So I used to work for Leeds City College, small campus. So it was mainly, for ESOL, so teaching a lot of.. we’d get refugees and asylum seekers coming in wanting to learn English.

So for Pride Month, we did our kind of pride event. So I kind of took ownership of that. It wasn't big, like I said it was small campus. So, we had a few flags up, a few decorations, a few cakes, just try and get people interested and kind of to learn what pride was all about. Wanted people to feel included, accepted, welcoming. And obviously being with kind of international students, we had students from- kind of from everywhere. So it was such a mix of religions and beliefs and some were more accepting than others. Some people disagreed.

So there was one student so although it wasn't a student I teached, he was very interested in the kind of what we put on for pride. He loved talking about it and kind of when we got talking more... So he was, he was kind of in the closet himself and was too kind of scared to come out because of his home country.

And that in itself, he just felt really seen, really welcomed. And we just talked for a long time. And that was kind of one of those moments where you felt kind of seen in the community. We had that kind of connection. And although kind of other teachers kind of tried to speak to him about it and stuff like that. You know, we got our own kind of connection because we were part of that community. We were joined together.

And even from there... Kind of as a follow up, every time we kind of saw each other, I’d kind of see how he was doing. And from that kind of connection and kind of friendship that we had, I was able to see just kind of his confidence grow both as a student and just as a person. And that was a really kind of lovely way we managed to connect and be proud of who we both were.