On a personal note…

This unit is pertinent on many levels and for many of us. For me there are life events that mean I have a strength of feeling and personal connections I thought it worth writing down. It’s not just about how these issues connect to my teaching practice, but also about events that have happened to me and how they have shaped and continue to shape my view on inclusivity in a poignant and meaningful way.

The first is that six months ago my brother in law suddenly died from a fatal stroke, I call him my brother even though I am not married to his brother, he was as good as my brother and I saw him as such. There is a tight bond between the family as they had arrived in the UK from Chile as political refugees from the military coup in 1973. He had fought prejudice and racism all his life and struggled with his deafness. He was a youth and community worker and aware of the importance of social justice. We often had many chats around the dinner table about these issues and more.

The second is on 7th July 2005 I survived the terrorist attack 7/7. I was a passenger on the Kings Cross train where a bomb was detonated killing 26 people. I was extremely lucky in that I was not in a carriage near the explosion and was able to walk off the train physically unhurt. However, after several years, I was diagnosed with PTSD. This had, without me realising, affected every aspect of my daily life including my working life, going to work had many layers to navigate. On that day I was travelling to work as a TEFL teacher at a language school in central London. At that time I had already taught people from many countries, from all backgrounds, races and faiths, as well as some students who were neuro diverse. My outlook was always to be as inclusive as possible due to the nature of teaching and learning another language. Communication is one of the main aims when teaching another language, more often than not this ties in with people who for obvious reasons communicate differently, not only in their first language but also culturally.

The impact of this event changed my life significantly and how I see the world will never be the same. At no time did I feel upset or angry with those who felt the need to engage with the ideology that promotes terrorism and act on it in this way. If anything I felt perplexed by how it had happened and that the UK government and world politic were to blame. I also already had a certain sense of these terrorist events as my mother and relatives come from a Catholic family in Northern Ireland, all have a wide range of opinion and position on the issues that face NI. Some of whom have also been directly affected due to ‘The Troubles’, losing family members and involvement in other incidents over those years. This I would say has had a huge impact on me and our family through it could be claimed as inherited trauma. Although these events and this one in particular have shaped and changed my life it has also taught me to look at and explore my understanding of the meaning of ‘difference’ and what inclusivity means. This I see has at least been a positive. In a sense it has also given me a kind of quest and desire to learn about the importance of what it means to be human and have empathy. To look at unconscious bias and not to ‘other’ people, to move beyond all kinds of racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and any kind of prejudice and to seek a person’s truth. What I have also learnt is that PTSD as a mental health condition is having an ‘unseen’ disability, with many layers to it. For example, a person can feel voiceless and unable to communicate for fear of the impact this may have in any given situation and where there may be the potential for a connection to what happened to them.

I am looking forward to this unit and, step into it with trepidation as I navigate these personal experiences through the topics discussed but with an openness to discover more!