VIEWS & OPINION


Offering more diverse texts isn’t just about expanding your English Literature curriculum, it’s about preparing your students for the outside world Comment by TABATHA SHEEHAN, Head of English at Westonbirt School


Finding texts that are inclusive and diverse is a responsibility and privilege that we all take very seriously – many teachers feel it is a moral duty to ensure that the texts we study and the discussions we have around these allow and encourage development in pupils’ compassion, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and real-world understanding.


But it is also important to not pretend that


this doesn’t involve some hard work and effort! You can’t simply introduce a new text overnight. But, by taking the time to do so, you’ll be helping your students to progress far beyond your classroom. One of the best tips I was told in my teaching training was to always go back to basics when you’re tackling something tricky, and for English teachers, this is essentially a reminder to go back to the books.


Tackle KS3 first


As part of our primary strategy, we include a DEI unit in Years 7-9, which include novels such as Wonder, A Kind of Spark, Refugee Boy, All American Boys, I am Malala and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, as well as multicultural and LGBTQ+ poetry from each continent.


The younger years are often overlooked when it comes to DEI. Teachers can be wary of tackling such seemingly complex and sensitive issues and potential complaints from parents when texts and discussions become intense and ‘real’. I would argue that this makes it more important for the younger years; education should be the doorway into critical thinking about reality and a safe but informative space to do so.


Engaging younger pupils is vital to tackling internal biases and planting the seed for inclusive thinking early on. There are thousands of books out there to help with this and we have found many of ours, listed above, by browsing bookstores and speaking to the sellers, researching bookseller websites (many often have pages devoted to diverse texts), asking other staff and pupils for recommendations and, most importantly, reading them ourselves before putting them in our scheme of works (SOW). Once this exciting task is done, we curate SOWs around the texts – researching context and implementing it into the study with wider reading and careful language study – and send home letters to parents to let them know what the books are, what other fictional wider reading the pupils can do alongside the unit, and things that they as parents could be reading to further develop discussions and thoughts at home.


Wider reading with KS4 and 5 set specs Within the confines of KS4 and 5 set exam texts, there’s not quite the 24 www.education-today.co.uk January 2023


same freedom to reinvent SOW entirely, but we do ensure we fully explore all the texts on offer with our classes.


We’re part of Pearson’s Lit in Colour programme, a programme run in partnership with Penguin and The Runnymede Trust. They have helped us greatly by providing free set texts, and a programme of support so we can diversify our curriculum. We allow our pupils to vote on what they would like to study, explaining the themes and cultural contexts of each, and encouraging them to develop critical thinking outside of their own world view and take responsibility for their inclusivity.


Beyond the texts, we also work hard to critically engage with the contexts of the works they are accessing – for instance, when students have chosen ‘Othello’ as their set Shakespeare for their A level exam we ensure that we read widely about the historical attitudes and events that shape racism. This can involve the wider reading of Ignatius Sancho’s accounts of slavery, as well as tracing the problematic etymology and semantics of the language in the play, such as ‘turban’d Turk’ and ‘thick-lips’ and comparing it to the language used today in the media, tackling any internalized biases and misconceptions of race.


It’s not just the English department, model DEI across the school! From their English lessons, our pupils can then take what they learn and apply it to their lives – they think more carefully about their language; they approach the news with more careful and shrewd eyes; they vary their choices in their consumption of media, looking beyond what they know to what they want to discover about others in the world. But this shouldn’t rest on the shoulders of the English department.


I work in a small private school renowned for nurturing children and celebrating their unique qualities, but we are acutely aware that pupils in a more economically privileged position at private schools also need to recognise their social and moral duties, including inclusivity. Many of our schools extra-curricular and enrichment activities are a part of that, such as the debate society that deals with news issues from around the world, the Model UN, Amnesty International Club, Goodwill service trips and fundraisers, LGBTQ+ society, an Eco Club, and many more.


Ultimately, whilst this is a predominantly white middle-class school, it is a place of great effort for DEI – our pupils understand that the world is much more diverse and challenging than they always see in their Cotswold bubble and so many of them want to be a part of making it better for others as much as for themselves.


Try and try again


Ultimately, each of these strategies for DEI are about your effort – as is much of the teaching profession – and about creating a culture where DEI is celebrated. Whilst many of these are academic and enrichment strategies, much of DEI is working with your team, the wider staff and your SLT to support one another in how you make progress, and not being afraid of taking a misstep.


The best you can do, as we tell all our students, is to try.


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