What is Implicit Bias?

1. While the brain isn’t wired to be racist, it uses biases as unconscious defensive shortcuts.
Here are some tips for bringing implicit bias to consciousness:

• Check your assumptions. Are there other ways to interpret a student’s behavior or reaction? Do your assumptions take into account social inequities or the stress of oppression in a racialized society?

• Look for patterns of inequity. Who do you call on most often? Who gets disciplined most often? What’s behind the discipline issues?

• Pay attention to your body sensations that signal fear or a sense of threat. During an incident, be sure to check your assumptions about why you are responding to specific students with frustration, suspicion or lower expectations. This can help rewire your brain’s messages about the student.
  
  

2. The brain uses the nervous system to sniff out implicit bias. Our need to be connected to a caring community and maintain a sense of identity is so critical to our survival that the brain has developed the ability to actually sniff out threats. 
Here are tips to avoid triggering students’ stress response to bias:

• Learn what rapport and connection look like in different cultures and begin using some of those tools. For example, socializing over food is a common way to connect.

• Practice affirmation and validation. Acknowledge students’ potential for rigorous learning. Show that you are aware of the socio-political context that marginalizes and invalidates the experiences of youth of color, especially English learners and African-American boys. Both groups are the usual targets of implicit bias.

3. Trust calms the brain’s watchdog.
The antidote to triggering the amygdala in the brain’s fear center is building trust. 
Here are some tips for building trust across differences:

• Be vulnerable and real with students. Share some of your life experiences so they see you as human, not just the authority figure. In return, listen to their stories.

• Create affinities and connections around similarities you and students share. Maybe it’s a love of a particular sports team or a social justice cause. The research is clear. One of the fastest ways to rewire our implicit biases is to redefine the in-group/out-group.