Teaching Bias Through Inference and Identity

I can’t remember the last week we had a full week of school. Between snow days, cold days, and now an ice day, I think it was December the last time I had the pleasure of being with our students for five days in a row. All of these days off have given me time to think, a luxury it seems within teaching, and in particular about how I can use the units my team had already planned to expand our work on bias and social comprehension.

Now, before I share these ideas, I want to make something very clear; I am not an expert on this work. In fact, I have gone back and forth on even sharing what we are doing because this is truly something I am working on myself, something that is nowhere near perfect, and something where I lean heavily on the work of others to do my own work. And yet, perhaps it is exactly this insecurity of trying to get things “right” that holds many educators back from doing any of this work. So perhaps then, this post will help someone else take the plunge, much like I have. I go into this work knowing that I have much to learn and that starting it is the right step for me, even if I am bound to screw up.

Focus of Unit:

Old focus: So our original main goal for the past few weeks was to focus on inferring and how we use evidence to support our inferences. In the past, I have written about the work we have done here, and while the work was good and reached its intended learning outcome, it also was a missed opportunity to discuss how what we infer is directly related to our perspective, our identity, and the bias we may carry.

New focus: So the new goal became focusing on inferences and how the evidence we use to support them are shaped by our identity and bias. A subtle difference that has made a huge difference in all of the work we are doing.

Some Resources used:

While I had my original slides that contained some great ideas, I knew I needed further resources to guide me in this work. Some of the resources I have turned to have been:

Teaching Tolerance – one lesson plan I am using is their ideas for teaching bias in the media through tone and word choice, however, these are not the only resource I am using as their webinars and their articles shape so much of my thinking.
Allsides.com I appreciate the collection of articles here that allow my students (and us) to really see how news can be reported to us and what it may look like from different news sources. This news site will also open up an opportunity to discuss whether the site itself is unbiased in how it is reporting others.
Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara K. Ahmed. This book has really helped me think about how we can teach social comprehension through identity work with students. It is incredibly well-written and offers up a wealth of ideas no matter where on the journey you are.
Time Magazine and their collection of iconic images as we discuss what we see versus what we can infer. I am also using these images to help students discuss which parts of their identity may be reflected or triggered in the images.
#DisruptTexts and their mission of disrupting the common narrative that shapes many of our literacy experiences.
The National Equity Project is partnered with our district so a lot of the images and information I use is coming from the training they have been giving us.
Professor Deb Reese and her work in the critical analysis of the representation of Indigenous People. One of the threads of our conversation has been why we are not as “triggered” by the racist or stereotypical representations of Native Americans in our everyday life. One student shared yesterday that she has realized that she hasn’t been triggered by it before because there has been such little shared throughout her education and life about indigenous people in general except for stories of how they might have been in the past.
Social Identity Wheel and the personal identity wheel shared by Inclusive Teaching at the University of Michigan.
Jess Lifshitz and the work that she does with her 5th graders in Illinois. She has written extensively about her work on her blog and also who she is inspired by, as well as shared great resources.

This is not an exhaustive list as I am so grateful for the work of many and I highly encourage you to read a lot, to seek out opportunities to learn, and to become connected to others who are doing this work. This is also why I am purposefully not sharing my handouts and slides, because they are created specifically for my students and are based around the learning I am doing myself. I really feel like all educators, especially white educators like myself, should be learning more about this and taking on this work, if I just share all of my slides then the work may not be started..

Guiding Questions

Much of our in-class work has been reflection and discussion based, rather than creating products, which is how we normally function anyway. I wanted students to have an opportunity to work through this with each other, if they chose to, and also reflect quietly if they wanted to. I also want to honor the varied lives my students have, some are deeply aware of the bias others have because this is their lived experience, while some would be brand new to the idea of bias. I think this is simply the balance many of us face. I set this up in stages because some things took longer, some things we needed to circle back to, and I didn’t want to rush this. Once again, I realize that this is just a start, it is not the only work that needs to be done here.

Stage 1:

The focus of stage 1 was establishing a common definition of what inference is and also activate background knowledge. Questions we used accompanied with images and video clips included (amongst other resources):

What does it mean to infer?
How does our perspective and lived experience shape what we infer?
How does perspective change what we infer?
How do you think others see you?
Videos used to support this work: Americ’s Funniest Home Videos, Michael Murphy’s Epic Anti-Gun Artwork for the DNC, The Guardian’s Point of View Advert, One Man – Six Stories

Stage 2:

The focus of stage 2 was picking up on missed clues and why we might have missed them. Questions we used included:

Writing about how others see you.
What do we need to do make correct inferences?
What do advertisers want us to intentionally infer about their products?
What do advertisers unintentionally have us infer?
How does bias shape you?
Using the first half of the story Wisconsin Winter we look at a text focused on what the main character is like. Then students are given the second half and we use it to discuss how we miss clues that seem obvious when we have the whole story.
What are different types of bias?

Stage 3:

The focus of stage 3 was different types of bias and how we see the world as individuals. We used a lot of different images to do a lot of this work, as well as news headlines. Questions we used included:

Stage 4:

What associations do you have when you see…using a variety of images.
How do assumptions play into bias?
How does the media shape us in our understanding of a situation?
How may this strengthen or diminish our bias?

The focus of stage 4 was what do we see versus what we can infer. I felt it was important that students saw how much inferences plays into how they view an event, a person, or the world in general. Questions we used included:

What do you see?
What do you infer?
What are you basing those inferences on?
What is the historical perspective of this event using Time Magazine pictures?
How does your identity and experiences affect your inferences? We used the personal identity wheel to help us think about how we see ourselves.
What are the associations you have using a list of words such as Family, love, marriage, police, school, and Thanksgiving?

Stage 5:

The focus of stage 5 is identity and which pieces of our identity we put more weight on which then, in turn, influences how we react to the world and what we think. Questions we use include:

How do your identity and experiences affect your inferences again?
What do you notice when we search for certain things on Google such as “Smart kid”, “Family” or “Native American” – how do you think these images affect you?
We also juxtapose our associations for the word “Thanksgiving” to those shared by some Native Americans in this video and then discuss why we may have different associations with the word.
Then we reflect privately on the questions posed on the social identity wheel.

Stage 6:

The focus of stage 6 is thinking about how our identities are triggered by images, videos, headlines and such. This is leading us closer to our end reflection, which is based around students finding an image that connects with their identity in some way. Questions we use include:

Do you connect to this image? Why or why not?
If you connected to it, which part of your identity was activated?
How might this connection affect how you view this image?
How does bias play out in the news?
How does bias play out in your own identity?
How does word choice and tone affect our understanding of a news event?
How might the news shape our understanding of the world?

Stage 7:

The focus of stage 7 is introducing our end reflection; how does our identity frame how we connect to something as well how might our bias play out in our understanding? There is so much more work to do, but in order for students to have some time to process and internalize all of this work, I want them to have some time to reflect and put the work into the world they are faced with. That is why our “end” product is asking them to reflect on how they see their identity reflected. Some of the questions they can reflect on include:

On the social identity wheel, what were the identities you thought the most about?
Which social identities have the strongest effect on how you see yourself?
Which part(s) of your identity is reflected or reacting to the piece you found? Or is it that your identity is not reflected in the piece?
How is your bias reflected in the image/video?
What, in particular, makes you connect with it (evidence)?
What does your identity make you infer in the image or video?
Which identities have the greatest effect on how others see you? Is this good or bad?

Students will have time in class to find an image or video and then to discuss before they write.

Throughout the entire unit, I hope students get a chance to reflect on who they are and how all of this may play into how they see the world. It is a start as we continue our work for the rest of the year, which involves debates, TED talks, and also much more reading and reflecting. This work will become part of our existing foundation as we move forward with the work that we have planned, hopefully allowing students to take a step back and notice how bias plays out in the world around them and in their own lives. This is not the only thing we will do, it is not the only thing we have done, but it is another concentrated effort in order to help students understand the world more. As always, I am so grateful to those who share their expertise with us so that we can all grow and help our students grow as well.