Instituting equality in a classroom takes conscious effort and requires confronting implicit biases, biases that we don’t know we have.
One way to uncover unconscious, implicit bias is to write down the race and gender of all the students you pick on using your normal method.
It can be shocking to find out that your decisions expose a significant bias.
Often, teachers believe they pick students fairly; however, the records of called-on students’ race and gender reveals implicit, unintentional bias.
Show all students that they are valued in your classroom by attempting to lessen the effects of this bias.
This bias is not conscious, but it does exist.
- Keep track of what kind of students dominate class time to help keep this bias in check.
