Moving From Teacher Bias to Teacher Agency

This is a video of a 90-minute seminar led by Rebekah Berlin and Dr. Robert Berry with a group of future teachers around the idea of acknowledging teacher bias and developing teacher agency, particularly around issues of equity in mathematics. What's powerful about this is Ms. Berlin's willingness to share how she confronted her own biases as a new teacher and realizes that "my locus of control turned out to be much larger than I thought" (at about 1:18:00). There are many ways to use segments of the video to spark productive reflection and discussion. Recently, Dr. Mark Ellis, who submitted the resource to the Toolkit, used this with a group of teacher leaders. He had them watch two segments (52:15 to 1:00:03 and 1:12:35 to 1:18:30) and talk about what these brought to mind for both them individually as well as for their work with other teachers to address issues of equity and social justice within their schools and districts.