Race To The Top

We’ve recently had several meetings of our “We Need To Talk About Racism” group. Year 12’s Savannah tells us more about who the group are and what they and the school hope to achieve together. 

Due to the wide-reaching impacts of racism in society, our school has established a group called ‘We Need to Talk About Racism’. This group’s main aim is to ensure that Waddesdon becomes an anti–racist school; one that celebrates students’ and staff’s diversity and cultures, rather than ignoring them. We believe by spreading awareness on how common racism is and the effect it has on individuals in the school, we as a school can take a step forward in not only claiming that we are anti -racist in our policies, but actively campaigning and putting in the effort to make a difference. 

In our latest meeting on the 1st of July, our group was able to meet with a hand full of year 7s & 8s, so that we could effectively plan Waddesdon’s future steps to being an all-inclusive anti-racist school. Some activities discussed included having a culture day where we as students can learn about different countries traditional foods, dress and activities. As well as culture day, our group is looking into further educating our fellow student on the personal experiences that children their age can have of racism and the later consequences of it. This will take place in planned CP lessons in a way that the whole Waddesdon community can relate to and understand. In addition to the CP lessons we also want to touch on the issues surrounding the pronunciation of student’s names. More importantly the time that we should all take to learn each other’s names no matter how difficult they may seem to be. Because at the end of the day that’s part of someone’s identity, it’s who they are.

So overall our ‘We Need to Talk About Racism’ group is all about making sure that everyone in the school is both aware of racism as a whole, and the different ways they can build up the courage stop racist behaviour in and outside of the school. In addition to this our group wants everyone to feel safe and included in the school environment.

On a side note, we would be happy for anyone else to join our group especially student from the younger groups, as we would love to know what your thoughts are and the different things you could do to contribute.

Thanks for reading and have a great day.