Addressing Implicit Bias

Addressing Implicit Bias

Julie Gretchen: As a teacher, as an adult, as a human, we all have implicit bias, and so without first understanding what that is and recognizing it, you can't really address it. And so that's an important piece when talking specifically about challenging behaviors, is for teachers to recognize their own implicit biases when working with children.

And sometimes they need a little help with that, so asking questions about, "I wonder why this behavior from this child may impact you, but I saw the same behavior in another child, and it didn't seem to bother you."  So kind of bringing those things to the forefront of the conversation is really important, because we have to address them in order to move forward.

Kristin Monson: So I had been coaching before and realized that the teacher had a biased lens when it came to working with boys versus girls and what's expected behavior for boys and what's expected behavior for girls. And how they interacted with girls was different than how they interacted with boys.

So there was lots of verbal interaction with the girls, and the boys were kind of off doing the rough and tumble. And there wasn't even an attempt for the open-ended questions with the boys in the classroom. So I just collected data, one time, who she was talking to based on gender, and we just sat down and talked about the data, because I knew she was ready to hear some of that.

We had a strong enough relationship, and I knew she could handle data. That's how her brain worked. And it was interesting to see how she received that. I was positively surprised that she went to the point of saying, "Okay, I think you're right, and I probably should look at that."

And it did change practice when I went back and looked at it again, because we wrote a smart goal around that, around increasing conversation - or WH questions - with boys, with everyone in the classroom. And it did change practice.