Two recent events have seen a surge in racism sweep our country and schools have not been immune to the harm this causes.
The first was the coronavirus pandemic. Asian Australian children were subject to taunts and treated as if they were contagious.
The second is the Black Lives Matter movement that started in the USA. Already a strong movement, greater action resulted from the murder of George Floyd by police. Marshalled by support, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their allies took to the streets in Australia protesting, among other things, the high rate of deaths in custody of First Nations people.
Students who attended the rallies have been vilified for being selfish, 'jumping on the bandwagon' and told that it's not a problem in Australia. Even our Prime Minister supported these views when he said that protesters should be charged, and that there was no slavery in Australia.

Racism needs to be addressed, both directly when it occurs, and in a manner that is preventative. We’ve put together a list of ways to get started in your school or early learning centre.

Do Your Own Learning

If you are white, chances are you are going to make mistakes when teaching an anti-racism curriculum.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it does mean you have to catch up on all the things we were never taught in Australian schools when we were growing up.
Here is a great list of places to start or continue your journey.

Representation matters

When discussing the need for representations of girls in varied roles, feminists have always said, ‘you cannot be what you cannot see’. This is true for any group. Often children of colour are only shown in books and other media to serve as an empathy building lesson for white children. It’s important that all children see themselves represented as complex people in their own right; sometimes with the storyline being about race and racial equity, but mostly just because they are also deserving of being knights, queens, explorers and gymnasts.

Now is a good time to do an audit of the books and resources at your school or early learning centre. Ask yourself:

Are they representative of the society we live in?
Do the books have main characters who are Aboriginal or children of colour?
Are there characters who are Muslim who are shown celebrating Eid?

Embedding Indigenous Knowledge

Embedding Indigenous knowledge is about much more than reading Dreamtime stories during NAIDOC week.

Aboriginal culture, history and knowledge can be embedded across every curriculum stream.

For early childhood education, Koori Curriculum is a great resource which can also act as a starting place for primary education.

Increasingly, there is an interest in changing a school’s LOTE from European languages to a local Indigenous language. While making that transition can be difficult, it has been a very meaningful one for school communities.

Create a Safe Environment

Make it clear when you start conversations about race and racism that your role is to keep people safe in the classroom.
This means centring the needs of non-white children. It is not the responsibility of a child to educate you or their classmates on their culture or heritage - unless this is something they volunteer. To that end, do not call on children of colour to offer up their lived experience. All children’s lives are private unless or until they want to share something important to them. Here is a heartbreaking example of the harm it can do when teachers offer up a child as a learning experience.
Let students know that racist comments and playing 'devils' advocate' will not be tolerated. The value of the lives of Black and Brown children are not to be debated or minimised with 'whataboutism' or victim blaming.

Discuss Racism

It is better to prevent students experiencing racism than addressing it after it has occurred.

Some people are concerned that children are too young for discussions about race and the systemic disadvantages faced by Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and migrant communities.
But if we have learned anything from the Black Lives Matters movement, it's that experiences of racism start from a very early age and children who are subjected to racism do not have the privilege of waiting until they are older to learn hard lessons about the life they were born into. There are many examples of how parents of colour have had to discuss race with their children here, here, here and here.
There are many books and resources available to start a conversation with children about racism.

Racism isn't just bullying

Just like sexual harassment at school is more than just bullying because of the systemic power imbalance between boys and girls, so is racism more than bullying because of systemic disadvantage.
This means that, as teachers and educators, you need to look deeper than the comment you overheard. We have seen teachers do a wonderful job in this when they understand, for instance, the broader implications of calling a child or a task ‘gay’, it’s time that casual racism was also treated with the same gravity.

For instance, friendship groups dealing with a culture of exclusion may be approached from a bullying perspective until that exclusion is based on the colour of a child’s skin, their accent or the fact that they are fasting. Then the racism must be directly addressed.

Making Anti-racism Visible

You may think that your school doesn’t have a racism problem because a child has never asked for help dealing with racism.
Maybe this is true, or maybe a child doesn’t have the words to articulate what they are experiencing, or doesn’t trust that a mostly white staff will understand and respond to their hurt.

Some things that you can do to provide children an opportunity to have incidences addressed include:

Ensuring that policies and codes of conduct address racism
Having posters around the school that promote anti-racist behaviour
Flying the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags alongside or alternatively with the Australian
Celebrating significant cultural days of the children and families in your community
Inviting community leaders to engage with the children through storytelling, art, cooking or gardening

Building an Anti-racist Environment