Confirmation bias and implicit bias pack a double punch in shaping how we use data in our professional learning communities and classrooms to serve our kids. If we are looking at the wrong data or interpreting it via implicit blinders, the science of our data-driven process isn’t going to save us from false assumptions.
With the mad string of traumatic and unexpected events in 2020, why not a bit of magic? Why not a totally irrational moment of joy?
Note: I write this blog as a white woman especially for white readers who have ever thought, “I’m not a racist,” as I have. All readers welcome.
Enjoy and share this video with a comforting message to families in sixteen languages.
This is an essential question to ask when a student struggles. It’s an essential question to engage educators in asking when they analyze data together to improve teaching for equity and EL excellence.
We have high expectations. We actively engage students. We observe to take notes on what they say and do. We are feeling on top of our formative data-gathering game!
Then, brain science enters the equation with humbling news: We don’t always see what’s right in front of us. This is especially true when we have implicit biases—which, as humans, we always do. We have all been conditioned by false narratives about racial difference, language hierarchies, and gender differences—whether we believe them or not.
For observation data to matter, we need to be clear on our learning intentions. For it to matter for equity, we need to be aware of our biases and intentional about disrupting defaults of low expectations for students from historically-marginalized groups. What do you see as students engage? How do you interpret the data? How do your lived experiences shape what you see?
How do you want to feel in school? How do your colleagues and students want to feel? Are their inequities in whose feelings take center stage?
This is part II of a coffee chat with Andrea Honigsfeld, Maria G. Dove and Tonya Ward Singer on how to collaborate for EL achievement.
This is one of the most essential questions in EL education: “How can you best differentiate teaching for ELs who are in “mainstream classrooms?”
Listen to our radio interview. Read our written recommendations on Education Week.
