Including Inclusion in the Classroom

I remember having two amazing weeks in 2018. I attended, for the very first time, the IATEFL Conference in Liverpool. It was a wonderful chance to meet old friends and, particularly, learn from great references in ELT. One of those references is John Gray, professor at UCL and an expert in LGBTQ+ issues in ESOL.

He opened the day with his plenary?(watch it?here) on Gender and Sexuality in ELT and talked about representation, in class, in the way we teach, and, especially, in ELT materials. One of the questions he raised, and quite a valid one, was why ELT books have almost no reference to homosexuals, transgender, and queer people. He answered it himself:

They’re taboos and don’t go well with publishers as they would probably reduce sales in certain countries

Paraphrasing John Gray

A week after IATEFL, I went to London to attend?Teaching House Presents?at Oxford House College where not only did I get the chance to meet the great author John Hughes again and learn precious tips on how to write materials, but was also pleasantly surprised by Simon Dunton and his incredibly insightful presentation on how to deal with diversity issues in the classroom. Simon started by saying how multicultural London is and that issues related to diversity are bound to be brought up in the classroom. Be it because students feel free to discuss them or because of what they see on the streets, in the pubs, the Tube and, honestly, basically everywhere in the city.

This family tree did not represent my family

Simon Dunton

Diversity goes beyond sexuality and ethnicity. A simple example was the family tree activity you see in most traditional books. Just like Simon, and myself, the family depicted there was of a man who married a woman and had children who got married to someone of the opposite sex and had children and so on. Simon’s parents got divorced and he had half-siblings, just like I do. My dad was married in Sweden before he got married to my mom in Brazil.

How many wheelchair users do we see in ELT materials? How many Muslims, Hindi, or other easily recognizable religious people because of what they wear? How many nonbinary people or gay couples? The problem with lack of representation is the lack of references or role models. As John Gray shared in his plenary, the queer Indonesian poet, Norman Pasaribu, put it:

As a kid, the books I read portrayed typical heterosexual love. When you don’t see yourself on the page, it’s harder to imagine yourself as a person

Norman Pasaribu

You might be asking yourself how neutral/biased you should be, especially if you come from a country where it is illegal to be homosexual, or if your family values go against some of the things I’ve mentioned, or if people with a disability or different races are considered inferior. The truth is: the world is diverse, it’s a reality, and I say we should embrace it. If not embrace it, at least make your students aware that this diversity exists and you could do it in the most discrete and “normal” way possible: Including Inclusive Models.

One way you could do it is simply by bringing pictures of people in wheelchairs, from different races or writing examples on the board of people from a diverse background. In this example (picture above) Simon had written on the board

He went out with his husband

One of the students got confused and asked his/her pair if that was a mistake. The peer had a brilliant answer she had copied from one of the many posters spread out in the school to promote diversity awareness. She said:

He has a husband. You have to get over it!

So, some of his tips, and a couple of my own are:

• Don’t avoid PARSNISPs. Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, -isms, and Pork. Challenge them instead. Here’s a?video lesson?I created about how I welcomed them in my classroom.
• Include inclusive models. Use examples like: She went shopping with her wife; They’ve just returned from the synagogue; Amir is going to the mosque; Also, use photos of people with disabilities and don’t make a big deal out of it.
• Increase of characters’ portfolio. Why should all our characters be so stereotypical? Why use a man as a doctor or engineer or scientist? Why always caucasian? Check out my Captain Marvel?blog post?about female role models.
• Create a safe environment. This is key! Make sure everyone is welcome to share their thoughts and feel safe to discuss these things. You don’t have to challenge their views and, even more important, impose yours. But a nice conversation in a welcoming environment can go a long way and make some of your students put down their defenses to actually start learning more effectively
• Decorate the school with posters with diverse people.
• Listen, don’t judge.

Let me share an example. One of the greatest moments I had in my own teaching experience was about 3 years ago when diversity was brought up and, I’d like to believe this is the reason anyway, I had created such a welcoming and safe environment that one of my students came out as bisexual. A 15yo student felt safe enough to share this with me and the class. We talked about it as, and that’s my personal opinion, it should be: NORMAL! This student had never truly engaged in the activities before, but after seeing that we were OK with it and that we accepted it, things completely changed.

We do live in a multicultural and diverse world but we fail to find role models and examples. It will take publishers and many teachers, school managers, parents a very long time to give this issue the status of normality it deserves, but we can certainly do our part. Some people are doing more than their fair share. Here’s an example of a wonderful initiative by two people I’m lucky to know in person. Ilá Coimbra and James Taylor

Their book?Raise Up?is an example of what materials should look like if all the wonderful diversity we see in the real world would actually be depicted in ELT materials. Click?here?to find out more about Raise Up.

It’s high time we started challenging some issues and embracing how wonderfully colorful and multicultural our world is. If you think your job is not to deal with these issues as a teacher but just to teach English, I may have bad news. You’re missing out on a great opportunity to teach about what’s out there in the real world by using authentic materials and really reaching out to students like mine, who needed to get something out of their chest and feel accepted. Maybe, the reason why some students are not learning is that their minds are so busy being afraid and feeling they’re not normal that if you reflect on the tips mentioned above, their world, and hopefully everyone else’s, would transform.