Tonight we present the final of our three mini-lectures by celebrated education consultant Sis. Rosemary Campbell-Stephens. For lecture one that was delivered on October 1st (https://www.mixcloud.com/AfrikaSpeaks/rosemary-campbell-stephens-lecture-series-pt-1-education-strategies-for-parents-young-people/), Sis. Rosemary presented twenty one strategies for parents and young people, namely:
1. Approach enhancing your learning as if you were an athlete in training
2. Start by acknowledging and logging what you know
3. Make learning fun or at least enjoyable
4. Seek, plan, be open to and create opportunities for learning
5. Record learning in a variety of ways, use your computers and notebooks
6. Note carefully how you learn best
7. Step outside your comfort zone, take calculated risks
8. Learn from mistakes
9. Learn about how you learn by learning something new
10. Incentivise yourself to learn (young people) – Parents incentivise your children
11. Study with peers
12. Practice or apply what you learn to real life situations to deepen understanding – become the teacher
13. Encourage young people to be enquiring and questioning
14. Use the technology available, but try not to be lazy
15. Keep the brain hydrated
16. Learn about the cognition of learning and how the brain functions
17. Be a problem-solver
18. There are particular strategies for approaching tests – practice, practice, practice
19. Learning should not always be a sedentary or solitary
20. Have mental warm-up/ stretching activities to get the particular part of the brain moving
21. Read and write

This was followed up on November 5th with a further twenty strategies for educators (https://www.mixcloud.com/AfrikaSpeaks/rosemary-campbell-stephens-lecture-series-pt-2-what-strategies-are-there-for-educators):

1. Identify your purpose as an educator, beyond that which we can take for granted, given your title and job description as teacher or leader, what is your purpose?
2. Align your purpose, with your values and practice and collaborate with the like-minded.
3. Act with moral purpose.
4. Develop unambivalent racial pride, look to any other races of people on this planet, if you have forgotten how.
5. Connect with your community or the communities that you serve. Connect and seek to understand the realities of their lived experience, even if it is not one with which you or your family personally identify.
6. Engage with your students, especially emotionally, the heart sends more messages to the brain than the other way round, having significant effect on brain function. Your students are physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, ancestral and tribal human beings, as are you. Connect all aspects of who you are to all aspects of who they are, and can be. Stop focusing partially and sparingly on one tiny aspect of developing ‘intellect’ or managing behaviour.
7. Historian – the public schooling system of which you are a part has a history and is not a meritocracy, understand the system, what it was set up to do and how, only then can you determine your part in it, but be prepared to un-learn.
8. Activist – stand for something, speak up and out, be disruptive – a big shout out to the group of educators some of whom are dear friends and former colleagues, who challenged Hodder Education’s GCSE Sociology textbook’s authors at the start of the academic year 2018-2019, about the deeply disturbing racist stereotypes about Caribbean Families found casually there in, forcing the book to be removed from sale and the content to be reviewed. It is a small but important victory. By being alert, organised and prepared to act as a collective in the interests of our community, such educators continue a strong tradition of defending our children from the cultural genocide that is perpetrated, through an unchecked, immoral schooling system with an agenda for us as Africans, whether by default or design. There are times when we must resist, protest, act and require that when we speak truth to power, we are heard, this was one such time and there are many, many more to come.
9. Researcher & writer – do our own research, writing and in other ways documenting, unapologetically through your own lenses, in your communities interests’, in your own words.
10. Pedagogy – be the lead learner, discipline yourself to become steeped in honing your craft, and do not miss too many opportunities for your students to teach you something. Be ambitious about cracking some of the major pedagogical challenges facing many educators e.g. devising innovative ways to teach bodily kinaesthetic learners, academic concepts, this is but one example of a stubborn challenge yet unresolved.
11. Strategist – pick your battles, organise, plan and execute, leave no students behind.
12. Authentic – find your authentic voice as an Afrikan educator.
13. Do what matters most – in many classrooms/places of learning today that is about creating a safe space just for students to simply be on any given day.
14. Be present – we are living through very troubling times that have potentially grave implications for us as Afrikan people, but there is a lot of noise and deflections, sometimes the temptation is to just run and hide. Be aware, be conscious and be intentional about everything that you do and say.
15. Griots – never underestimate the power of story for engaging, motivating, empowering and passing on knowledge and wisdom to the current generation of students and the future generation of educators.
16. Teach your students how to learn, firstly about themselves, then to be curious about how they learn best and how to extend their range, so that they can transfer skills to different situations and have the confidence to move beyond their preferred learning style when required.
17. Create spaces and opportunities for students to learn specifically about what it is to be human, physically, emotionally, culturally, spiritually and intellectually, relate everything to life and being.
18. Be innovative – for goodness sake, have an original thought!
19. Creative – among other things create your own narratives about those you teach, who they are, what you as their teachers and they as your students are together capable of! Remove or block, and replace the deficit thinking and language that dominates the frontal lobes of the brain for both student and teacher and those who would attempt to measure and assess the potential magic that together you make.
20. Build your tribe, understand the importance of ancestry, identity and culture in the process.
21. Start from where students are at, but teach them how to be boundless intellectually and infinite beings.”

Tonight we finish (hopefully by way of a new beginning) to pull the threads together to outline thirteen strategies for the whole community.
1. Bring students, parents, educators and other key stakeholders together in networks
2. Be present, act in the present, and have a presence
3. Communities as guardians of education
4. Build on the self-help legacy of community activism and innovation in education
5. Identify community assets such as intellectual property
6. Identify potential power bases
7. Develop repositories of information
8. Shape a community vision for education
9. Collect narratives, write blogs of community strategies that have worked
10. Use social media
11. Become Governors
12. Engage with young people
13. Collaborate and partner with like-minded

Sis. Rosemary is keen to emphasise that none of the lists of suggestions are by any means exhaustive and people may want to add their own practical strategies. Our sister also shares some reflections on the nature of ‘community,’ its evolution (we might also add, it’s definition) and the challenges this presents not only for the here and now but also the future – particularly in this age of divergent identities and allegiances.

What should not get lost, however, especially as we enter the season of Kwanzaa, is Sis. Rosemary’s underpinning emphasis on nation building, meaning that it is imperative that we get to grips with ‘The State of Afrikan Disorganisation’ in the UK,’ that Bro. Ifayomi Grant believes is “irretrievable.” (1)

As can be seen from the thirteen points, the starting point is to harness the expertise that undoubtedly exists within the community to develop or create internal autonomous institutions and strategic engagement with external ones. In the latter case for example, this would require beyond the usual round protests and demonstrations that typically follows reports such as “Record number of UK children excluded for racist bullying.” (2) Even if these actions strike a blow in a specific case, they tend to barely leave a scratch on the institutional body politic they are up against – although they may indicate future organisational praxis.

So to effect strategies for our community, we need to be clear what our community is. How would we define it, what are its parameters and what are its distinctive features? If manage to resolve these queries, it still needs to be determined where does responsibility for its maintenance lie. Sis. Rosemary does proscribe roles for existing organisations

(1) Ifayomi Grant (2015) ‘The State of Afrikan Disorganisation’ in the UK,’ The Navig8or Newsletter, August 2015
(2) Sarah Marsh and Aamna Mohdin (30/11/18) Record number of UK children excluded for racist bullying. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/30/record-number-of-uk-children-excluded-for-racist-bullying

So tonight we ask the question:

Rosemary Campbell-Stephens Lecture Series pt. 3 – What are the most effective education strategies for the community?
1. How do we define community and is ours functional?
2. Or is it in “irretrievable” decline?
3. What is the role of organisations in pushing forward the nation-building education agenda?
4. In what way can these organisations be supported
5. Do we really have an appetite for nation-building or is it just an empty sound bite?

Sis. Rosemary Campbell-Stephens: is a world renowned Education Consultant with almost 40 years experience as an educator, who resides in Jamaica. Her previous roles in the include: Head Teacher, Visiting Fellow at Institute of Education, University of London, Associate at National College for School Leadership; Associate at Virtual Staff College, OFSTED inspector and Leadership Consultant at RMC Consultants (UK) and head of the National College for Educational Leadership (Jamaica).