Implicit Bias Part two

We had a big meeting with Mindbridge yesterday after school from 2-3:30.  I think everyone was tired, plus they know we have another meeting on Friday about Universal Design for Learning with a group called CAST all day, so I think it was stressing everyone out.  I know that even the people who are on board with the work we are doing felt overwhelmed and found it difficult to participate. 

That being said, it was still an interesting and fulfilling afternoon about what we have learned and where we might need to go from here.  I found it all fascinating, and terrifying, and confusing.  I was overwhelmed at the end of the afternoon, because there was a big discussion about someone's wall saying, "All lives matter", which was painted by a student long before the "Black Lives Matter" movement began.  The student painted it on a teacher's wall, because he felt really moved by how safe and protected and respected he felt in that teacher's classroom.  If you understand the context, it makes a lot of sense.  However, the "Black Lives Matter" movement has changed our understanding of "All Lives Matter" which is problematic to their world, their belief system, their thought process, and you can't use it anymore without fear of repercussions.  We have very few African American students in our school, but it would only take one evening of parents of a child to see this and react negatively to it.  We are trying to learn about other cultures, feelings of others, we are trying to learn EMPATHY in a big way so we can teach it to our students.  If we fight about this, it could look like you truly are biased, prejudiced and even racist. 

The other discussion was about the fact that we have so little diversity in York, that it makes it hard to make a cause for training in this area.  Or do we?  We have socio-economic diversity, we have people who are challenged in different ways, we have younger and older teachers, we have people whose sexual orientation is diverse, etc.. we have other types of diversity.  If we don't teach empathy, no matter what the differences are, we cannot truly say we are open-minded and working on our implicit bias.  Yes, bias helps us stay safe, and locked down and secure, but it also creates cliques, and jokes at other's expense, and triangulation, and thoughtlessness, and eventually we are we? 

I feel like after this session, we know what implicit bias means, (your elephant, your driver) and we know that we need to be more sensitive to others no matter what we might believe.  We need to be open-minded to do this work, and people need to be made aware of their bias, even if they don't think it exists.  It does.