By Mrs Tarrant (Head of Year 7 and 8)

Before the half term break, on Thursday 13th January, the whole of Year 7 engaged in a Diversity and Inclusion morning, with the focus on microaggressions.

We started the morning talking through the results from the Whole School Flair survey outlining some of the experiences and opinions from the BGS community. This led to our first main session delivered by Sixth Formers and our Diversity and Inclusion Captain, Tireni. They outlined what microaggressions were and shared personal experiences. Mr Gracie (Deputy Head Student Engagement and Welfare)  introduced the Year 7 students the concept of the 5 D’s (Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay and Direct) and encouraged everyone in our community to be active bystanders.

The students then discussed five different relatable scenarios of when microaggressions were demonstrated and tried to apply the concept of the 5 D’s. This brought about some wonderfully insightful conversations and really allowed the students to understand how they can be active bystanders.

During the later session, the whole year were split into houses to create posters and short videos to explain what Microaggressions are and how we can address them in our school community.