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I think that it's important for all of us as educators to check our bias before making a decision about a student. I think it is super important to not have pre-formed opinions about students. It's important to give every student the opportunity to learn in a safe and inclusive environment where their cultures are appreciated and welcomed.

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Everyone has biases that they have developed over their lives. I think my bias comes into play with kids and their behaviors. If I think a child is intentionally misbehaving or isn't a very nice child, I have a hard time not being bias towards them. However, this is a bias that I am very aware of and I work really hard to focus on forming a relationship with those kids. Once I have formed a relationship with them and see past the behavior, my bias in that regard goes away. However, it is something that I have to actively reflect on. One of my biggest fear is that a child looks back and thinks to themselves "you know I think my teacher treated me differently than the other students". As a result, I try to pause a couple times a day and remind myself that I need to take a step back and reset. I think I have an easier time with this than my aides do though. My aides get along with some kids more than others and they have a hard time not being bias as a result. If I notice some bias happening then I will talk with them about it and have them spend more time with that child. I really think relationships are key. I think when you truly get to know a student it is much harder to be bias towards them.

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Over the past years but specifically in the last year I have evaluated my biases when it comes to my students. We all have biases and it is important that everyone "unpacks" their own so we can better serve the students we work with. As much as it needs to be an individual effort to understand your biases, I do think that educators need more training on un biased teaching strategies and training on how to identify disabilities while understanding cultural impact. I think that sometimes educational staff see a student struggling and often assume that the student needs an IEP or has a disability. The reality is that the teachers may just not be using culturally responsive practices to meet the cultural needs of the student. As an educator I make a conscious effort to evaluate my biases and use practices that are beneficial to the student whether that is related to their culture, race, or any situation.

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I feel differences in culture become a disability when it is treated as "we" and "they." This is how "we" do it here. "They" do not fit into the social norm of the school district. Therefore, "they" are labeled as being disabled for not living up to the districts normalized expectations. As Allison mention in her post, as educators we can check for bias by measuring out practices against the social norms of the student cultures present within our classrooms, schools, and districts. It is our job to diversify our thinking and practices to meet the needs of our students. Just because we not understand a behavior, does not mean that it is not a norm in another culture. A stagnant attitude towards personal growth will only stifle an educator's practices. Plus, a teacher may find out more about themselves by learning about the cultures to the students around them.

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While reading this article, I had a few moments where I hoped after the past year, that more people or educators would stop to check our bias more often before addressing student behaviors or immediately writing them off. I know I probably have hidden bias towards students, especially behaviors of students who are not already in special education or receiving intervention services. While this was my first year at this school and in this district, we had several PD focused on equity, PBIS interventions, and SEL lessons specifically targeted towards effects of the pandemic and BLM movements over the last year. From my experience so far, I feel my school is more focused on relationship building with students than immediately assigning discipline, which is a welcome change and allows for a breath and time to check bias before assigning a consequence for the perceived situation.

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Like a lot of people have mentioned here, everyone has their own set of personal experiences which lead to developing biases, whether positive or negative. It is important that teachers continue to reflect on these biases throughout their career to make sure that their biases are not impacting their students. It is our responsibility as educators to make sure we remain judgement and bias free so that our students can feel culturally supported in the environment dedicated to helping them successfully learn. It can be about respect and acceptance rather than overhaul of your ideals as an individual- for example, some students wear specialized clothing during holiday periods due to religion. As a teacher, I don't have to begin wearing that clothing to demonstrate a removal of my bias, but I can certainly accept the student is wearing their clothing, ask them if they would like to explain anything to the classroom, make an effort to bring in holiday treats or goodies to celebrate the holiday with the whole group, or do a reading about the holiday with my class. Treat everything as a learning experience about the different cultural experiences we have on a daily basis.

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After reading the article, I realized that bias is a common issue amongst many education systems. A lot of bias in my opinion comes from the lack of experience and practice teachers have had with learning and understanding different cultures. As a teacher, I am constantly trying to be aware of any biases I may possess. I never want to be bias towards a student and their learning along with my coworkers. I have noticed in my own critical issues assignment, that bias is present along all platforms. I am discussing mental health and apart of that was going into the different intervention they have available. I discovered one of the main reasons students have been misdiagnosed for disabilities is due to intervention bias. Meaning teachers are not implementing these interventions using information on their students diverse backgrounds. I find it important to understand your students and their cultural backgrounds the moment they enter your classroom. I like to make sure I have a good relationship with the parents as well and trying to understand the reason for student behaviors.

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I have spent a lot of time in my undergrad and in my current teaching reflecting on my own bias. I have internal bias that have come in the way of how I perceive someone. After reflecting, I have become aware of them and am better at teaching. Some of the strategies that I used include taking a survey  or writing a reflection on my feelings to identify my own bias.
Also, I think culture plays a big disability to bias. Every culture is different leading others to judge a certain culture without knowing it. For example, some cultures allow different clothing or do not celebrate certain holidays which affects the classroom and those who work with the student. It makes some people uncomfortable working around these cultural differences.

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As others have mentioned, everyone's unique experiences and backgrounds will create biases. My experience in the FL school system was that students were very quickly identified with a learning disability when it could have possibly been more that language was the barrier. Our school was a full inclusion focus (no pull out ELL services occurred) and the number of students on my caseload was very large, and primarily consisted of students who were ELL. I think it is easy for the language barrier often presented as a disability. I think as an educator checking in with others teachers and professionals to get a team approach to determine what the root issue is whether it be behavior, ELL, etc. it is necessary to bring others in to prevent biases from occurring.

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Everyone has their own unique set of experiences in life that lead and affect their beliefs and form biases. I think it is important that everyone realizes they own limited experiences, and then strive to grow more knowledgeable in areas where we lack experience. As educators, we must lead by example with our students, and help them learn empathy and realize there is more to our world than the tiny slice they are experiencing. We also must make sure our minds are open and wiling to change. We must avoid assumptions and show empathy.
I think it is important to have classroom accountability. Having healthy relationships with aides and other teachers who can call you out on bias and help you grow, is beneficial to the school as a whole. We have all made associations and assumptions we shouldn't, so we need people around us who will help hold us accountable for recognizing, and learning from out own bias.

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I believe that differences in culture become disability through a lack of education and awareness about people who come from difference backgrounds. It is essential that teachers reflect on personal biases and then continuously seek out opportunities to educate themselves and grow professionally in order to ensure that biases are not factoring in to making decisions for children. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to learn about the students in front of me- their culture included, so that I can best meet their needs. From year to year, the group of students that I serve may change. This means that I should always been seeking out opportunities to educate myself about the cultures of my students. I am a member of my school district's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. I appreciate that my district provides opportunities for staff to learn about issues that impact our students who come from many different backgrounds.

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I think that we all acquire some sort of bias throughout our lives based upon the communities and cultures we grew up in. Unfortunately, some take those biases and project them onto others are wrong ways of acting or learning. The piece of the article that explained how the classification of ED was created by policy makers rather than educators and clinicians really stuck with me. I think that many people feel that students that are different from what they expect need a label, rather than acknowledging their inherent biases and seeing the students from a different lens. When looking at a student's behavior and determining whether it is due to a disability or cultural difference I think it is important to acknowledge our own backgrounds and what makes us different from the student, and then consciously strip that away. By recognizing our biases and intentionally trying to look at the behavior from a data-driven perspective, we're able to provide more equitable services for all students.

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I think that everyone has some type of bias whether they inherently realize it or not. Individuals who do not have experiences outside of their "bubble" only know of others what they may see in television or social media. As school staff, we need to be constantly reflecting, and pushing ourselves to learn about others so this doesn't happen. I have not personally worked with ELL students, but I know our school has an ELL consult that comes into our building to work with the students. As far as students who are considered low-income, I find myself reflecting a lot when giving assessments in reading, especially. If the student does not have a lot of life experiences outside of school, they really struggle with their reading comprehension due to the lack of background knowledge. I have had many conversations with our testing team about this. This doesn't mean they have a reading deficit, they just may not have the background understanding to make the inferences we want or expect. As teachers we have to be constantly reflecting. It is especially important when we are teaching in areas that we aren't as familiar with. You need to have an understanding of the community and where the kiddos are coming from.

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Like many of you have already stated, everyone's experiences and backgrounds can cause each of us to have biases. I think it is important to understand what these are and continue to learn. For example, I went to school in a very diverse area and was very used to the diversity, where as now where I work there is little to no diversity within the students and I have learned, many students do not know about other cultures. This coming school year, I plan to teach my students about other cultures and diversity so they do not lack the knowledge. The district I grew up in has a wide range of cultures and diversity. Some of the schools have families who are lower-income and did not have as many educational experiences as others. I think this impacts a lot of the elementary schools and the rate of sped referrals because a lot of the students entering kindergarten did not go to preschool and their parents didn't always have a strong educational background. I think these service providers need to stop making assumptions and meet students at their needs instead of referring to special education. My best friends mom is a teacher at one of these schools and she works as hard as she can to meet the needs of her students, who are lower than others, but works her butt of meeting the needs of her students. We need more teachers who advocate for their students.

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I believe that every teacher has cultural bias.  I think that it comes from the experiences that we have had and our surroundings.  I think first and foremost it is important to realize them and be consistently reflecting.  I think that this year I have seen more bias when it comes to special education.  I have seen more ELL students being discussed as maybe needed special education supports.  I have also seen more students who are considered "low income" being brought up also.  I think that it is so very important that we really look at the whole child and not just where they come from.  Every student learns differently no matter their background and some students may need some extra support in the classroom, but does not mean that they necessarily have a disability.  I think that whole building conversations and professional development is important in order to get everyone including administrators on the same page. The more that you are able to talk about bias and how to overcome it as a school community the better. Our job is to advocate for our students and always do what we know is best for them. Therefore, understanding and avoiding bias is essential.

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I think that based on personal experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs, everyone has bias of some kind. I have observed the most examples of bias from people regarding culture/socioeconomic status. With social media being so prevalent in today's world, I think this could have either positive or negative impact on people's bias. This could depend on the type of social media they engage with. I think teachers, administration, and other service providers have these predispositions or beliefs of a culture or group of people allow this bias to interfere with their profession. Perhaps they have never been "called out" for this bias, and this is why it is affecting the decisions they make. Students who are affected by bias are already at an unfair advantage. As an educator, we need to be aware of who we are as people including our beliefs, understandings, and knowledge of different populations. It is so important we get to know each student as the WHOLE child and learn their backgrounds. Students of a variety of backgrounds and abilities can be at a huge disadvantage if they are not given the unbiased, equal opportunity as their peers in the majority groups. Educators need to inform themselves, check their biases, and inform/call out their coworkers to be advocates for students and provide a fair learning environment.

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I believe that everyone has some bias within them, but some are aware of their own bias. It is so important for teachers to reflect on any bias they may have in education since it can/will impact their students lives if there is bias within the classroom. When looking at qualification and bias related to ED, I think it is important to ensure you are not generalizing a population. The data needs to support the qualification and be looked at without race or cultural differences. In order for educator to check their bias, it should be a consistent discussion and topic of reflection. Teachers should think about behaviors that they respond to. The why you respond or how you respond should not be different due to someones culture. I think some educators start to feel a student is "trouble" or "harder" just based on their culture or race. As educators, we need to make sure we start the conversation with our colleagues if we see them starting to display bias. It can be a hard conversation but someone has to start it. I have had students with different races qualified as BD. Overall, I feel some teachers get tense or nervous when they know a student qualified with ED/BD is in their class especially if it is a student of color. I will advocate for my students and share their strengths as much as I can to help other teachers see it as well. I will discuss bias with my teachers when it arises to advocate for my students.

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I think that depending on the person that everyone has some bias. I think most often people have bias about students with disabilities. If faculty have students with a different culture than theirs they often do not understand and might judge their actions. You have to build a relationship with your students and make them feel like it is okay to be different. We can understand that we are all different and that we might have different values and were brought up different ways. I think noticing the differences and knowing what a bias might be is helpful with checking to make sure you are not bias. You can learn a lot about a person based off their past and just by building a relationship with them.