GX SKILLS
SPEAKING
THE LANGUAGE OF
INCLUSION
To get more people involved
in organised exercise, we
must be more inclusive.
From increasing cultural
awareness to learning
simple language skills,
instructing beyond your
comfort zone will reap
benefits for everyone
involved, writes instructor
Mel Morony.
64 | NETWORK AUTUMN 2020
magine it is your first time doing a
Group Fitness class. You make
enough sense of it to participate
and at the end you feel like you
have achieved something. Now change a
variable – imagine you are a vision or hearing
impaired person, or that you are from
another country and do not speak or
understand much English beyond the
basics. Imagine how much you would have
been able to participate in that class. Would
you have even felt welcome?
I
The value of ‘inclusion’
It is common for fitness facilities to have some
sort of values stance, either established by
themselves, or by the organisations that they
are part of. These values often encompass
the concept of inclusion. But if asked how
we show inclusion in our facilities, what
would be our response?
Would it be a knee-jerk, ‘Of course,
anybody can join us!’ as we point out the
gender-neutral wash-rooms and bilingual
signage? Would we point to our compliance
with the Anti-Discrimination Act (assuming
no exemptions have been granted) in relation
to people who have a protected attribute
and decide that was sufficient?
Being ‘open to everybody’ may be
confusing inclusion with tolerance. While
related to inclusion, tolerance is defined
as ‘the ability/willingness to tolerate the
existence of opinions or behaviour that one
dislikes or disagrees with’ – which is good,
but can take a ‘live and let live’ attitude.
Feeling tolerated is not the same as feeling
included. If an organisation has provided
structures to facilitate inclusion, that is great,
but do we really expect structures to replace
human engagement and connection?
Moreover, if the measure of any of our values
is what is enshrined in the law, then what
need is there to have it as a value?
Inclusion is defined as ‘the act or state
of including or of being included within a