After watching this webinar, I learned a lot about how some teachers might have unintentional implicit bias within the classroom and of different strategies that can be used to prevent it from occurring. This webinar shows that there are also multiple different ways in which implicit bias can be used and is not limited to a specific method. One thing that resonated with me is where it talks about how young children are exposed to stereotypes from the ages of 10 to 12. This shows that it is already starting to become something that seems normal to them because of the way they see people act or how things are explained to them. I feel as though in order to get rid of these specific thought from an early age, parents need to be more aware of how some things that they might say could potentially alter how their children think. (Devine, 10:50).
Another thing that resonated with me from the webinar is where it talked about how it impossible to break specific habits. This in relation to thinking about stereotypes shows that if we as humans grow up thinking something one way, it will be hard to change our thinking because we are so used to what grew up with. This shows that even if you try to train yourself to not think of a specific group of people in a way and believe that it is wrong, you will probably still have thoughts of it. (Devine, 14:48).
Something else from this webinar that did make me think is where it talks about stereotype suppression which is where people try to completely get rid of stereotypes from their mind. This was considered to be a non effective strategy because in order to fully accomplish this, you would still have to think of why you decided to try and forget about a stereotype. This shows that an issue like this can not be just fully ignored but needs other steps in order to go in the right direction such as stereotype replacement. (Devine, 39:24).
One example of a time where I have experienced unintentional bias was when I was in lower level classes in high school for students with learning disabilities. Other students thought as though me and the other students were taking these classes because they would be easier or because we weren’t as smart as everyone else in the grade but it was mostly because we needed the information presented to us differently. This gave them the automatic assumption that we weren’t on the same academic level as everyone else in other classes as well. One way that we responded in a positive way especially in physics olympics where all the sections of the class would compete against each other. This allowed us to show that we were on par with everyone else and were equally getting what we needed to succeed.