Wellbeing
Charlotte and Ibby
Preventing and Responding to racism in schools
Schools play a key role in preventing, identifying and responding to incidents of racism. BBPS, along with the department, acknowledges that culturally safe environments support better engagement and outcomes for learners.
By taking a proactive and whole-of-school approach, schools can ensure that all students are respected, valued and treated equally. Evidence shows that early intervention of prejudiced attitudes and behaviours, including racist bullying, can contribute to positive lifelong impacts for all students and the school community.
To further support our commitment to building cultural understanding in our students, we will be sharing a range of resources with you via our newsletter in term 3 – some of these will give you an insight into how we address concepts of racism in an age appropriate way through our school curriculum, while others are being provided to proactively support conversations at home.
Why strengthening multicultural inclusion in schools matters
(Information informed by DE document, Student Leaders for Multicultural Inclusion 2023)
Multicultural inclusion and building intercultural capability are essential to ensuring a vibrant and prosperous community in which everyone is welcomed, feels safe and is supported to participate. The Victorian Government acknowledges that education plays a particularly critical role in promoting social cohesion and multicultural inclusion in our community. Schools provide an environment where respectful relationships, acceptance of diversity, knowledge of other cultures and an understanding of global and local issues can be developed and championed.
Exploring culture: What do we mean when we talk about culture? When we talk about culture, we sometimes limit our understanding to nationality, faith and ethnicity. Culture is much broader than this and can mean a lot of different things to people. Our culture can be informed by our family, our friends, and the different communities we identify with. Any discussion or learning about cultural diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion needs to begin with an open dialogue about what culture is and what it may mean to different people in the room.
Celebrating Diversity @ BBPS
Last term’s Grade 6 action projects were focussed on addressing three key concepts at BBPS, informed by our Attitudes to School Survey
- School connectedness and belonging
- Bullying prevention
- Cultural diversity
Congratulations to our Cultural Captains and Visual Art Captains, whose projects provided opportunities to build an understanding of different cultures represented across our school.
Our Cultural Captains ran a cultural games session for grades 4 and 5 and our Visual Arts Captains facilitated an art workshop with grade 2, resulting in our diversity art display in the Library.
How can you support at home?
Explore different understandings of ‘culture’ and what it means for your family, and what it might mean for others.
Find ways to explore and focus on the similarities between and across cultures (rather than the differences).
Empower your child to share their culture with others. If they are comfortable, encourage them to delve into history, behaviours, values, and beliefs, highlighting the things that are important to them and their community.
Conversation stems to support at home:
• What are our family traditions? What are your hobbies?
• What language do you use that adults (like your teachers) might not understand? What other languages can you name? Who do we know that speaks another language?
• Is culture always something visible?
• What do you think of when you think of Melbourne’s culture? Where do people hang out? What do people wear? What do people eat or drink?
School policies (on our SCHOOL WEBSITE ) that support our processes are
- Child Safe policy – outlining our commitment to Child Safety and detailing how we meet standard requirements
- Student Wellbeing and Engagement Policy – detailing school follow through process
- Parent Complaint policy – outlining processes for our community to follow should they need to report an incident to the school
- The department’s Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Policy, also requires schools to have a local policy which explains that discrimination will not be tolerated, such as an Inclusion and Diversity Policy. The Report Racism hotline is also available for students and families who might not be comfortable reporting an incident of racism to their school.
Resource share