As teachers, we wield tremendous power in our classrooms. Our interactions with students, day after day, pieced together over time, can build community in small and significant ways—or undermine it. Our decisions about curriculum, and whose experiences are represented in the literature we teach and how, send messages to our students about the human experiences that we need to pay attention to—and which we can ignore. Our instructional choices signal to our students whether we value compliance or engagement. Our assessments can guide students to better learning or reduce them to numbers on a test.

Conversations about how we wield this power happen every day. In planning meetings, department rooms, in the brief exchanges we have in the hallways with colleagues—every day, teachers discuss the best ways to reach our students, to make learning truly engaging for all the
kids in the room. Yet underneath all these conversations about what we’re teaching and why, there’s something deeper that often goes overlooked and unsaid.

It’s us.

Teaching is an intensely human activity. The best teachers are those who know that teaching—and students—cannot be standardized. Giving two teachers the same curriculum and asking them to follow it “with fidelity” is an impossible task. Not only are the teachers different individuals, but they’re also charged with the care of dozens of individual children. Although I read Palmer’s (1997) The Courage to Teach as a pre-service teacher many years ago, his words hold true: “Good
teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.” We teach who we are. This is what can make our practice so powerful—even transformative—but also potentially dangerous.

And because we teach who we are, it means we also teach with all the biases—good and bad, implicit and explicit—that have been forged from our experiences. Below I outline five common teacher biases that I have observed in my own experience and observations.

CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE

Over the years, as teachers gain more expertise over the curriculum, we may have a harder time seeing the material from the point-of-view of our students.

Our expertise starts to feel like common knowledge that everyone should have and we forget that the information was once new to us, too. Instead, we might feel discouraged as teachers, giving into “my students don’t know anything!” thinking and blame students for not knowing what we, as teachers, have spent years learning.

TRY THIS: Read a short text “cold” with your students. Choose a text you’ve never read before (ex. something recommended by a colleague) and read, respond, and analyze it side-by-side with students.

Doing this occasionally will allow you to model a learning stance and co-create knowledge with your students.

NOSTALGIA BIAS

When we’re feeling nostalgic, we might engage in distorted and idealized versions of the past. How many times have we been guilty of thinking, Well, when I was in school, we never did X, Y, or Z? Maybe not. Or maybe you did back then and don’t remember. But what does it matter to the kids sitting in front of you right now?

Furthermore, if nostalgia tempts us to idealize the past, what might that mean for us as educators as our student population becomes increasingly diverse?

SHIFT YOUR THINKING: When you find yourself thinking about how things were better “back then,” stop to challenge this thinking. Instead of focusing on the “deficits” you perceive students have, shift to focus on what assets students have today that they bring to their learning.

TRY TOMORROW: Make a list of all the skills and knowledge your students have that you did not have at their age.

ANCHORING BIAS

The anchoring bias occurs when we allow initial information we get about something to “anchor” all of our subsequent judgements about it. In other words, what we hear or learn first may disproportionately affect the way we understand and process further information.

As teachers, consider how often initial information we have about a student — perhaps reports from previous teachers — may lead us to draw unfair conclusions that we might not have otherwise if we hadn’t had this initial information.

Try to limit the amount of information you have about students from previous teachers to only what is absolutely essential. Students’ identities are dynamic, not fixed, and every student deserves a fresh start each school year.

Create learning experiences early in the year that allow students to showcase their strengths (versus assessments that spotlight their weaknesses).

IN-GROUP BIAS

Psychologists have long documented the in-group bias we show for those who are similar to us. This bias can be both intentional or unintentional.

In-group biases have the potential to perpetuate patterns of advantage and disadvantage in school settings where White middle-class values and culture are seen as the norm and/or where those in power (teachers, administrators, and parents) may reinforce this. Students whose cultures or backgrounds are different are disadvantaged.

TRY THIS: Reflect on the students you have had over the years. Are there some students who stand out more favorably to you than others? In what ways were these students similar to you, either to the person you are now or as the student you were in school? How might this in-group bias have affected your relationships with students who were different from you? Make a point to get to know and form relationships with students who are (on the surface) least like you.

JUST WORLD HYPOTHESIS

The just world hypothesis describes people’s tendency to believe that life is inherently fair—that individuals get what they deserve. In the US, it’s easy to see how this bias might be particularly strong with the country’s “pick yourself by your bootstraps” mentality.

While this bias might feel like the truth, it downplays the role that luck or chance might play and also ignores the powerful, negative effects of systemic, historic, and contemporary discrimination. In simple terms, this bias claims that if you’re not successful, it’s your fault (because if you worked hard, you’d be successful because we live in a “just” world).

Consider how many times we reinforce this bias in our classrooms: We might tell students to behave well so that they can get extra recess. We might withhold recess from another student who misbehaves. We often tell students that if they study and work hard that they will do well on the test, get a good grade in class, get into a good college, find a good job, and make a good living. Is this not the driving ethos of schooling in the United States?

And yet we know that injustice exists. Teaching and learning cannot be reduced to a matter of karma—that what goes around comes around.

While it may be true that a student who prepares for a test may get a higher grade, what about the student who might be dealing with issues at home and cannot concentrate enough to study? Or what about the student who has carried a label of “troublemaker” from one teacher to the next and not received the support and skills to even know how to study? Or what about the student who studies and does know the material but does not perform well on tests?

• Stop yourself when you find yourself engaging with the just world hypothesis. Ask: What additional information do I need here? What other factors are at play?

• Reconsider your own personal experiences by taking into account the advantages that you have had.

• Reflect on experiences in your own life that you felt were not fair or where the outcome did not seem justified by the circumstances.

• Learn more about your students’ backgrounds to create a more complete picture of their advantages and disadvantages.

Of course, these five biases are by no means exhaustive, but they are a beginning. The better we understand how these biases might be informing our thinking, the better able we are to interrupt their potentially harmful impacts on ourselves and our students.

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