Alex Gaunt - Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Niamh 

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of College in Conversation. Unfortunately or fortunately, who knows, Matt is not the host of today's episode. It is in fact, Niamh, it's lovely to be here for the first time. I have a great conversation for you all today, one of which focuses on equality, diversity and inclusion. That leads me to introduce my guest, Alex Gaunt, who is the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Lead at Lingfield College. 

Alex 

Hello everybody. Yes, my name is Alex Gaunt, I’ve been the inclusion lead since September, which is a new role which I applied for. I was very excited to get. 

Niamh 

Brilliant. So, let's start off. What does it mean to be the equality, diversity and inclusion lead both to you and to the school community? 

Alex 

Well, it depends on how cynical I am being… First, my cynical answer is a joke was that it’s always my job to have the ideas to get turned down. But on more serious note, I want to try and make this school a more inclusive and welcoming environment for everybody. Because when we look at things like the protected characteristics, and one of the things I'm trying to stress and sometimes people misunderstand is, is trying to like privilege or gain advantage for certain groups, that's literally the exact opposite of what it's trying to do. 

Everyone has at least some of the protected characteristics, I'm not sure why I'm gesturing with my hands at this point… this is a teacher thing, but everyone has some lots of the protected characteristics. So when we have things like the Equality Act, when we're trying to incorporate those into the way we as a school act and respond to things we are protecting, we are looking, we are trying to help and support every single student. 

It's not about some students, it's not about other students. It's about literally every single student, every single teacher, every single member of staff, anyone associated with Lingfield College. That's who we're trying to help. That's what equality, diversity and inclusion for me is all about. It's about including everyone. It's amazing. Everyone here. 

Niamh 

Because everyone is a part of those protected characteristics. So therefore, it's vital to make sure. 

Alex 

Exactly we everyone has an ethnic, racial, national background, everyone has a sexuality, everyone has gender, everyone has sex as they were assigned it to just name a few. So, we've all got these things. And the thing about the Equality Act is as well, and the inclusion is not about trying to sort of lump us all together and make us the same. 

That's another mistake sometimes people make. We are all different. We are completely different. We've all got different combinations of sexuality and ethnicity and disability and all of these other areas. And that's brilliant because we're all different. But when we all come together and if we genuinely can properly come together as a whole, it's so much better when we've all we've all got something different to bring to the party. 

So we need to not leave anyone out because if we leave someone else out, we're all the rest of us going to suffer because they're not part of our community anymore. They've got something good to bring to it. So, we need to bring people in  

Niamh 

…and celebrate everyone as part of that. 

Alex 

Exactly. 

Niamh 

So I guess my follow up is what drew you to the role that you're currently in now. 

Alex 

So I've been a teacher for my 18th year now, and I know I know this is my 10th year at Lingfield College. I am the new Mr. Harrison, but I started teaching because I trained as a… I did a philosophy degree, I did a master's degree, and I love my subject. But my parents made clear that there was no more money for a Ph.D. and I needed to get a job. 

And I wasn't prepared to give the subject up. So, I went into teaching because that was the next best thing to do. A Ph.D. As far as I was concerned, I think I might have said this to sort of thing to you as part of your GCSE class at one point, but I think loving a subject isn't enough to keep you going in teaching. 

I love the students. I think you're all absolutely brilliant and there are a tiny number of jobs where I get to spend every single day with interesting, interested young people who have got something new to say to me. And sometimes we have this sort of idea that I'm as a teacher here to impart knowledge and wisdom on you, but it's like this sort of one-way street. 

And that's absolutely wrong. I would say it's got to be a two-way street, and over the 18 years of doing the job, I've come to realize more and more and more how much I've learned from you lot, from the students. I, I genuinely believe I am a better person because of the students, because of things that I've learned from the students, because of things that the students have told me and taught me. 

And in learning all of this about you and in becoming, I like to think a better version of me. Because of that, I thought, I want to take this further. I want to be able to do more. I can be a bit of an argumentative so-and-so as well,  

Niamh 

I think we all can! 

Alex 

…and if these things are right about the things and if there's stuff that I think, oh, we need to as a school, we need to be doing that better. 

I've always had a slight tendency just say, Oh, you know, I'm just going to tell people, I'm going to nag people about these sorts of things anyway. So the EDI role seemed like a really good one because it made like I was like the official school EDI nag. And so, I had like a proper designated nagging role and an encouraging role. 

And for me that was really positive because I can now start using and hopefully developing some of the things that I've learned myself, some of the things I've learned from the students and some of the developments I've made, I can hopefully start helping the school to become a more inclusive, successful environment. And also it puts me in an official role where more people are going to come and talk to me. 

More students might come and talk to me so I can learn even more. And that's going to be brilliant. And I can think “I never thought about that. Oh yes, I can totally see how that could be an issue. Oh yeah, that's a brilliant idea. We definitely need to take that one forwards.” And if I didn't have the job, if I wasn't this sort of figurehead or face of… I’m not sure you really want me as face of EDI really, but for want of a better word, we’ll call it that. If I wasn't doing that, people might not come and speak to me. They might not talk to anyone about it, and we would as a school, then lose out on a potentially brilliant idea and brilliant, excellent new initiative. And that would be a tragedy. So, yeah. 

Niamh 

And I think you talk about nagging, but actually it's just that conversation is so important. I think that's why it's perfect for the podcast, that quality conversation that we're talking about, this inside the classroom, especially. 

Alex 

Nagging, is almost certainly the wrong word for me to have used there… encouraging, kind. 

 

Niamh 

Yeah, exactly! That’s a better word. 

Alex 

That's encouraging. And positive, forward-looking conversations and discussions and those sorts of things. 

Niamh 

And that is how we can change and that kind of thing. 

Alex 

Yeah, absolutely. 

Niamh 

Wonderful. So can you give us an insight into what you have looked at specifically in your time in the role so far? 

Alex 

Loads of things, actually. It's as soon as it's one of those roles that I sort of found this out, as soon as I, you know, I turn one stone to see what's underneath it, you say, “Oh, right, There's a thousand other things I've got to do!” I spent I spent a lot of the first half term in meetings with various different people. 

There's a thousand more meetings I need to have with other people and discovering things that we can look to and we can move forward. So, for example, one of the things I… we have had conversations and a lot of teachers have sort of ummed and ah’ed about it, for example, is the ethnic makeup of our school community. And we sort of have this feeling that there might be a sort of predominantly sort of white Caucasian ethnic background to the school. 

But how reflective of the community at large, how reflective of our area are we? Because I think it's you can't say that Lingfield in Lingfield College on the outskirts, on the edge of Surrey, Sussex, Kent. We're not going to have the same sort of ethnic mix as some maybe other cities around the UK, like a Leicester or something like that. 

I think it's not unreasonable to say, have we got a diversity that's sort of comparable to the local area? And it's one of those things that we had various pieces of data, but we've never sort of sat down and stuck them all together and so on I was having a conversation with Mrs. Brassett. Actually she, I mentioned this to her as part of something else, she said, “I know I've got that data!” I said, “Have you? Brilliant!” 

So she passed on to me all of the background for the ethnicity of our students, but also for our staff, ethnic and racial backgrounds as well. And that was really interesting to then look at that and say and then compare it to the census data, which obviously the government do every ten years. And actually it turns out we are actually pretty representative of the local area, which I've mentioned a couple of people they found is a slight surprise, actually. 

But actually Lingfield College is quite representative of the diversity of our local area. There are some areas where we have slightly higher percentages. There are some areas where we have slightly lower percentages, but there's an overall picture actually we are quite representative and that's a really interesting thing to do. But it also highlights that there are some potential issues where we have diversity in our student population that isn't always reflected in the staff population. 

So we have, for example, quite a lot of students who've got a South Asian ethnic background, but we don't have any staff in the prep or senior school from that background as well. And that might be something that we can look at moving forwards. Is there a way that we can reach out to potentially brilliant new teachers or brilliant new members of staff. 

And so it's something that because we've gone away and just done the analysis, the data was already there. It was just putting it all together and looking at it, actually potentially we can do, we've identified this is something to be aware of. 

There’s a few things we’ve got in process, we… I’s going to sound like a really little thing but it’s really important. We’re relabelling all the toilets in the school, because we’ve had, for years and years and everyone does it, you go into any sort of public space, you’ve got the pictures of the guy with his trousers on and the girl with a skirt. And it's like, well, lots of girls don’t wear skirts. Lots of guys don’t necessarily wear trousers. This is reinforcing stereotypes and actually where is non-gendered space for people who aren’t comfortable using either of those options? And looking through, and again I’ve spoken to Mrs. Parsons and I had a couple of meetings about this. We came up with some new labels, and so we decided we’re going to do away with all the pictures because the pictures that reinforce stereotypes that aren’t particularly helpful… 

Niamh 

Yeah, that’s not the way we want to go. 

Alex 

Exactly, they’re kind of outdated. So, we’re now going to have, nice and simple, male student toilets, female student toilets, and individual student toilets. So we’re not going to have this labelled as accessibility because there can be potentially be unfortunately sort of connotations and people might have sort of attitudes about it. So individual student toilets, and we’re going to have several designated individual student toilets. A couple near the auditorium, and there’s going to be another one on the Geography and MFL corridor as well so that anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable using a gendered space has an option. So that’s for anyone and everyone who doesn’t feel comfortable using a gendered space. It’s a little change but it’s hopefully sending a message out to some of our community that we understand that the situation as it is might not leave you feeling comfortable, we want to help you and we want to support you. This is a really easy thing for us to do but hopefully it will make a profound difference and it will send out a really positive message that we’re listening and we’re trying to support people.  

We’ve got some… there's potentially some things in the pipeline in terms of getting some accreditation, there’s various accreditation schemes, there’s a UNICEF rights respecting award scheme, working with Mrs. Wren to start trying to hopefully sign us up for volunteers and that will help again give us some guidance. 

But it also gives a nice way to acknowledge the work that we're doing. 

Niamh 

I think that's brilliant, especially from joining in year seven to year 13 to see the progression, just seeing like attitudes change and things like that has been like really amazing. To just observe because it really is influential in the language now we are using and things like that. 

Alex 

So you think as a student it's changed for the better? 

Niamh 

I do think. 

Alex 

That's good.  

Niamh 

Or at least changing. 

Alex 

Yes, Yes. I mean, this job is never going to finish. I'm never going to be like, “Yep, done that now.” 

There's always going to be something else that we can do and other things that crop up. But I see that's… 

Niamh 

That's exciting. 

Alex 

Exactly. There’s always going to be something else, there’s always going to be another task for me to get my teeth into or whoever might do the job in the future. 

Niamh 

Perfect. So should a member of our school community wish to discuss an aspect of equality, diversity and inclusion with you? How should they go about organising that with you? 

Alex 

One of the easiest ways is emails. I know that it's a really obvious, boring sort of example, but you can email either me on my school email, which is gaunta@lingfieldcollege.co.uk So you can also this year as well, we set up an equality diversity and inclusion email, which is equality, diversity… no sorry it's edi@lingfieldcollege.co.uk and I think we need to we need to probably make that more widely known and more widely accessible. 

But actually it was one of the things I wanted to set up, an EDI email so that students could email that. And it means that potentially I can give access to someone else if, if Yeah, if in years to come, if I, if I stand down or if I move on and someone else takes over, they can take that role over. 

So there's that as well. You can't we have the EDI Instagram, which is a relatively new creation and we posted a couple of things already. And so people can, you know, contact us through the Instagram. They can come and talk to me as well. I'm almost always around. I'm always around somewhere, but usually I’m in room one so you can always come and just have a chat with me or talk to any other trusted adult. 

We've got a whole staff body who are there and willing and happy to help people. And so anyone who's concerned or anyone who wants to discuss any sort of aspect, they can talk to anyone. Hopefully they feel that they can talk to someone. And as I've always said to my classes, my forms and things, so that when we look at some of the important issues and difficult issues, that not everyone's going to feel comfortable talking to me. 

And I get that because I'm not the right person for everyone. 

But that's okay If there's someone else. For me, as long as everyone on the student body feels that there's someone on the staff, someone at the school that they could go to and talk to, that's okay. I would love them to be able to and happy and comfortable talking to me. But if you have no idea who I am, if you've never met me, you know, sometimes it's just… 

Niamh 

It can be tricky. 

Alex 

Yeah, it can be tricky and a new teacher can be a bit intimidating, like,  you don't know them or you've only seen him like twice when I was shouting at some Year 9s for being noisy in the corridor. “I don't want to go and talk to him. He was really mean to those Year 9s.” I get that. So talk to someone else and if it's serious, they can pass it on to me. 

They can pass onto Mrs. Parsons., Mrs. Sevier, one of our other designated helpers. 

Niamh 

Brilliant. That's great advice. So can you share with us one thing that everyone kind of in the school community, students, staff, parents can do to educate themselves about EDI, is there something you can watch, read? 

Alex 

I think we all just need to listen. Actually, honestly, we need to listen to each other. And I have had these conversations with various different people and a lot of issues, a lot of difficulties come about because people don't necessarily understand and don't realize a language that they're using, a word choice that they've made isn't appropriate. 

But when someone says, actually, I don't like that, could you use something else, listen to them and try and do better next time. And this isn't necessarily an EDI thing, for me, that's like a basic politeness in being a civil person thing. Like if, if, if you call me by a nickname I don't like very much. 

Like my mum used to call me Al, it drove me up the wall. It's like, no Alex or Alexander or son even, just not Al… anyway. So I said like, please don't, just stop, because actually that's like it's just a basic, politeness thing. 

Niamh 

So communication along with listening. 

Alex 

Yeah, So we need to listen to each other when someone says, No, I don't like that word. Can you use this word instead? Okay! If someone says, Actually no, these are my pronouns, we’re gonna make mistakes with things like pronouns. So I'm going to mispronoun people every now and then and other people through not through any sort of malicious thing, might just get pronouns wrong and but when someone says actually know he/him or I'm they/them or I'm she… Listen. Okay, sorry.  

If we all listen to each other, honestly, I think so many of our problems we'd be like all of the answers exist, or most of the answers exist in our school community. We just need to listen to each other. It's not going to be a going away - I want you all to go away and read this book or this piece of theory or whatever. Actually, we could solve so many problems if we all listen to the answers that someone's got somewhere. 

Niamh 

I mean, it sounds so simple, but it's definitely something I think we can all work on. 

Alex 

Yeah, absolutely. 

Niamh 

In every capacity. 

Alex 

Yeah, absolutely. 

Niamh 

So finally, February is LGBT History Month. Therefore, can you enlighten us on what's going on within the school community to raise awareness and support for the matter? 

Alex 

Too many spoilers, of course. 

Niamh 

Yeah. 

Alex 

Yes. So we are doing assembly on this Monday, which is the 31st of January to launch it. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about LGBT history, but also the theme for LGBT history Pride Month this year, which is Behind the lens, which I think is a really exciting idea. 

Niamh 

I was looking into it and it sounds really interesting. 

Alex 

It's really cool. And so you've got, you know, a lot of the time when we think about like famous LGBT people, you're thinking about characters in shows maybe, or actors or singers or influencers. I think that's the right word…? 

Niamh 

Indeed. 

Alex 

And that covers the whole YouTuber tik-tok thing, doesn't it? I’m sounding so old aren’t I? 

Niamh 

No, carry on. 

Alex 

So but actually the people who are behind the scenes, the directors and the writers and the costume designers and the set designers and all the other myriad people that go towards making these amazing shows, like really making huge differences don’t always get the sort of the limelight and don't always get that credit. And so that's what the idea of LGBT History Month is, is to look at the creators and to celebrate the creators from who are behind the lens. 

And so in the assembly, I'm going to talk a couple of people who, like I particularly love. Like there’ that Dana Torres, who is the creator of that the Owl House, which is on Disney, which independently of any sort of other themes and positive representation, it's got amazing positive representation of the LGBT community. It was Disney's first ever non-binary character was in the Owl House. 

It's brilliant and it's created by Dana Terrace, who is a bisexual woman, and she has put a lot of her own experiences and ideas into the show. And it's just an amazing show. It's really good. And I'm going to properly nerd out about it, but it is absolutely brilliant, this amazing fantasy world that has been created. 

And it's a wonderful show that also has incredibly good representation and all come from the mind of this incredible writer, Dana Terrace, who's a writer and animator, and she's just amazing. And so that's a wonderful show. And also, Nate Stephenson? …so Nate Stephenson was the showrunner on the She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which was again not going to wax lyrical too much, but it was an incredible show, is a brilliant show with again, amazing representation. 

But also more than that was just an incredible story as well. And also he wrote a book called Nimona, which is a graphic novel that he published when he was like 23 or something obscenely… like, to be that good, that young is incredible. And Nimona is being made into a film that's being released this year, was with Disney, I want to say Blue Sky, Blue something or other studios, unfortunately got shut down when this film was three quarters finished, but Netflix took it on and Netflix bought it and Netflix are finishing it off and releasing it. So Nate Stephenson is a trans man and is still I think only in his fifties and to have done all these incredible things also has suffered with a lot of mental health issues as well. 

So Nate gives again this behind the scenes incredible creativity and has made some really, really wonderful things. And I know some of our students are aware of Nate Stephenson as well and if not aware of Nate Stephenson, also aware of the things that he's produced, the things that he's been associated with. So those are like two really, really good examples that I want to, I'm going to have to try and control my, my, my natural enthusiasm and not just go on and on and on in the assembly. They’re just wonderful people. And hopefully then that will lead us into then have a sort of series of PowerPoints and things like that and PSHE time where that tutors times are really, really rushed and difficult and tight, We’re gonna launch a competition for the students to produce a creative response themed around a TV show or streaming show or film, which has positive LGBT themes where they've got an opportunity to themselves go behind the lens of a LGBT themed TV show film. They can create a new character or write a scene that they'd like to see, whether that be filming it, storyboarding it, scripting it. 

They can create some new set designs, also new costume designs. They could do some writing, some writers who don't want to do the sort of artsy thing, they can do some fan fiction or something like that. So or they could do something completely different. That's, you know, I don't wanna sort of limit their creativity by my lack of imagination. 

I want to give them the chance to do something fun. And so it's to try and encourage as many students as possible to rather than sort of passively listening to information about various people to become more actively involved. And so reach out and say, look, we can do it. “I know I've got a really good idea about that. I love that show. 

That's really good. Yeah. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Wouldn't it be great if, you know, Holt and this other person did that?” And it might be and so you’ve got loads of these different potential examples. We've got an incredibly creative student body.  

Niamh 

Absolutely, yeah.  

Alex 

Let's let you let rip on it and so do over the month of the Pride month we'll be running this competition, we’ll be encouraging… there'll be prizes to be won and we'll do we're going to use the display space on the main school corridor, I’ve already arranged with Mrs. Fallows, that she's going to give us some displays back that display space for a while. So, we going to put up some of the amazing examples, and hopefully we can then create something that's really, really, fantastic but also something that is also going to inspire the rest of us and open our eyes up to maybe some things that we don't know about. 

Like there might be loads of films and TV shows that I had no idea about. Oh, that's amazing. And if we can start spreading that positive message about positive representation, I think that would be really, really good. 

Niamh 

Absolutely. So definitely, if you're creative February, get involved. 

Alex 

Absolutely. 

Niamh 

Media, English, anything. 

Alex 

Absolutely anything, any sort of creativity you've got. You can bring it into this. And there's so many shows you can choose from, so I’ve mentioned the Owl House, I've mentioned She-Ra, but you've also got other shows where you've got even like, you know, My Little Pony has got LGBT themes in it actually. You've got people like things like Ki Po in the age of the wonderbeasts and moving away from the sort of cartoons, you know, so you've got like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but there's also like HeartStop seems to have made a big impact on everyone. 

Niamh 

Yeah, that was massive. 

Alex 

Everyone and everyone's like, everyone's always so cute, so sweet, isn't it? And, and it is, but it's also there's a lot of difficult things in there and it's a really interesting show. And again, was also really interesting is that there's a lot of the actors, the creators, they're not just getting people who aren't part of the sort of LGBTQ plus community to imagine what it would be like. 

They've got a trans actor playing a trans character. They know trans. 

Niamh 

Actively representing. 

Alex 

LGBT writers and directors, and it's just incredible to have that sort of thing now. 

Niamh 

Brilliant. So thank you very much. That leads us to the end of the episode. Thanks, Mr Gaunt, for joining me. 

Alex 

It’s been an absolute pleasure as always. 

Niamh 

Good, thanks to everyone for listening and I hope to see you soon.