Laying the Foundations of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)

The Big Think (TBT) is a PSHE programme for ages 5 to 11 which explores human relationships through the lens of 5 BIG human values and develops 5 BIG Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. Our holistic approach uses Silent Sitting meditations for Self-Management, Real World stories for Social Awareness skills, Values Inquiry for Responsible Decision-making skills, The BIG Feelings Compass for Self-Awareness skills and a range of safe dialogue practices to build Relationship Skills.

TBT’s approach has been created to build Belonging in all pupils and staff because we know that a stronger sense of Belonging in pupils leads to higher performance in all areas.

But when working with Primary schools to embed a whole school PSHE approach, we are regularly faced with this pressing question from Early Years practitioners: ‘But what about us?’

We will always collaborate, trial, model and adapt our resources for 4-year-olds and younger. But this just isn’t good enough. If we truly want to create a climate of inclusion, equity and celebrated diversity – where EVERYONE (pupils AND staff) feels a strong sense of Belonging – then we must lay the foundations of DEI with the whole school community and start with more serious intentions, and with evidence-based practice, in those precious Early Years.

To this end, we have recently started collaborating with a range of Early Years settings such as The Mulberry House School in West London and Exhall Cedars Infant, Nursery and Pre-school in Coventry, to start together at the beginning and build Belonging in the Early Years from ages 2 to 7.

 We are all human first

Human Values work well in all settings and with all ages simply because we are all human and when bringing together groups of people of any age and in any context, this is a powerfully inclusive way to begin.  Introducing The Big Think to any school starts with a Community Values Dialogue – a 90-minute circle discussion with 30 invited participants representing the school community (school leaders, teachers, governors, support staff, caregivers, community and faith leaders and most importantly – pupils, who are often members of the school council). This will naturally look quite different in different schools and can be face-to-face (always our choice!) or virtual.

Community Values Dialogues at Copenhagen Primary, Islington, London

Community Values Dialogues at Eastfield Primary, Middlesex

Community Values Dialogues at Waltham St Lawrence Primary School, Reading

Virtual Community Values Dialogue, St Pauls and All Hallows’ Primary, Tottenham, London  

Bringing the school community together during Covid and adding a new school value of Compassion to reflect the need of the community at the time.

Virtual Community Values Dialogue, The Brighton Middle School, Karachi Pakistan

‘Bright Minds, Brighter horizons’ We explored their core school value of Happiness.

Building Belonging in Early Years Settings

The Head Teacher at The Mulberry House School, Victoria Playford, leads with the vision: ‘Born curious, live curious, stay curious’.  A prep school in West Hampstead for ages 2 to 7, she wanted to bring to life their PSHE curriculum through their school values and ensure key social and emotional learning skills were being developed throughout the school.

Their Community Values Dialogue involved school council pupils aged from 4 to 7 (including the Minister for Community who was 7!) and offered the chance for very young children to have a voice and part to play in shaping how the school values would influence their PSHE curriculum.  Each class has a basket of special animals that bring to life the school values in their everyday learning (e.g. Empathy Elephant, Mindful Meerkat, Resilient Water Bear, Participating Penguin and Meditative Macaque) and these Special Animals became the essence of our work with such young children.

A 6-year-old at The Mulberry House School choosing to connect Empathy Elephant with the BIG 5 Value of Love ‘because Empathy is about learning to love everyone for who they are’

Each very young person was able to choose a special animal to link to a core BIG 5 Value and speak about the life skills they would need to show this value in action. Together we created a safe space of non-judgement where everyone could join in with courage, listen with curiosity and respect all ideas.  Pupils didn’t have to agree with their peers, teachers or caregivers, and could move the animals around to try out a range of opinions and see which ideas were a best-fit for themselves and their school.

A 4-year-old at The Mulberry House School choosing to connect the BIG 5 Value of Responsibility with the school’s Resilient Water Bear ‘because it’s my job to ask for help if I need it and this is being resilient’

During the final check-out of the session, in which everyone is able to share a key idea they will take away and act upon, all adults expressed surprise at the depth of understanding about human values that the very young children were able to demonstrate during the session and the collaborative and inclusive ways they were able to make responsible decisions together. We could all see that our youngest humans already know how to live life as natural ambassadors for DEI – we just need to protect safe spaces for them to practise these innate values and skills.

Exhall Cedars Infant, Nursery and Pre-school in Coventry is a vastly different context serving an area of high deprivation.  However, it is laying the very same foundations as The Mulberry House School.  Headteacher Sharon Hillyard and PSHE Lead Bex Episcopo were keen to build Belonging in their pupils aged from 2 to 7 through self-regulation skills and oracy skills.  They figured that if their children had time to understand themselves more deeply and were able to label their feelings and talk about them, they would feel a stronger sense of Belonging and be able to access learning more readily.

Exhall Cedar Infants – using special animals to represent the values (Rex the Resilient Fox, Rory the Respectful Rabbit, Kai the Kind Deer, Nuala the Nurturing Owl, Hadwyn the Honest Hedgehog)

During the Staff Workshop, Early Years teachers shared their experiences of very young pupils who struggled to belong as their communication and language skills were the most underdeveloped they had ever seen – with many arriving unable to make the sounds for animals.  For a host of complex reasons, the pandemic, coupled with rising poverty, have had a marked impact on the ability of pupils to feel they belong at school.

In response to this national need, our new Early Years resources will focus on developing Self-Regulation and Oracy skills. Early Years children and staff deserve access to high quality evidence-based resources to support them in the vital work they do in establishing strong foundations on which to build learning and belonging for life.  We can’t wait to get started. 

Learners are Bouncing Back

and Reconnecting

with help from The Big Think 

Katherine Mannion, PSHE Lead at Eastfield Primary School, Enfield, London

During lockdown, teachers used The Big Think's 'Connecting Classrooms' lesson kits on their Remote Learning timetables. Some year groups brought the children together for a LIVE TBT session, while others created recorded lessons for children to access online. We had a great response to these sessions and children in KS1 particularly enjoyed being able to do the 'Silent Sitting' in the comfort of their own home! 

When we returned to the classroom in March 2021, we knew that there would be an increased focus on core subjects like maths and writing. However, we also wanted to ensure the children would be accessing good quality PSHE lessons and be given regular opportunities to express their thoughts and feelings.

We were reassured by the DfE's update that teachers should:

'prioritise RSHE content based on the needs of their pupils'

 So, with Sarah's help at The Big Think, we devised a programme of TBT lessons for the remainder of the year to suit the needs of our children at Eastfield. We have selected lessons from 'Peace' and 'Truth' because of their focus on pupil wellbeing – they promote Social and Emotional Learning Skills such as Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation – and they also capture important values like Belonging, Growth and Pride to meet gaps in learning related to puberty and the new RSE statutory requirements.  We are looking forward to reconnecting with our students over the coming months and having many a singalong to 'The Big Sing'! 

The Big Question: 

How can you bring your school values to life?

Case Study: St Paul’s and All Hallows’ Primary Schools, Tottenham, London.

A collaboration between The Big Think and dance charity Streetz Ahead.

Dance Coach Zak Harry (Streetz Ahead) on school field besides Spurs ground!

Value in Action - TRUTH: Pride

The Big Question: Should we have pride in our changing bodies?

The Big Think team has been busy creating the final 32 lesson kits to complete our values-based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programme for primary schools. We are also working on the development of a Community Values in Action Dialogue series to use in schools to help engage the wider community in school-based social action projects.

So, when the theme of this year’s World Values Day was announced as Values in Action, we jumped on the opportunity to create something special to share on the day!

One of our new tricky values is Pride (which comes under our core value of TRUTH) since this value can have both positive and negative connotations. We thought this value theme linked well to the puberty element of the new Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) requirements and so commissioned author Yasmin Floyer to write a playscript highlighting the common worries Year 5/6 children have about changes happening or not happening to their bodies as they approach puberty and this session was then piloted with Year 6 at TBT school St Paul’s and All Hallows’.

This got the TBT team thinking – How can we go further at bringing the value of Pride to life and show it in action? How can we show the Year 6 girls in our pilot class that we should celebrate what our bodies can achieve, rather than what they look like?

Here our collaboration with dance charity Streetz Ahead was born! We were offered their lead instructor Zak Harry to run 4 sessions with seventeen Year 6 girls to create a performance based on pride in our bodies – culminating in a showcase film to launch on World Values Day! See the film and what the girls thought of the project here.

Meanwhile, our pilot Community Values in Action Dialogue, also at St Paul’s and All Hallows’ Primary, happened on Tuesday 13 October 2020 and involved SLT members, teachers, governors, the Vicar, pupils, parents and representatives from the local Tottenham Hotspur Foundation. We asked The Big Question: How can we bring our school values to life in the community?

Perhaps this has got you thinking…How does your school show your Values in Action? It might be noticing small daily acts, learning through a creative curriculum or through larger community projects.

Whichever way, using values in action to frame your work – big and small - certainly makes for very lively and engaging learning for the whole school community. We recommend you get involved now!

In the week commencing Monday 16th March 2020, the Coronavirus outbreak was starting to feel like a very real threat at home in the UK. Whilst schools were still open as usual, vulnerable people were being asked to stay at home, with signs the virus was beginning to spread. There was a growing realisation that soon we would all be asked to stay at home, including most school children, and a gnawing fear that many people might become ill, or even die.  

On Tuesday 17th March, The Big Think team agreed to write a quick-turnaround Assembly and Lesson before schools closed - we wanted to support school staff and pupils with their growing anxiety about Coronavirus and the life-changing implications for us all. 

The Big Think authors, Maisie Chan and Avantika Taneja, collaborated on a factual story ‘Spread Kindness’ about children from around the world showing acts of kindness during the global outbreak. They sourced tender examples of how children in other countries ahead of the UK in the outbreak, had offered acts of kindness to their communities to keep everyone going. 

Galia Pike, The Big Think illustrator, quickly produced a drawing of a boy holding his rainbow poster like the children in Italy. Our graphic designer, Rob Bowden, managed to compile our Journal page from Self-Isolation in Tallinn. And Sarah Pengelly, The Big Think Curriculum Developer, created a Values Inquiry asking the question: Are you kind to others even when you are feeling worried? and using scenarios such as worrying about vulnerable family members the children wouldn’t be able to visit, people vying for supplies in supermarkets, running out of hand sanitiser and starting to hear about people dying.  

Now, a few weeks later, with most people at home in lockdown and keyworkers valiantly keeping our essential services going, we can see daily evidence of acts of kindness happening across Britain in the face of such worry.  Schools making masks for keyworkers, children making rainbow posters for their windows and newly constructed hospitals, neighbours keeping physically distant – but still making new contact socially with each other – dancing in the street or clapping the NHS.  We wondered how the UK would rise to this unprecedented challenge, and are astounded each and every day by the new acts of kindness shown to each other. 

Maybe these are early signs of a real and forever shift in how we unite as local, national and global communities to create kinder, more sustainable and equal societies for all. 

“Try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”

— Maya Angelou, American poet, award-winning author and civil rights activist (1928-2014)