Participating in the DARPL Enhanced Leadership Series (ELS) has enabled me to reflect more deeply on my understanding of anti-racism and the role we play in creating truly inclusive learning environments. Prior to the ELS, my understanding of anti-racism centred mainly on promoting equality and ensuring that discrimination was challenged when it occurred. While this remains important, the learning within the DARPL CoP has helped me recognise that anti-racist practice and leadership are proactive. This requires intentional curriculum design (deliberate curriculum as we call it in DARPL), ongoing reflection and a sustained commitment to ensuring that diverse perspectives and experiences are represented within the curriculum.
The DARPL ELS has strengthened my confidence to engage in critical professional dialogue about representation and belonging within our school community. My learning has reinforced that anti-racism is not a single initiative but part of continuous professional development and whole school community cohesion and improvement. Back at school, through collaborative discussions with colleagues and external agencies, we are increasingly considering how the curriculum can reflect the diversity of our local, pan-Wales and global communities while remaining meaningful and contextual for our learners.
My learning within DARPL has fuelled my leadership, emphasised and realised the importance of connecting learning to pupils’, staff and community lived experiences and digging deep into the concept of place. ELS highlighted how a curriculum can support pupils to develop their individual and collective sense of identity and belonging while also learning about the diverse stories that shape Wales and the wider world. It has encouraged me to think critically about whose voices are included in our curriculum and how learning experiences can be designed to be authentic and inclusive.
Within our school, we strive for anti-racist and decolonial principles to be reflected through whole-school curriculum projects that promote enquiry, representation and collaboration. Inspired by DARPL, over the past two years we have developed projects to explore identity, heritage and migration. Last year our Welsh Heritage Schools Initiative award-winning project, Footprints of the Past, explored the concept of cynefin and personal heritage. Younger learners explored journeys and travel, while learners in Year 3 & 4 investigated the heritage of our school community by creating passports to celebrate languages and connections to place. Older learners explored the story of Windrush in Wales, developing an understanding of migration and diversity within Welsh history.
This year our whole-school project explores the impact of migration on Llandudno. Learners investigated how migration has shaped the local community through themes such as food, stories and people. Younger pupils explored how local food businesses have influenced the area, while others explored folk stories from different cultures and shared stories from home. Older learners visited Conwy Archives to research the life of Joe Taylor, a black boxer born in Maryland in the late 1800s to enslaved parents who later settled in Llandudno and became an important member of the local community.
These experiences allow pupils to explore important concepts such as identity, belonging and diversity in ways that are authentic, age-appropriate and meaningful.
My commitment to developing this work further is reflected in my professional leadership, our equity planning and our improvement and development planning. As part of my NPQH, my headteacher development project focuses on promoting diversity, anti-racist practice and pupils’ sense of belonging within our school community. My enquiry question asks: How effectively does my leadership in a faith school promote diversity, anti-racist practice and pupils’ sense of belonging within our school community?
Through ongoing engagement and professional learning with DARPL, sustained curriculum review and reflection and authentic collaboration, our school continues to develop a curriculum and culture to support every pupil to feel seen, valued, represented and inspired through learning community cohesion.
To find out more about joining DAN (follow this link): Advocacy Network – DARPL
To find out more about attending ELS (follow this link): Enhanced Leadership Series – DARPL
