Amber

Representation in education is important, because of the vast amount of knowledge and information that is to be learnt, teaching needs to come from a variety of sources for real enrichment and understanding across board coming from a variety of sources. 

One particular incident that stands out when I was in primary school where some of the black students were selected and separated from the rest of the class to work with a teacher specialising in multi ethnic education without the permission of parents, the said teacher was a white middle class male who was married to a black woman, this was disrespectful towards the ethnic minorities in the school and humiliating for the children involved. I have had to see my classmates be stigmatised whilst learning in schools and treated unfairly due to the colour of their skin, often it was young black men who were labelled as unruly and disruptive, whilst some educators may have been unconsciously bias it was obvious some had limited resources to attain an acceptable level of education for them. I have felt that my co-workers have found it difficult to communicate with me in a way that reflects the way they might address white counterparts even when all concerned were equal in the job role. Unfortunately, my ideas have been looked over in favour of mainstream ideas. In this case I had suggested research to carry out for my degree, the idea was to gain phenomenological understanding into the lack of blood donors from black and minority ethnic communities however, feeling the sense of unease and apprehension by my peers I had to abandon the idea.