What have we been up to? Yellow Flag’s Summer Update

May 2021: 10 Schools on board for September

Over the month of May, the Yellow Flag team selected and onboarded ten new schools to start on the programme in September 2021! We received a high number of applications, despite the challenges of COVID-19, and choosing just 10 schools was very difficult. We have met with the selected schools to prepare them for the programme roll-out in September.

The principals, teachers and staff in all schools were extremely enthusiastic about inclusion and anti-racism, and we’re looking forward to getting started after the summer!

Yellow Flag Renewal Seminar and Renewal Schools for September 2021

On the 20th May 2021, Yellow Flag held a renewal Seminar for schools to prepare them to renew their flag. To remain a Yellow Flag school, the programme must be renewed every three years. In this one-hour workshop, Yellow Flag talked through the process and timeline of renewal, and gave teachers the space to discuss and exchange insights from their previous experience with the Yellow Flag.

On the back of the success of the seminar, 7 schools will all be renewing the Yellow Flag from September and plan to achieve the renewal of their flag by June 2022: Central Model Senior School, Dublin 1; Mercy College, Coolock; Castaheany Educate Together National School, Dublin 15; Coláiste Pobal Setanta College, Clonsilla, D15; St. Oliver Plunkett National School, Balbriggan, Scoil Gráinne Community National School, Clonee, D15 and St. Patricks National School, Skerries. We are delighted to have them on board and recognise their ongoing commitment to inclusion, diversity and anti-racism work in school life.

July 2021: Yellow Flag collaboration for INTO Summer Course

The Yellow Flag Programme is delighted to have been invited to collaborate with the Irish National Teacher’s Organisation (INTO) on the development of a Continued Professional Development summer course for teachers. The course is called Embracing Ethnic and Racial Diversity in our Schools, and it walks participants through concepts of racism, prejudice and unconscious bias, concluding in the Yellow Flag’s module on Building Inclusive Schools.

The course will run this July and is open to 500 teachers, who are members of the union. This is a great opportunity for Yellow Flag to be connected with such an important stakeholder in the education space, and to be officially recognised by the INTO as “best practice” in creating inclusive learning environments.

Film Project – Our 8 Step Programme for Schools

Early this year, the Yellow Flag programme teamed up with Young Irish Film Makers (YIFM) , an innovative film project company for young people based in Kilkenny, to develop an exciting new film project to document “The Yellow Flag 8 Step Journey” in schools. YIFM’s interviewed students and teachers from St. Mary’s Primary School, Dorset Street, Dublin 1; Hansfield Educate Together National School, Dublin 15 and St. Tiernan’s Community School, Balally, Dublin 16. The film makers visited all three schools to document their journey through the Yellow Flag programme and create a series of short videos where students and teachers talk of their experiences navigating the 8 steps. As part of Step 8 of the film project, our coordinator Molly spoke about why a separate anti-racism policy for schools is so important if we are to challenge institutional racism and see anti-racism work as a whole-school responsibility, not just for students. We are all very proud of the schools who made such an incredible contribution to the project which will be hosted to our website.

To view videos go to https://yellowflag.ie/doing-the-8-steps/

‘Racial Justice & School Inclusion Policy’ Self-Reflection Workshop for schools

Yellow Flag recently collaborated with Nadia Moussed from Youth Work Ireland, Cork, to develop an individual self-reflection ‘Racial Justice & Social Inclusion Policy’ workshop for all staff in primary and post-primary schools. Nadia is one of our current intercultural facilitators on our Yellow Flag programme panel for our ‘Introduction to Intercultural Awareness CPD’ workshop in schools. The new workshop aims to support staff in schools to move beyond using an ‘anti-bullying policy’ alone to tackle racism, by combining the work of a school inclusion policy, anti-bullying policy with a racial justice policy and is Yellow Flags response to the growing need to develop greater awareness and skills for challenging racism in the school environment.