Written by Andrew Moffat
Andrew Moffat has been teaching for 25 years and is currently PD Lead at Excelsior MAT. He is the author of “No Outsiders in our school: Teaching the Equality Act in Primary Schools” and “No Outsiders: everyone different, everyone welcome”. In 2017 Andrew was awarded a MBE for services to equality and diversity in education and in 2019 he was listed as a top ten finalist in the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize.
There are many blogs about belonging on this platform, but rarely do we hear direct from the voice of a child. Here is that voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yxSG2U-aIk
This three-minute film was made at my school last term. My school is a two-form entry primary in Birmingham. The flags were up on lamp posts surrounding the school this time last year. Today, those flags are still there, but now they have become wallpaper. Tattered wallpaper that you don’t really notice.
However, I’m sure some of our children still notice the flags as they file through the gate every morning, searching for that reassurance that they belong; the reassurance that they fit in. Can they bring their whole selves through the gate, and will they feel accepted, embraced, respected?
Last summer, Year 6 children were set a task to write a speech for a MAT-wide oracy competition. The speech could be about a person who inspired you or ‘what equality means to me’. Hussein wrote a speech about Manchester United and showed it to his teacher. She told him this speech was good, but “It wasn’t him”. She suggested he write another and make it about something he felt deeply about; “something that had meaning in his life.” Hussein went away and wrote this second speech in fifteen minutes. This second speech was stunning. And here it is, read by Hussein and his friends.
A little context: Hussein never talked about being a refugee before Year 6. These were conversations he was not ready to have, or rather, conversations educators at the school were not confident enough to have with him. But as Hussein moved into Year 6, we introduced No Outsiders to the school and suddenly, through assemblies and lessons, we were having conversations with all children about difference and diversity. I was leading No Outsiders assemblies every week where we talked openly about refugees and attitudes towards difference within the framework of British Values and the Protected Characteristics. No Outsiders lesson plans using picture books like “The island” by Armin Greder and “Saving the butterfly” by Helen Cooper in Y6 enabled pupils to hold conversations exploring experiences of refugees and relate these experiences to our life in school. No Outsiders gave us the tools to build an inclusive, welcoming narrative so that all children felt reassured that they belonged.
Hussein slowly started opening up about his own experiences as a refugee living in Britain and his peers listened. As he says in the speech, “I felt safe, I felt seen, I felt like I belonged. “
When Hussein first wrote his speech, his teacher sent him to me to read it. I was floored. I knew before he reached the end that I wanted others to hear this; I had to make a recording before he left my school in a matter of weeks. At first, Hussein didn’t want to appear in the film, and I suggested we asked friends in his class to read it for him so that the words were still heard. He liked that idea and very quickly we got permissions for pupils to be filmed. On the day, I wanted Hussein to be around the filming, and he was eager for his peers to get it right; he would coach them as they read his lines. Then half-way through the day he said to me maybe he would like to be in the film after all.
I was working with Felicity from Fledgling Education who was making the film for me. Felicity came up with these great ideas to film children making No Outsiders letters and hold them up at points in the film. She also insisted on every child reading chunks of the speech and getting a recording of Hussein reading all of it which she then used to edit later. There is a moment in the speech where Hussein says, “I am Hussein.” I wanted a “I am Spartacus” moment in the film where we heard all his friends saying that line, but I was worried it might look corny. Felicity knew exactly what she was doing to make it a key moment in the film and she also had the idea to have multiple children say other key lines together to give the impression this was everyone’s story.
The finished film was more than I hoped for. I’ve been sitting on it for two months waiting for the right time to make it public and I always knew I wanted to use Hannah Wilson and The Belonging Effect to launch it because I know that everyone reading this blog is going to be an ally; a friend.
The events that led me to decide to release the film were the footage of masked men closing down Dover port in protest about migrants and then the news of a village in Oxfordshire voting to remove themselves from England because they don’t want refugees housed near them. We are living in challenging times. I hope this short film gives pause for thought.
Andrew Moffat: www.no-outsiders.com
Fledgling Education offers a range of bespoke services, including filmmaking, curriculum consultancy and creative arts workshops. Felicity can be contacted at felicity@fledglingeducation.co.uk