Celebrating difference
Somehow I always get the post-holidays gig when I write The Conversation, and what a bumper holiday it was, with Easter, Passover and Ramadan all happening at once.
This Friday marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, so you might be thinking about how you might support Muslim students to celebrate Eid, and educate all students about this important time.
This piece by young reporter, Loretta Hasanaj caught my eye as she reminds us that with two billion or so Muslims worldwide, there are many different ways to commemorate Eid al-Fitr.
‘Not a racist country’
A constant theme over the holiday period, sadly, has been various government debacles around racism, whether that be racist immigration policy, the institutional racism of the metropolitan police force, views around child-grooming legislation, or racist dolls.
All of which reinforces findings of the most comprehensive survey of race inequality in the UK for more than 25 years, including what its authors say is unprecedented insight into the experiences of Gypsy, Traveller, Roma, and Jewish communities.
The report reveals that more than one-third of people from ethnic and religious minorities have experienced racially motivated physical or verbal abuse, including children while at school. And yet Government has rejected demands for schools to make recording racist incidents mandatory.
Staying educated
Luckily, there are some great new books and resources for educators, which can support anti-racism efforts in schools.
Though written for early years educators, Valerie Daniel’s Anti-Racist Practice in the Early Years: A Holistic Framework for the Wellbeing of All Children is relevant and relatable across the sector. And out this week, Sarah Wordlaw’s Time to Shake Up the Primary Curriculum: A step-by-step guide to creating a global, diverse and inclusive school promises to be a treat, supporting efforts to ensure the curriculum whispers ‘you belong’ to all children in ways which are meaningful and not tokenistic.
Of course, our society is divided along more than racial lines. The UK National Archives has created some resources for secondary schools to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement which are worth checking out, as is an article which helps highlight where some political nuance is overlooked by the resources.
CheatGPT?
There’s been a lot written about using Artificial Intelligence (AI) recently, so I decided to give it a go this week. I’m using it to help me write a literature review and a blog post, and so far, so good!
Evidently, I’m not alone. In Wales, university students have ‘confessed’ to writing essays with the help of ChatGPT’s AI programme. But before we rush to dismiss this as cheating, it’s probably worth understanding how we might incorporate AI into our teaching, and young people’s learning.
In the 1970s, teachers were up in arms about calculators in schools. Today, they are on every Year 7 starter’s essential items list. The main concern then was rooted in the fact that maths instruction would need to change in response to their use. Once educators understood that in fact the calculator could accelerate students’ access to more complex maths and that there were ways to firmly embed mental maths into the curriculum early on, teaching and learning changed accordingly.
It’s a reminder that the narrative around cheating doesn’t tell the whole story when new tech comes on the scene. Indeed, many teachers think generative AI could actually make learning better, believing that ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it.
Meanwhile, technology is already making learning better for some, prompting the Dyslexia Commission to recommend in their new report that children in every school should be introduced to assistive technology. This, they argue, will help create equitable access.
We shouldn’t allow this attempt to raise awareness of the benefits of incorporating technology within mainstream teaching and learning to go unheard. Especially not when the biggest blocker to this is teachers who feel unfamiliar and sometimes overwhelmed by the idea of learning how to use it themselves.
Plus ça change!
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