Part 2: Valuable lessons from leaders of diverse education

At Lyfta, we continue to strive towards amplifying the human dimension to subject-specific learning through our storyworlds. We are honoured to be working with brilliant and ambitious teachers across the country to nurture hope, resilience and empathy in the classroom. We were excited to take part in the #DiverseEd summer conference - The Big VIRTUAL Conversation - which was organised by Hannah Wilson last month. This was a chance for us to learn from a host of impressive leaders and advocates in the diverse education sphere while making a contribution to the conversation ourselves.

All speakers offered enriching insights and advice in striving towards a more diverse, equitable and inclusive school environment and we wanted to capture a few of the many valuable and practical lessons voiced. In this post, we're sharing lessons regarding leadership and culture.

You can watch the full playback of the conference here. We have also included shorter, bite-sized clips from each leader that we have quoted, to make the content easier to consume or dip in and out of.

Serdar Ferit - Co-CEO and creative director at Lyfta

"In the past at Lyfta, we have said that we're trying to normalise diversity. More recently, we're saying that we are trying to humanise diversity and diverse narratives. Humanising diverse narratives is what I'm going to start with. This is a story about my dad…" (click the link below to listen to the short story)

"You need a shared framework to create that foundation, so when people feel that they are not being heard, they are able to call out (and they have permission to and are expected to call out) that person who is not fulfilling those agreements. It has to be absolutely explicit that this is what we stand for in our school community. It shouldn't just be on the individual to call out the fact that they feel invisible. It needs to be on everyone to notice that."

"Change is difficult. Change is uncomfortable. But it doesn't need to be aggressive and it doesn't need to be confrontational. It just means that we need to have those conversations and they need to be mutual conversations. We need a clear plan, something that means we've got an outcome, knowing where we want to go with it and what milestones to hit. And rather than tokenistic, making them tangible."

"Words without actions can be detrimental to the work in changing culture that we want to see. I make a continual investment in supporting others and those who reach out to me or injustices that I try to address. I hold myself accountable for that and encourage others to challenge me when I make mistakes. I also apologise and prepare to rework my approach to allyship when my approach needs to change."

"How can we expect to solve some of the most complex problems if we don't choose people to be on our team who have a diverse set of perspectives and experiences. Diversity performs better, it is as simple as that."

"Schools don't exist in a bubble from the rest of society, and there need to be role models that reflect the rich diversity of our society. We know that people perform better when they can be themselves. So everybody benefits, staff and the young people in our schools."

"If we want to be anti-racist we need to upskill our staff treat teams. What we need to do is have continuous reflective practice, a constant reflective practise, about how we're trauma-informed and bias aware."

"If you're somebody who has a disability, you need to share that with students. If you're somebody who comes from a diverse background, you need to share that with students. If you're a member of the LGBT community, you need to share that. Most students don't think they've got anybody that they can speak to, or anybody would understand what they're going through. You make such a difference by doing that and by being their advocate."

"We can be wistful about the future and positions of influence we might have, but it's really important to come back to where we are now. What can we do from the place that we're in? How can we lead ourselves really well and influence the sphere that surrounds us? Hopefully, as we do that, we can start to have a momentum of change going forward."