Tools Against Racism

Today we had the last day of our workshop here in Bilbao. We continued with brainstorming and eventually ended up with not four but six new tools against racism. We had also an opportunity to get some feedback from the teachers of Jesuitak Indautxu. And that feedback was good! Happy to plan the next workshop in Ireland but now we have to say sad goodbyes for a few months.

Yesterday we had speakers from Fundacion Ellacuria and Association of Gypsy Women in the Basque Country. Ellacuria's work is focused on building communities and creating support networks. Emil and Suleman told us their stories and about their journey to Europe. They reminded us that it is teachers' job to educate their students to stop the racism in the classrooms.

Yesterday was a day full of thoughts! We saw a wakening documentary about refugee children, with some of them staying in refugee camps for years. It was also very eye-opening to hear about the racism that students face at school. Ane Irazabal, an international journalist, gave us a lot to think about during her presentation.

Today we kicked off our third workshop that takes place in Bilbao, Spain. The day included some interesting conversations and very special speakers from Biltzen and Irungo harrera sarea. What an exciting week we have ahead of us!

Happy Easter! This is a perfect time to reminisce our last week's amazing and eye-opening workshop in Hardenberg! On the last day we toured around the school and presented our tools to the teachers who gave us feedback on how they would work. In one of the pictures there are also posters created by the students of Alfa-college. At the end of the workshop we created a mindmap where everyone wrote what they had learned during the workshop. As you can see, we all learned a lot during these days.

Our next workshop will take place in Spain in the autumn. We are really looking forward to another educational and fun workshop!

The agenda for the third day was to work on the tools against racism. Our aim is to create four tools:
1. Perspective thinking
2. Create a safe place for conversation
3. Teacher as a role model
4. Show what's real, don't explain

In between the workshops, we also made a walking tour in Hardenberg.

Our last day of workshop has also started. We can't wait to share the results!

The second day of our workshop in the Netherlands included an amazing lecture by Hannele Fenken where she talked about how to reduce racism and use for example friendship as a tool in doing so. We also got to hear from three students about the racism that they have faced and had a great discussion around the subject. The day ended with a workshop where we developed tools to prevent racism.

Yesterday was the first day of our workshop #2 that takes place in the Netherlands. After some national difficulties with trains we got to start our workshop. Christian de Kraker gave an interesting lecture about Vocational education: Equality and non-discrimination research, acts and regulations in the Netherlands. We also got to learn about the Dutch school system and start planning our pilots. What an interesting week we have ahead of us!

The last day of the workshop was dedicated to the pilots. We created three different pilot exercises to involve teachers (or anybody else potentially) to discuss racism and anti-racism. One pilot exercise was an awareness test (own privileges and prejudices). It was implemented successfully and it was considered an interesting tool to raise discussion and own reflection. The second pilot was about discussion statements which could be left eg. in the teachers' rooms. We interviewed a few teachers to know their opinions but they didn't recognise racism as a problem. So, some development work must be done for the statements. The third pilot was case posters in which different conversation topics about racist or discriminatory situations were brought up with practical examples and pictures. Staff members who reviewed the questions found the case posters useful and good tools to start the conversation. The first workshop was successful and we are looking forward to the next workshop in the Netherlands in April!

On the third day of the workshop, we focused on anti-racist pedagogy and pilots which will be implemented tomorrow. We discussed the anti-racist pedagogy from several perspectives, for example where the knowledge is coming from, how to integrate anti-racism into the content, and what type of processes and practices are needed in the colleges. We are excited about our pilots because it's a good chance to check other teachers' opinions and what kind of tools can be utilised in practice to make a change. Looking forward to the last day of the workshop! Thank you Ruut Kaukinen again for an excellent day and practical training as a whole!

We started the second day of the workshop with learning of what happens when there is a fire alarm in the Finnish college. :D Then we started with useful practical exercises to recognise our journey to anti-racist actions and pedagogy and different perspectives e.g., knowledge, democracy to emancipatory levels. We used for example the wheel of power / privilege to discover our own position. We experimented also norm navigation which was useful tool to analyse the visible materials, physical space and its safeness, for example from the point of view of the ethnicity, language skills, disability or gender identity. The statue of otherness was also a nice visualisation exercise (picture) which raised good discussion. At the end of the day, we discussed factual racist incidents and what can we do to react and what type of questions to address. Proactive and reactive perspectives were discussed too. Good discussion to be continued!

The first day of the workshop at Varia! The excellent key lecture presented by Ulkar Aghayeva from the Rauhankasvatusinstituutti ry (The Peace Education Institute) raised lots of thoughts and let us to reflect the multifaceted phenomenon of racism, privileges, anti-racism, and raised awareness of the importance of the institutional racism. The good starting point for learning. We analysed also a survey from Varia and Mercuria colleges staff in which it's possible notice there is lack of competence to detect and intervene racism. Active discussion of the definitions of racism, discrimination, work related issues in vocational education. Communication and language are central. Thank you very much facilitator / trainer Ruut Kaukinen! To be continued!