E36. Conversations in Education: Creating Belonging in the Classroom with Zahara Chowdhury

What does belonging actually mean in a classroom and what does it require of us?Zahara Chowdhury is a teacher with eighteen years of experience across secondary, further and higher education. She is the author of Creating Belonging in the Classroom (Bloomsbury) and hosts the podcast School Should Be. Zahara brings both professional knowledge and personal experience to this conversation. Writing about belonging as a South Asian Muslim woman who grew up normalising assimilation and a practitioner meant writing from a place of real vulnerability. What she offers is not a framework to implement but an invitation to look more honestly at what we create and for whom.Together we explore:Why Zahara wrote Creating Belonging in the Classroom.The belonging triangle: representation, connection and voice and what each of these looks like in practice.Why belonging is not one-size-fits-all and why understanding your community comes before anything else.What we consistently underestimate, including the power of a smile, a question and being seen without judgment.Fear, repair and what to do when belonging breaks down in a classroom.What Zahara wishes more people in education were saying to one another.Zahara leaves us with this: what would change if we started seeing teachers as people?Connect with Zahara through her blog or her podcast, School Should Be.