How to Reflect on our Biases
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This blog post is inspired by a post by Kevin of Kevin’s Meandering Mind in 2018 entitled How Can We Tell If We Are Biased, If We Already Are Biased?. He argues that it can be difficult to acknowledge our bias, both because it makes us vulnerable and because it’s hard to see in ourselves. I can certainly relate to this - there are so many practices that make me wince when I think back on them! There were the years I required students to pick “French names” or refrained from commenting when my district planned “Cinco de Mayo” -themed spirit days.
Some practices I changed slowly, and over time. When I began to see picking names in the target language as problematic, I simply encouraged students to use the target-language version of their name if they had one and if they wanted to (Robert to Roberto, for example). Eventually I stopped doing even that, and only displayed my list of common target language names for students to use in their writing if they so chose (after reading dozens of essays about “Pierre”!). This was a gradual change that I made over the course of several years, and initially I felt ashamed about ever having engaged in the practice. However, I began telling my students about this progression, and why I made the choice to stop the practice. As you know if you’ve read my blog posts before, I do not shy away from sharing my past mistakes and what I learned from them!
Which brings me to the question - how can we understand what biases we hold, or in what ways we are behaving in problematic ways? What behavior might I engage in today that is biased towards a particular group of students, or simply just not appropriate? A great example of changes that can happen over a short period of time are the choices many communities are making to change their mascots. Recently, the community of a district I once worked in called for a change of mascot from “The Indians” to something appropriate and culturally competent. Only a few years before, I had been called “overly sensitive” for raising concern over students wearing traditional headdresses to our school pep rallies. A lot can change over the course of a few years, and it’s important to reflect on our own biases and practices.
The best way I know for addressing these kinds of concerns is to always be learning. I read articles, watch TedTalks, and look for new research in Google Scholar. I talk about my ideas and concerns with colleagues and friends that I trust to engage in difficult discussions with me. Most importantly, once I learn that a behavior or practice is not appropriate, I own it. I reflect on it, change it, and admit that I was wrong and am choosing a different practice. This is not always easy! However, we owe it to ourselves and our students to engage in competitive practice that actively addresses bias.
Are there things you’ve changed in your own practice over the course of your career? What’s a practice that your students have benefitted from you changing?
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