I have a good friend Jenny, whose daughter shared a reflection on her upbringing. She shared with her mom how she was never taught about race nor was it ever mentioned at all in their household. This reflection came when her daughter started dating a black woman. Her daughter wanted to make sure that her parents were going to treat her partner with respect and not let any hidden biases affect their relationship. This revelation was a huge surprise and a huge catalyst for change for Jenny. She realized how her white privilege had led to her being able to not talk about race with her children. She could completely ignore it. But also she is an educator so she also saw how she was ignoring it with her students too. This has led to her becoming a change agent in her school and community in how the school is addressing issues like race, gender, sexuality, and other marginalized groups. Once a month, she gathered a group to read, watch, and discuss these issues within our community. It is during one of these meetings that I was introduced to Project Implicit.
I have taken a couple of the tests. To be honest, the results were not surprising. Although I seem to have no difference in preference in terms of gender or sexuality, I did have a slight difference in preference in white over black in the race test. When taking the test, I could feel this bias coming out. I found it interesting that the Teaching Tolerance article even mentions how many test takers experience this when taking the tests. “The very act of taking the tests can force hidden biases into the conscious part of the mind” (Teaching Tolerance, 2009). But it is this forced consciousness that is necessary to try to change behavior to be more egalitarian. Although implicit biases are hard to remove, only through conscious awareness can anyone work on the strategies listed in the article to try to remove it from their behavior. Since I’ve started focusing on this, starting with the group my friend Jenny started and continued in my professional practice at school, my awareness has really opened up. Once you learn to look for hidden biases, you start seeing them everywhere. I think we should be teaching our students about this too. That way they won’t have to work so hard to erase their biases in their adulthood when they become more cemented into your worldview.
Understanding biases is crucial in working in collaborative teams as well. The work that Google did in Project Aristotle shows that groups need to have psychological safety in order to work together effectively and for team members to feel connected to their work (Duhigg, 2016). This does not mean that team members have to be best friends or hang out with each other outside of work. What it does mean is that team members need to feel safe talking about anything and everything with their teammates without fear of rejection or threat to job security. “We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency” (Duhigg, 2016). Implicit bias is definitely messy and a hard conversation to have. But this awareness will help create a culture of psychological safety in collaborative teams. The climate needs to be one where implicit bias is reduced and every team member is embraced as valuable.
While the staff and team members of my collaborative groups appear to be similar in appearances (white and female), there is a lot of diversity within the group in other ways. The difference that really jumps out at me is the difference of job titles. There is a hierarchy of power in schools with administration at top and paraprofessionals and other hourly wage employees on the bottom. There is a bias even between classroom teachers and “specials” teachers. Some of the teams I’ve been on stick to thisl power structure. Those at the top drive the discussion and make the big decisions. The equity team that I am on currently is purposefully trying to recognize differences within the team and try to value all members. Paraeducators have very unique perspectives especially about the students they directly work with that they need to be included in these discussions. I think that this is the strength of this team. We are not fully there yet, but it is a purposeful goal of the team.
One of the things that we have done in our equity team is use restorative circles to discuss implicit bias and hidden curriculum. This format for discussing these tough topics has been very helpful in creating a culture of psychological safety. I would not say that this team is fully there, but significant steps to get to psychological safety have happened due to the restorative circles. When I read the National School Reform Faculty’s Equity Perspectives, I realized that our restorative circles were making space to have these tough discussions. “These perspectives provide the opportunity to dialogue and build shared meaning on the beliefs, values and assumptions that generally are not discussed in schools or other public spaces” (Cary, 2017). They were a vehicle to get our team on board with a shared belief and purpose, another one of our strengths.
Creating the right conditions for collaborative teams to reach psychological safety is not always easy. There might be group members that have no interest in participating in a team that does more than just talk about the agenda items. Time is valuable of course. There also might be group members who are unwilling to look at themselves for hidden biases. This is difficult self work that not everyone will be willing to undertake. But I think that if it is a team norm, it will make the team more successful and make work more enjoyable. “We want to know that work is more than just labor” (Duhigg, 2016). We want to be part of a community.
References
Cary, V. (2017). Equity Perspectives: Creating Space for Making Meaning on Equity Issues. National School Reform Faculty. https://www.nsrfharmony.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/12_perspectives_equity_0.pdf
Duhigg, C. (2016, February 25). What google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html
Test yourself for hidden bias. (2009, September 10). Teaching Tolerance. https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/test-yourself-for-hidden-bias
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