Call Out Culture: Be a Dear

 Call out Culture is something very important to me - being able to talk to someone when they say or do potentially damaging or hurtful things is powerful. I'm definitely privileged that my friendship group are very good at this, from creating safe spaces for gigs, to training people about ending street harassment, to making zines about privilege and more. I'm also grateful that my friendship group and family are very diverse.  Most importantly,  we can 'call each other out' easily, without damaging the other person's ego.

However in the work place it is often a different matter... Maybe you don't know someone so well, so you can make snap judgements, including assuming that they are ______ist. Maybe the person saying something is 'more senior' that you, so you don't want to call them out, because of fear of retribution. Calling someone out can also reveal a lot about yourself, and often you don't want to show that vulnerability or openness in the work place. 

A good friend and colleague of mine once told me "Don't get mad, get curious". Where as when I was younger I would probably write someone off because of something they said or did, now I want to understand why they said something or if they understood the impact on their words or actions.

We recently had a speaker at our school called Rosetta Lee. Rosetta Lee is a teacher, trainer, speaker, facilitator, educator and activist. She spoke to us about inclusivity and also about dealing with microaggressions in the work place. (This talk was a day after I attended the talk "The Rise of Islamophobia", so this was fresh in my mind during this sessions). One of the most useful tools she gave us was "Be A DEAR". I've put into a presentation, so that I may remember is more easily, and so that I can share it with my students.

This is particularly useful in international schools, where we have a diverse community of teachers and students from all over the world. Being internationally minded goes beyond food, flags and festivals - and this is a good tool to help students to develop this.

Also in the talk Rosette Lee gave the microaggression example of being non-white, and someone asking "Where are you from", and when hearing "America", they say "but where are you really from". This is perfectly illustrated in a video I shared a while back called "What Kind of Asian Are You?"

Also:

• I usually hate Wikipedia but their page on Microaggressions is pretty good.
• For IB / MYP teachers....this supports the ATL "Giving and Receiving Meaningful Feedback"
• My Presentation (You can select "File" then "Make a Copy" if you want an editable version.