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.
The seminar discussion is based on a book chapter of the same title:
Berlin, R. & Berry III, R. Q. (2018). Confronting the lies I tell myself This link will take you to an external website in a new tab.. In M. Civil, D. White, & S. Celedon-Pattichis (Eds.). Access and Equity: Promoting High-Quality Mathematics in Grades 3-5 (pp. 9-20). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics