Jonathan addressed the second conference of ISemax ProWorld Link in Rwanda. This school improvement organisation seeks to provide services that include human resource and management advice, support with IT tools across the curriculum and ‘Education Recreation’ support for schools on integrating creative and performing arts within the curriculum. Jonathan spoke on ‘Holistic approaches to education’ that centred upon universal human values and their role in the intellectual (head) the emotional (heart) and the practical (hands) aspects of a positive pedagogy.

We focussed on how diversity is a fundamental aspect of being human. We shared guiding values that showed our commonalities and our personal values stories that demonstrated our diversity. After being reminded of the research that confirms the universal importance of emotions, positive experience, deep engagement and multiple definitions of intelligence, we worked on what the combination of respect for diversity and deep engagement in learning could look like across a curriculum designed to respond to the big issues of the day.

working with the teaching, support and administration staff of three primary schools, we sang, planned and discussed, values, stories, practical engagement and valuing the diversity in each other - for a richer, inclusive, involving and more relevant curriculum for all.

Often diversity training leaves participants feeling guilty and inadequate. Alex and Jonathan take a radically different and wholly human line.  We argue that diversity is a fundamental and highly valuable aspect of humanity itself - a distinctive feature of our genus to be nurtured, developed and celebrated.  Our experience from very different cultural starting points is that recognising, honouring and maintaining human diversity is as important as sustaining bio-diversity - both have the potential to save humanity from the multiple threats it faces.  Our ongoing research into values, the strength of diversity and the importance of inclusion is founded upon narratives collected in settings across the non-western world, in the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, India, Japan, Palestine and Malaysia .  Insights from these stories, sharing them and building on them underlines the fundamentally human nature of stories themselves and their potential to offer the positive, humanising and sustaining future craved by all. Our presentation will show how their international research has resulted in a unique diversity training approach in schools and other institutions across the UK.

Alex and Jonathan will use one refugee story to demonstrate the power of stories to reach over and beneath cultural differences to communicate on fundamental issues common for all of us: safety, security, food, shelter, water, family, friends. The same stories concern values common across the globe and remind us of the contributions we all need to make life better, richer more human. see: https://www.bowdeneducation.org/ a

Working with a team of senior staff Alex and Jonathan used a range of stories to lead discussion and thinking about the values that lead, motivate and sustain us as individuals and colleagues. We introduced current neuroscientific research on positivity, values , well-0being and the importance of personal narratives,

EDUCATION4DIVERSITY and Professor Ray Coker will be speaking to the staff of the Langton school, Canterbury about the Naaz Coker unaccompanied refugee minors project which will start in April. 30 sixth form volunteers will run weekly sessions of arts and sports that will include a group of young refugees. E4D is involved in setting up the project, preparing volunteers, mentoring refugees and UK students, and offering staff curriculum advice and support.

Refugees, Migrants and Education Lecture and seminar

Creativity, diversity and the curriculum

Every Wednesday afternoon for the spring and summer terms 2019 E4D helped organise, mentor and evaluate the IYRUKC project with refugee young people from the Gravesend area and their age mates in Gravesend Grammar School. Games, social activities, food and drink

An audience of teachers, teacher union representatives and academics heard Alex and Jonathan speak on migration and refugee issues and their importance to a living and relevant curriculum at this prestigious event .

Alex and Jonathan had a great afternoon exploring the school’s wild marsh area, complete with water buffalo, grass snakes and hives of black bees. We met the school goats and chickens, visited its art -inspired Room 13 and toured a truly exciting school. We introduced staff to the controversial issues surrounding migration, immigration and diversity. We worked on how these issues can be approached across the curriculum in every subject and in thematic work

West Rise Junior School, Eastbourne

Jonathan spoke on migrations, refugees and the geography curriculum at the GA national conference

SIXTH FORM STUDENTS OF GRAVESEND GRAMMAR HOST A FRIENDSHIP AFTERNOON OF SPORTS, GAMES AND CHAT - THE FOURTH SESSION OF OUR YEAR-LONG PROJECT WITH THE NAZNIN COKER FOUNDATION

Sixth Form students of Gravesend Grammar host a Friendship afternoon of sports, games and chat - the third session of our year-long project with the Naznin Coker Foundation.

E4D supervises the first session of the Naznin Coker Foundation project where sixth form mentors from Gravesend Grammar School host refugee young people for sports, arts and cultural activities

With the Naznin Coker Foundation E4D will be preparing sixth form students at Gravesend Grammar School to become mentors for the integration project starting after half term.

E4D will deliver Staff development for the Initial Teacher Education tutors at Canterbury Christ Church on planning a curriculum that capitalises on human diversity.

E4D will deliver a presentation to the leaders of Medway and Swale Arts Education programme, regarding inputs on diversity, migrants and refugees.

E4D will provide  a refugee 'journey' talk as part of celebrating 15th Anniversary of Kent Refugee Action Network. 

E4D will deliver a practical and arts based diversity training as part of a staff development in association with the Scarabeus Aerial Theatre Project.

E4D will facilitate a panel discussion and an illustrated workshop during the University of Brighton conference on the r ole of the University in relation to refugees and forced migration.