Cultural Competence in Schools
Helping school staff to foster a learning environment where every pupil feels like they belong and can thrive.
Who we are and how others see us impact the relationships we form and engage with our environment; children and young people are no different. This workshop aims to encourage school staff to consider intersectional identity and cultures in their policies and practice. It will facilitate participants to develop their self-awareness, empathic knowledge and understanding of other cultures.
The workshop covers theoretical information on racial identity and racial trauma and offers key cultural competence skills. We also invite participants to use both personal and professional experiences and case examples to deepen their understanding of race, culture, and intersecting identities.
Culturally competent work operates within the context of our external realities. Therefore, the workshop will invite participants to reflect on how racial and cultural identifications and social realities might influence our psychological internal states (Tummala-Narra, 2004). By attending this workshop, participants will explore their relationship with racial identity and hopefully become more attuned to the needs of the racially minoritised pupils in their schools.
Kemi Omijeh is a qualified teacher, and MBACP Registered psychodynamic and CBT-trained Therapist and Clinical Supervisor with over 12 years of experience working in mental health, predominantly in schools and school-based services. Alongside working as a Nafsiyat trainer and facilitator, Kemi also works as director of pupil wellbeing at all through schools. Kemi’s guiding purpose in all her work is based on the view that with all the difficulties and challenges that may come with childhood and adolescence, subjecting children to racialised experiences and racial trauma should not be one of them.
