“Implicit bias is a form of bias that occurs automatically and unintentionally, that nevertheless affects judgments, decisions, and behaviors.”

Source: https://diversity.nih.gov/sociocultural-factors/implicit-bias#:~:text=Implicit%20bias%20is%20a%20form,retaining%20a%20diverse%20scientific%20workforce.

Implicit Bias in the Classroom

As much as we would like, we are not morally neutral when we show up in the classroom. We arrive unconsciously valuing experiences and behaviors over others, but the more we are aware of them, the better we can support our students.

There are online implicit bias tests you can take like the one from Harvard.

But you can also take a moment to write a personal educational biography where you can explore questions that help you look closely at you the cultural and value of education you were surrounded by. Yolanda Medina, Chair of Teacher Education, writes about an autobiography about her educational experience here as an example.

In Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond explores implicit bias by urging teachers to explore the following questions. Questions that you might find useful as you think about your own autobiography. [This list is modified/edited down from her original list.]

• How did you family identify ethnically and racially?
• Where did you live–urban, suburban, or rural community?
• Has your family been here for generations, decades, or just a few years?
• How would you describe your family’s economic status?
• Were you the first in your family to attend college? If not who? Your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents?
• What family stories are regularly told or referenced? What message to they communicate about core values?
• Review primary messages about upbringing: what did you parents, neighbors, and other authority figures tell you respect looked like? Disrespect?
• How were you raised to respond to different emotional displays–crying, anger, happiness, etc?
• As a child, did you call adults by their first names?
• What got you shunned or shamed in your family?
• What earned you praise as a child?
• Were you allowed to question, or talk back, to adults?
• What was you family/community’s relationship with time?

How might your past experiences inform how you might interpret classroom and other student behaviors? Inform assessment? Influence feelings towards a student or students?

There is really no one but us who can provide checks and balances of power in the classroom so I think it’s especially important to figure out where we might be a disservice to our best intentions.