4 Jun 2020
Finding the ‘I’ in Equity
Part 2
Minnesota Educator Academy
Professional Development
• This session is offered through Education Minnesota with support
materials from AFT and is property of Education Minnesota and
cannot be used outside of EdMN sponsored professional
development.
• One of the most important aspects of MEA PD is the opportunity
for educators to lead professional development for their
colleagues.
• We are able to put our union dues to work by training our
colleagues and offering meaningful professional development.
1
4 Jun 2020
Our Agenda
Part I – Grounding norms for conversations, creating a safe and brave
space, increase self-awareness, and identify the need for equity.
Part II – Understanding and overcoming bias, privilege, and fragility.
Part III – Identifying skills to speak up against prejudice, bias, and
stereotypes
Part IV – Next steps: defining systems change, building supports, leading in
the classroom and beyond, action plan writing
High Standards for Professional Practice
8710.0310 DEFINITIONS AND GENERAL RULES FOR TEACHING
LICENSES
Subpart 1.
D. "Cultural competency training" means a training program that promotes self-reflection
and discussion including but not limited to all of the following topics: racial, cultural, and
socioeconomic groups; American Indian and Alaskan native students; religion;
systemic racism; gender identity, including transgender students; sexual orientation;
language diversity; and individuals with disabilities and mental health concerns.
Training programs must be designed to deepen teachers' understanding of their own
frames of reference, the potential bias in these frames, and their impact on expectations
for and relationships with students, students' families, and the school communities,
consistent with part 8710.2000, subpart 4, and Minnesota Statutes, section 120B.30,
subdivision 1, paragraph (q).
Learning targets
• Participants will understand implicit bias and reflect on it
in their own lives.
• Participants will learn the psychological and cultural
construction of privilege.
• Participants will gather strategies to recognize and
dismantle implicit bias in their lives
2
4 Jun 2020
What do we VALUE?
Honoring the Humanity and Dignity of Each Person: we each
possess intrinsic worth that can't be earned or taken away
Active Listening: Listen to understand, not to respond
Intersectionality: Facets of our identities shape us and inform our
experience
Reflection and Connection: Understanding ourselves is ongoing
work, and it helps us to build meaningful relationships.
Accepting Discomfort and Non-Closure: Much of this work is
about changing ourselves, not others.
Why work to develop an equity mindset?
Movement building is the effort of social change agents to engage power holders and the broader society
in addressing a systemic problem or injustice while promoting an alternative vision or solution.
Movement building requires a range of intersecting approaches through a set of distinct stages over a
long-term period of time.
Through movement building, organizers can:
• Propose solutions to the root causes of social problems;
• Enable people to exercise their collective power;
• Humanize groups that have been denied basic human rights and
improve conditions for the groups affected;
• Create structural change by building something larger than a
particular organization or campaign; and
• Promote visions and values for society based on fairness, justice
and democracy
Concentric Circles of Equity Work
CORE VALUES
Ongoing, internal, reflective “Work”
System Relational trust
Balanced perspectives and approach to similarity and difference
WHAT DO WE FACE?
Others
One of the worst opportunity gaps in the nation
The reality of the School-to-Prison pipeline
Disproportionate disciplinary data
Over-identification for Special Education
Self
and under-identification for Gifted Services
Bully/harassment rates of marginalized students/staff
Suicide rates of LGBTQ+ students and staff
3
4 Jun 2020
Thinking about ourselves
How does your experience
shape your frames of
reference?
10
Respect
11
Courageous Conversations
Agreements Conditions
Stay engaged Keep your comments personal, local,
and immediate
Speak your truth
Isolate race
Experience discomfort
Normalize social construction and
Expect and accept non-closure
multiple perspectives
Monitor agreements and establish
parameters
Establish a "working definition" for race
Examine the presence and role of
whiteness
12
4
4 Jun 2020
Intersectionality
RACE
* Various axes of identity that society
grants advantage
and disadvantage
* we can be given
advantage within elements
of identity
13
Intersectionality
1. Along which axes of identity have
you been advantaged or
disadvantaged?
2. Reflect on what advantage looks
like for you on one axis.
14
Privilege…what it is not
• It’s not the suggestion that people have never
struggled
• It’s not the assumption that everything a person has
accomplished was unearned
What it is
• A built-in advantage, separate from one’s level of
income or effort
15
5
4 Jun 2020
Understanding Privilege (Advantage)
“I have come to see white privilege as an
invisible package of unearned assets that I can
count on cashing in each day, but about which I
was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. What privilege
is like an invisible weightless knapsack of
special provisions, maps, passports,
codebooks, visas, clothes,
tools, and blank checks.”
-- Peggy McIntosh (1989)
16
Privilege – the Power of Normal
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
17
Privilege – the Power of the Benefit
of the Doubt
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
18
6
4 Jun 2020
Privilege – the Power of
Accumulated Power
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
19
Privilege – the Power of
Accumulated Power
-ISMs and
phobias
That rain populates the
earth, giving some areas PRIVILEGE
more access to life and
resources than others
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
20
Kaia’s story
21
7
4 Jun 2020
Natalia’s story
22
Bias and the brain
23
Bias – what is it?
24
8
4 Jun 2020
What is unconscious (implicit) bias?
Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people
that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds
unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these
biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.
• Unconscious: the automatic assumptions and generalizations based on society's
stereotypes we all subconsciously make.
• Different than perception: You speak English so well!
• Quick Judgement: Hearing an accent might lead your brain to think, “I have to work
harder to understand.”
• We all have unconscious bias. The question is how this impacts student learning.
25
Bias in action
26
Real life Bias unchecked
Discrimination
Stereotypes Prejudices
27
9
4 Jun 2020
Natalia’s story
28
What now?
29
Overcome Our Bias
● Recognize/accept our biases
● Get close (lean in)
● Speak up
From Verna Myers TED Talk
30
10
4 Jun 2020
31
Intercultural Competence/Sensitivity
• The ability to interact, communicate and relate effectively and
appropriately in a variety of cultural contexts.
• The ability to make increasingly more complex perceptual
distinctions about one’s experience with cultural differences
• As a person’s experience of cultural differences becomes more
complex, the ability to adapt behavior appropriate to a cultural
context increases
• The ability to perceive - and therefore experience - cultural
differences in more complex ways is the central dynamic of the
DMIS theory
32
The Golden Rule
Treat others as you want to be treated.
From: AUMA COME TOGETHER ALBERTA CONFERENCE
Charlene Ball and Lucenia Ortiz, May 2018
33
11
4 Jun 2020
The Golden Rule
Treat others as you want to be treated.
● Assumption that our own world view is the center of reality (ethnocentric,
monocultural)
● Seeing difference from our own perspective (our normal: sympathy)
The Platinum Rule
Treat others as they want to be treated.
● Assumption of difference (ethnorelative, intercultural)
● Seeing from another’s perspective (their normal: empathy)
From: AUMA COME TOGETHER ALBERTA CONFERENCE
Charlene Ball and Lucenia Ortiz, May 2018
34
Find the Counter Narrative
35
Fragility
“A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress
becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive
moves. These moves include the outward display of
emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such
as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing
situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate
white racial equilibrium.”
-- Robin DiAngelo, “White Fragility”
36
12
4 Jun 2020
Heather Hackman
“How can dominant
groups move beyond
guilt and shame?”
(3:00 mins)
37
Reflect:
Which of the strategies of
curiosity, grief, and humility
resonate the most with you?
38
This is heart work.
On your worksheet, respond to the
following prompts:
• Moving forward, I will work to
overcome my implicit bias by…
• I feel…
• Upon further review -
39
13
4 Jun 2020
Food for thought…
“Equity work isn’t a checklist…
…it is a lifestyle change.”
- EdMN Racial Equity Advocate
(REA) Cohort 2
40
Thank you!
For more information contact:
learnupon@edmn.org
41
14
