How to build an Antiracist School | A Conversation with Orlene Badu

I speak with Orlene Badu, a passionate advocate for education equity and the elimination of systemic biases in schools. Orlene shares her personal experiences as a young black girl growing up and how those experiences motivated her to challenge low expectations and create opportunities for other children. She discusses the importance of racial literacy training for staff and the need to understand the perspectives and experiences of the communities international schools serve.

Orlene also highlights the significance of creating safe spaces for marginalized members of the community to share their experiences and for staff voices to be heard without fear of negative consequences. We dive into the challenges of addressing biases within the education system, the importance of role modeling anti-racist behavior, and the use of rubrics for self-assessment and reflection. Orlene emphasizes that addressing biases and inequalities requires active effort and collaboration, and provides valuable insights for international school leaders who are committed to creating inclusive and equitable learning environments.

Key Quotes

"The actively antiracist educator or organization will be actively disrupting those inequalities, actively taking ownership of their own biases, whether that be in the individual or the system”

"I think sometimes people think if you say unconscious bias, they seem to think that means that you're giving people you're allowing people to be biased because they were unconscious and they never knew. Rather than really understanding that it's knowing that we all have biases and we can admit them without realizing and we have to challenge ourselves to do better."

"But us trying to challenge them on our own is not enough because the system can also have biased outcomes."

“There are so many young people for whom if they had had the support that they needed when they needed it, then behavior would never have been a concern."

"Your behavior policy is as strong or as it is as strong as the adult who administers it." "I think one of the mistakes that we can make is we can think we know what's needed, we can think as educators or as leaders that we know what's kind of where we need to go in terms of approach, but actually it's really important that we understand what our community feel as well."

Resources Mentioned

How to Build Your Antiracist Classroom

Hackney diverse curriculum resources, adaptable, six weekly units of work that were developed by highly skilled teachers in Hackney for teachers. You can sign up for these resources here.

Thank you for tuning in, and as always, if you found this episode useful, please share your experience. You can find me online on Twitter, LinkedIN and Instagram: @leaningshane. My website is shaneleaning.com.

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Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com

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