Journal #4

What are your biases and how do you mitigate your behavior when working with students?

I will be the first to admit that during my CPI I had biases towards my students. I thought my Hispanic students would have more difficulty with reading and writing than their Caucasian peers and I thought girls would enjoy artistic assignments more than boys. On both of these counts I was wrong. In fact, what happened was pretty much the opposite of what I expected. On a summative assessment where I had my students write an essay it was my Hispanic students that had the top 3 grades. For the artistic assignments I gave to my class there were 2 boys in particular that really enjoyed those activities and put far more effort into them than the rest of the class. Needless to say, both of these experiences were eye openers to me about what my biases were and what I should do with them.


It wasn't soon after that I began reflecting on what I needed to change about my biases and I finally came up with the only conclusion that made sense. I would need to believe from the very first day that all my students have different abilities and interests, and that these are not determined by race, religion, or gender. It's not that these 3 factors can't affect a student's ability and interests, because they do sometimes. It's that I shouldn't automatically correlate outside influences and appearances with inside interests and abilities. In fact, all students are capable of doing well and all of them have varied interests because they are all different, just as one human is different from another. Once I realized this, it was a lot easier for me to approach all my students in an equitable manner and they were much better for it. I decided from this point forward I would seek to study each student individually to seek out what their particular interests and abilities are. For me, it was simply a change of perspective and attitude that enabled me to be a much more effective teacher for my students.