Help us understand implicit bias. Reflect on the results of your participation in the survey. Name a time when you used your own implicit bias to navigate a situation.

Implicit bias is our subconscious negative prejudices against a certain group of people. I took the race implicit bias subtest and my results showed that I was “faster at sorting ‘African Americans’ with ‘Bad’ and ‘European Americans’ with ‘Good’ than ‘European Americans’ with ‘Bad’ and ‘African Americans’ with ‘Good’.” After reflecting, I realized that these results were not entirely surprising considering with whom I spend the majority of my time with (and it seems how my virtual content algorithm filters for my viewing).

This is not the first time I have taken this subtest, and while I was disappointed to see that my results had not changed from the first time I took this a couple of years ago, I will say that the results continue to shape my interactions. Knowing this information, I have been more intentional about choosing literature and viewing content by BIPOC folks for myself and for my students. I also am more thoughtful in my interactions with students of color– considering and choosing my words in a way that I hope does not feel abrasive or accusatory (if that would be a way that my implicit bias would play out).

For example, I was on morning playground duty and there were two students of color who were breaking playground rules. (It’s worth noting that I have never had an interaction with these students or seen them at our 600+ student school, the crossover between duties and who’s on the playground can be kind of random). They had the “we got caught” look on their faces, and I monitored my own facial expression, making sure my body language came off as calm and warm. I began with a question, “what are you playing over here?” They told me, and I acknowledged that it sounded fun and then pivoted to ask if there was a way they could still play the same game while following the morning rule of playing on the pavement. They expressed their frustration with this rule, and I again acknowledged and reinforced what they were supposed to be doing. I asked if they would like some help coming up with a way to play a similar game on the pavement. Nope- they were fine to just walk over to the pavement. It feels odd writing this out, because this really isn’t very different than how I would handle any playground infraction incident, especially with students I don’t know. But knowing the results from my implicit bias subtest, I self-monitored and reminded myself that these students were trying to have fun at recess, but needed some guidance, just to be sure that my own implicit biases would not fuel this interaction.