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I was surprised to find out that I had implicit/unconscious bias toward people that were more like me. I took the Race IAT, the Disability IAT, and the Gender-Career IAT. I really thought I would be more neutral in these tests, or hoped I would be. :) However, I had a moderate automatic preference for people that looked like me and similar abilities to me. Knowing this, I need to make sure I am giving my students the same respect and hold them to the same expectations no matter what their race, gender, ability, religion, etc. This is good to know and recognize as the first step to creating a more equitable learning environment for all of my students.

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Was interesting to test. I got tripped up on the E and I buttons when the testing switched and found myself looking at the topics to ensure I was getting the one I wanted pressed.

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These tests helped give me more insight on how I view certain topics and how to best support my students in the future. By knowing your own biases, you are able to work on them and help your students succeed to the best of their abilities.

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We are also raising the next generation of involved dads as our pack is three boys strong. I was cut off at two minutes in my recording, but I would add that I will continue being open minded of all people (students and families), male and female, and their preferences for home-life, work-life, and sexual preferences. I will work on having no biases, not a "moderate or slightly moderate automatic" response to these biases. I am also curious to see if anyone has a "no bias" report or if this testing pulls one way or another, so I will look and listen for these as I respond to my peers.

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I took three of the IAT tests - religion, sexuality, and Arab Muslim names. The results of the last test show that I was much faster at sorting Other People with Bad and Arab Muslims with Good than vice versa. My first thought was that compared to others who took this test, I was probably in a smaller percentage since the common belief that we're taught in school is that white Americans tend to associate Muslims with bad. However, the exact same percentage of responders sorted them in the opposite way.

So what does this mean? Well, I lived in a predominantly Muslim country in my early 20s, so maybe I don't have the implicit bias that I'm told I'm predisposed to have as a white Midwesterner. Or perhaps these tests aren't as accurate as the writers had hoped? There are lots of different ways to examine these results. For example, when I silently repeated to myself the choices that were associated with the key in my dominant hand, I felt my sorting was much faster. I tried to do it the opposite way, by concentrating on the answers associated with my non-dominant hand, and I found I was spending more time sorting the words. So do the test results have more to do with the way we think about the words as they appear on the screen, or with the biases that we supposedly have regarding Muslim/Bad vs. Other/Good?

As for the sexuality IAT, I sorted everything equally. My best friend is a gay woman married to another gay woman and I adore them both. They've raised three amazing sons and are two of the best moms I know. So I'm not surprised that everything was equal for me in this test. However, I did make errors each time because I was trying to go quickly. It also trips me up each in each test when the same sorting is done but the sides of the screen are switched on me.

The religion IAT gave me much the same results as the sexuality one. I really feel these tests are more about the ways in which our fingers are reacting to what we see on the screen than about implicit bias.

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I took the quiz to check for bias for CIS gendered or trans individuals and showed no preference. I have had a few trans students. One of these individuals I found to be challenging. So I was curious to see if I would display an anti-trans bias and was glad that I did not. The most interesting thing was that the largest category was no bias, though many more people showed some sort of bias for CIS or Trans people. The number of people favoring CIS people was slightly larger, which did not surprise me. This is one of the reasons that I am so determined to be kind and fair toward these students.

I also looked for bias for young versus old people and again displayed no bias. I have an honesty bias. I like people who are brutally honest, no matter their other faults. Fake people I have a hard time with.

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Taking the Implicit Association Test (IAT) on gender and science revealed something interesting: I showed no strong bias either way. I was equally quick to associate both genders with both fields. I think that’s because I’ve lived this tension firsthand. I spent a decade as a professional scientist before becoming an educator, and I was often the only woman in the room, or even the entire building. At one point, I was the only female in a massive science building in downtown Louisville filled with hundreds of scientists. That reality shaped how I see gender roles in STEM.

What I learned about myself is that while I may not hold an implicit bias, I still carry the weight of experience from a male-dominated field. Moving forward, this pushes me to be intentional about representation in my classroom, highlighting female scientists, encouraging all students to see themselves in STEM, and actively working to disrupt stereotypes before they take hold.

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First step towards doing better is knowing better. These tests were rough, but needed.

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I took the Age IAT and found that I did not have an automatic bias preference between old people and young people. When I first took this test I was hoping that I didn't have a bias against young people, especially as a teacher. I wasn't sure how I would score when it came to old people though. When I first started taking the test I was a bit unsure as to how the test was going to be able to analyze if I had a bias towards either age group. But after a few rounds of the test, I found that I was slipping up more because I had committed to memory the original sides for both old/young and good/bad. I did make a few mistakes while going through, but I think that was just my brain forgetting which side is left and which is right. Haha!

As I got closer to the end of the test I then wondered if maybe since I work with young people most of the year, if I would have a bias against old people. I was a bit worried because I kept thinking "I really do value the perspective of individuals older than me, but do I have an unknown bias against them?" I am thankful that I ended up in the zone of no automatic bias towards either grouping of people, especially as someone who works with many different ages of individuals every day!

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I took a variety of test. Of the many I thought I would be very neutral on (gender-science and gender-career) I found I was slightly quicker at female-science and female-career pairings. This makes senses as I am a female science teacher, but what I found more interesting was the order. The counter culture bias seemed to be last…maybe that reveals my bias by making that generalization. In tests that had me associate a topic with “good” or “bad” words, I found the association harder. It was interesting because I did not always associate the words used for “bad” as having a clearly bad association. Failure, negative, and dirty are not words I associate with “bad” things. I often get dirty doing things I love: painting, cooking, playing with my nephews, and being in nature. A negative correlation or negative temperature is not a bad thing. Failure is just an opportunity to learn. I try to remove the stigma associated with such words in my classroom. With that being said, I anticipated the bias as I started a test, I tried to think of ways to take the test from an unbiased approach, and focuses on the right side designation rather than all four categories at once. As I took various test I did feel the sting of selecting a wrong correlation even if it was just because I miss read the word.

Recognizing bias is critical to ensure all students succeed. As I read the articles for the week I found myself assessing if I call on or help students more based biases, and found myself using systems (like students names on popsicle sticks and random generators) that help to eliminate bias in my classroom. My hope is to be more aware of my implicit biases and establish practices the remove biases when possible.

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I took the Hispanic IAT, which determines your likeness for Hispanic names and European American names. My results determined that I was equally fast and accurate at sorting through both styles of names and good and bad words. it showed me what I already believed of my self that I have equal respect for people of different cultures. I am not really bias for one over the other even though I think I may sometimes be. I also took the Age IAT, which determines which age group I may have a preference for young people or old people. It showed that I have a preference for young people and that may be because i work with highschoolers daily and I feel young and old sometimes around them. I believe the implications that it has on my classroom are that I show respect to all students no matter their age and sometimes prefer talking to them directly about their problems versus going to their parents as I consider them to be young adults. Moving forward I may need to change my thinking about working with parents because they can bring a lot of insight on their children that I may not have.

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I was much faster at sorting career and male names. Would I have been faster at sorting female names and careers if that had been what I did first? How much of a difference does this make?

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I discovered that I was faster sorting male names and career words than female names and career words. If had had done the latter first, would I have been faster? When I introduce new ideas to students how will that affect their overall outcome of retaining that new information?