly, exposure therapy is not without its critics. It could potentially induce more anxiety or trauma to expose an individual to their fears. However, when it comes to nurturing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive international education community, it is vital that we expose ourselves to individuals and perspectives which we may fear. How often do we cultivate friendships with those from different races, nationalities, abilities, religions, gender identities, or sexual orientations to ourselves? How much literature do we read from non-dominant perspectives? Do we ever make an effort to de-centre ourselves and listen to those who are traditionally unheard in our communities? We cannot do equity and inclusion work if we are not reaching out to form these relationships or hear their perspectives.

Now, before everyone rushes off to find that one BIPOC friend or attend that one cultural festival, I must clarify that we should not fall into the superficial and tokenising equity traps. Rather, I am suggesting that we must engage in deep and meaningful work to embed and centre a broader range of perspectives in our communities. As educators, beyond forming friendships across differences, this means learning to employ culturally relevant pedagogy strategies and consistently immersing ourselves in literature to enrich our understanding of student experiences such as Dr. Danau Tanu’s Growing Up in Transit. We need to truly expose ourselves to difference in order to overcome the fears that paralyse us.

 

The choice we have to make

 

While CBT and exposure therapies tend to be applied to individuals, I would argue that our learning organisations are in need of collective therapy. Just as with any other therapy, this will take more than a one-time workshop to address. Our institutions and their leaders must ensure that adequate time and resources are provided to move past our fearful inertia. We must commit to and invest in advancing DEIJ initiatives so that everyone feels a true sense of belonging at our institutions.

Strategies which root out our fears are essential for us to make progress in disrupting the status quo in the manner that DEIJ work requires. After all, we are collections of individuals with anxieties and fears, these fears creep into our decision-making. As we mould the next generation to tackle the urgent problems we see in our world, and as we aim to protect the most marginalised individuals in our community, we cannot afford to let our fears paralyse us into inaction. Are we prepared to work on ourselves and our institutions to break through our fears in order to build a more equitable world, or are we prepared to inherit a more polarised and inequitable world? Let’s be courageous and choose the former.

“…I will become what I deserve…” Ben Howard’s voice echoes repeatedly as the bridge of the song The Fear builds to a crescendo. When it comes to DEIJ, if we continue to live our lives in the confines of fear, we will only have ourselves to blame for what our institutions will become in the face of the challenges that face us.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Nunana Nyomi is the University Advisor and DEIJ Coordinator at Leysin American School, Switzerland. Nunana is passionate about developing communities where everyone can thrive as their full selves and helping students find career pathways which allow them to fulfill their potential. Nunana currently serves as University Advisor and DEIJ Coordinator at Leysin American School (LAS) in Switzerland.

Prior to joining LAS, Nunana was based in the Netherlands as Associate Director of Higher Education Services for the Council of International Schools (CIS) and provided programs to support student transitions from school to university education. Additionally, Nunana served on the CIS Global Citizenship Team and on a special CIS Board Committee on Inclusion through Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism (I-DEA). He also previously led international student admissions for Calvin University in the U.S. Nunana is a Third-Culture Kid who grew up in the U.S., Ghana, Kenya, Switzerland, and the U.K. He has a BA in International Relations and French (Calvin University) and a MA in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education (Michigan State University).