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.
This story is a metaphor for a common scenario in our classrooms: those moments where a scaffold or a task stumps student—not because the students need reteaching, but because the scaffold or task fails to connect to how students think and what they already know and can do.
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?
Observing students is one of the most important teaching skills. It is also one of the most under-prioritized in professional learning initiatives and district-wide change. Using observation data for equity requires more than watching students — we need to learn to see beyond our own biases and use new data to challenge our own assumptions.
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?
Reading old family letters I discovered something I never expected to find. Join me on this humbling journey.
With respect for all political opinions, let’s agree that kids must feel safe to learn. Election rhetoric provoked fear. How do schools address it?
The language we use to talk about students matters. It reflects and shapes our perceptions, and most importantly, our expectations for student success.
In your school, make a courageous commitment to shift all staff conversations about kids and their families from a deficit mindset, which views diversity as a problem kids bear, to an asset mindset: one which truly values students and their communities for the diversity they bring. Begin by reframing these four sentences.
