Unconscious Bias
Our unconscious bias unit traces inequality from the 1860's through today. Specifically, the unit focuses on unconscious bias, and how much of the inequality that lingers in our country isn't the blatant, purposeful racism of the 1960's, but is in fact more subtle, and in some ways, more insidious than that. We'll even engage in a Harvard Study to measure our own unconscious bias, and to help advance the field of inequality research.
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Topic 1: Essentially Questioning
In this, the first week of our inequality unit, we write questions that drive our learning for the rest of the unit. Because it's such a valuable use of our time, we spend the entire week writing, evaluating, refining, and voting on the questions we want to answer. We'll also utilize some reader-response theory to discuss how inequality has affected our lives.
Lesson Plans |
Materials |
Monday, 11/23/2020
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Today, we will use a four-corner's discussion protocol to connect students' lives with the reality of inequality using Reader Response Theory. Basically, students see a statement projected, and walk to one of the four corners of the classroom based on their response. They choose to "strongly agree," "agree," "disagree," or "strongly disagree." All they need to earn credit for the day is respond verbally to justify where they walked.
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Thursday, 11/24/2020
In this lesson, intended to develop schema about inequality, we'll start with a gallery-walk protocol during which students react to images of inequality. (This year responses will be tracked in a Google form to assess text complexity and prevent copying.) We will then utilize a second mix and mingle protocol using sentence strips describing the golden rule to build schema about the universality of equality (in theory) contrasted with the universality of inequality (in reality. |
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Topic 2: Defining Unconscious Bias
Our second week is focused on defining unconscious bias. Before understanding each author's perspective, we need to understand the definition of unconscious bias. That being said, it's not a word that lends itself to a single, dictionary definition. As such, we'll spend the week taking Harvard's IAT (yes, that Harvard.)
Monday 11/30/2020, and Thursday, 12/3/2020: IAT Day [In Person]
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During today's lesson, we'll actually take part in advancing the field of inequality in our country by participating in a study that over five million people have already taken. It's an amazing survey that uses simple words and images to figure out how your brain works before you have the chance to think and process your answer. While we'll start with some explanations of how the survey works, and what some of the demographic questions mean, largely, students are engaging with the test itself.
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Tuesday, 12/1/2020, and Friday, 12/4/2020 [In Person]
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During this lesson, students will start by examining the word cloud generated by our image analysis. They'll start with a group-based "observe and infer" protocol to essentially do a modified close read of the word cloud itself to build understanding. After sharing and clarifying their understanding of the cloud itself, students will work with their groups to write ten open-ended questions about inequality based on the word cloud. They'll use our inquiry-based learning sentence frames to help. Once they have written ten questions, they'll choose their three best based on our Quality Question Criteria. We'll then perform a hosted gallery walk where one group member will get feedback from the other groups. At this point, groups will winnow down their three top questions to the one best question based on their peer's feedback, and they'll turn in their top question.
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This word cloud was generated from last week's Form responses.
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Asynchronous Assignment 1: Quizlet Practice
Asynchronous Assignment 2: Mind Map
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A “mind map” is a way to create a visual representation to organize knowledge. It works the same way that the synapses of a brain function, so it’s an incredibly useful tool to use to think about, acquire, and remember new or complex information. The focus of a mind map is not on individual pieces of trivia, it’s on the connections between the information, and on creating the bigger picture.
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"Choice Week" Lessons - [Three Weeks]
12/7/2020-1/8/2020
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**Our equality unit occurs between Halloween and St. Patrick's Day. With Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, President's Day, MLK day, February break, etc. planning for five-day weeks for our equality unit is just short sighted. Instead of planning Monday-Friday weeks, the outline below shows the work our students will do for each text. Those days might span part of a single week, or several calendar weeks depending on how they fall. Regardless, students will chose three of the six texts below with which to read and engage.
Watch the video to the right for a description of our choice weeks! |
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At home, students will:
Day 1: Students will watch the TED Talk they choose on the first day of each "choice week." They'll use our digital Notice/Wonder chart to demonstrate their learning as they watch.
Day 2: Practice assigned skills in IXL.
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In school, students will:
Day 1: Students will perform "Close Reads" on each speech they choose. To do so, we'll print the transcript (they're differentiated six ways each to meet your student's exact needs,) and your student will use one of our Close Read Tools to refine, and to demonstrate their knowledge of the nuances of the speech.
Day 2: Students will use their close read document to complete our connection tool graphic organizer, and write an amazing paragraph! Each paragraph will serve as a body paragraph in their final essay.
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Choice Week: Student-Engaged AssessmentThe trick to teaching is to make sure students understand the mistakes they're making in an emotion-free context before moving on to attempt a similar activity for a second time. The Peardeck-enhanced Slides we'll use weekly will show students how their annotations are being graded, and engage them in the grading process themselves, before they move on to their next choice-week text selection.
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Verna MyersVerna Myers starts her speech with a staggering connection between a book she was reading about violence against young, black men from the early 1900's, and the recent radio reports about violence against young, black men from today. She shares some insight about the uselessness of pretending to be "color blind" and the importance of admitting our biases to overcome them.
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Yasmin Abdel-MagiedYasmin Abdel-Magied transforms both her wardrobe, and our perceptions about inequality with her insightful speech about how the world looks at her differently depending on the cloth she chooses, or chooses not to wear. We'll continue building connections between how the different sub groups experience inequality.
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Emily Scheck *No TED Talk*
Based on this year's gender-specific questions, we needed to add more texts about how gender identity and sexuality create inequality. We dumped some of the women's rights specific texts from last year in favor of this text from November, 2018 about how sexuality still impacts people's lives.
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Yoruba RichenYoruba Richen makes connections between the civil rights movement's success in Barrack Obama's becoming president, and the gay rights' movements recent success. Like most of our speakers, her vision of civil rights is not one representing a single perspective: she represents two groups, each struggling for equality.
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Halla ThomasdottirHalla Thomasdottir shares excellent advice in her speech. We learn about Iceland, the most equal country in the world. Most importantly, we learn about how important it is for women to run for office, whether or not they win the election. You will never, in your entire life, experience a more hopeful message delivered by the "loser" of an election.
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Robbyn McFaddenThis is live as of 2020! This news story shares how equality is still on the rise for women's rights. Believe it or not, up until this year, there were statues in Central Park commemorating famous, real men, and famous, fictional women!!! No real women were featured in Central Park statues until 2020. Not only that, it took quite a fight to get those women to the "pedestal" they deserved, and even some of our female, American heroes faced the scrutiny of 21st century norms applied to their 19th and 20th century lives.
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Tracie KeeseeKeesee shares amazing insight about the importance of community and police working together to build safety. During 2020, there was a crazy line drawn in the sand where either you were in favor of law and order, or in favor of violence and chaos. Keesee, a retired police officer, shares her insights on a path forward that will be best for everyone. I'm not sure, but I'd bet that on her front yard she posted both signs in support for BLM, AND for her local police, and that's going to be the only way forward.
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Clint SmithClint Smith shares some thoughts about how he was raised, and on the difference between how kids of different races and genders are raised in America right now. His speech is basically a free-verse poem about his experience as a kid, and how that experience with his parents and teachers empowered him to succeed in a culture that might not be conducive to his success.
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Monique MorrisMorris shares some of the unique problems facing black girls in our schools. This is a data-heavy speech that shares some of the perceptions about black girls and how those perceptions impact our girls! This talk covers is all, culture, hair, clothes, identity. As a father of a female toddler, this was incredibly enlightening for me, even though my daughter is white.
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Raj JayadevJayadev shares some incredibly insightful ideas about how to activate a community to transform a criminal into a person. They're not working for chaos or lawlessness. They're just making sure that everyone gets the same benefit of the doubt that some people get in our criminal justice system, and that some people do not.
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Adam FossAdam Foss is a prosecutor. His job is to hold people accountable for their crimes. That being said, he has some incredibly thoughtful ideas about criminal justice, trial wins, and creativity, and how all of those factors impact whether communities are safe, happy, and healthy. He asks us to question the true meaning of the word "justice" from the perspective of the kid who made a mistake, instead of from the perspective of a lawyer out to make their career, and a lot of money.
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Alice GoffmanAlice Goffman shares how she existed as part of a two-class system that moves children into adulthood. While at college, she learned all the skills she needed to be an adult, and built a resume that led her to deliver this TED talk. Surrounding her college, she saw the other side of coin. Poor communities filled with kids her age (college age) being thrown in jail, or having legal complications that caused them to have very limited options at the same time that Goffman herself was learning everything she needed.
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Tillett WrightWright has a crazy thought! What if no one were 100% anything? No one is 100% black, or white. No one has 100% male or female characteristics. (I'm a man, but I drink tea and teach English, two traditionally "female" things.) She then shares the thought: what if no one is 100% gay or straight? She then drops a bombshell about the legal question about how to draw the line between who likes who and what? That's about the best description I can offer for this TED talk.
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Alaa MurabitAlaa Murabit emphatically covers the importance of understanding before casting judgment, and as such, this TED Talk is incredibly powerful for anyone who has felt that brief tug of unconscious bias, or even uncertainty of expectation, when in the presence of our Muslim women. Alaa looks at inequality through the lens of business, and as such, offers a unique perspective for our Unconscious Bias unit.
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Ziauddin YousafzaiThis stunning TED Talk shares some insight about the bias that occurs against women in some countries even today. Besides the tragic violence (and subsequent triumph) Ziauddin Yousafzai is an equality pioneer because as a man, he is deeply passionate about fighting for women's right to equal education and opportunities.
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Aaron HueyIn this, the most moving of our speeches, we examine "Manifest Destiny" from the perspective of the losing side, and we realize that what we learn as a great time in American history is only great advancement for the U.S. based on the great loss of our Native American population. As our final group, our connections are now complete, and we can use all the evidence we've accrued to answer the questions we posed in week one.
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Runner's World: Runner's Alliance
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Venus WilliamsIn her incredibly evidence-based speech, Williams shares the pay inequality at Wimbledon, and makes impressive arguments about how women's tennis is a particularly good barometer for equal pay in sports because both sexes play at the same time, on the same court, so it would be impossible to say who was attracting the crowd and television viewers!
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Final Essay
1/19/2020-1/22/2020
Essay DescriptionOur essay this unit will answer the essential questions our students created during our first week. Regardless of the questions, the essay will connect how different groups across history and countries have suffered from, and worked to overcome inequality.
Amazing Student Exemplars: |
Success Skills
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Essay Materials
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Unconscious Bias Connection ToolThis tool helps students to organize their writing in a few ways. It "chunks" the writing process into manageable tasks - finding evidence as they read or watch, and explaining the evidence as soon as they find it, instead of weeks after. By using a clear, table format, it helps students to see the structure of writing because it is literally structured. Also, it makes the writing process less scary, because they've done most of it ahead of time. By and large, when they sit down to write their paragraphs and essay, they can copy and paste their own work, allowing them to focus on the finer nuances of writing.
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Writing Tools PageThe goal of every successful ELA classroom is to help students develop into the best possible writers that they can become. The tools below are what we use in my classroom to help students on the road to above grade level writing and beyond. What matters to my students and their parents are the tools below, and how they're used.
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Essay Differentiation
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This essay prompt provides sentence frames for all transitions throughout. Students assigned this claim will demonstrate a literal understanding by summarizing a few of our texts.
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This essay prompt provides an in-depth outline making it easy for students with a literal understanding of some of our texts to use their work throughout the unit to organize an effective essay. Sentence frames are provided for the introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
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This essay prompt provides an in-depth outline making it easy for students with quality, grade-level analysis of most of our texts to use their work throughout the unit to organize a beautiful essay.
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With sparse directions, and requiring an in-depth analysis of every text to which students have access, this assignment stretches what it's possible for 8th-grade students to produce.
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Essay Peer Review Protocol
1/19/2020 - 1/22/2020
The longer I teach, the more I realize that students don't learn when teachers evaluate their work. Students learn the most when they learn to evaluate their own work, and the work of their peers. Our peer-review protocol emphasizes evidence from student writing and linking it to language from the four-point rubric. I've utilized the whole "warm & cool" method in the past and it ends up emphasizing feelings, not writing. My evidence-based method grounds all actionable feedback in evidence accrued from the writing itself.
In Person Days:
Our peer-review process begins with, essentially a lecture. I might lecture 1% of the school year, and I spend that 1% to contribute meaningfully to our peer-review process. I start by reading and projecting above grade level writing, and pointing out the key features that define it as above grade level. Then we move down the rubric to grade level, below grade level, and very confused, or hardly attempted. The goal is to celebrate amazing work, and learn from mistakes, so we enforce a strict rule: Evaluate writing, never judge writers. Once I've explained the rubric points, we move into a whole-group, response-card activity (usually augmented by Peardeck or Plickers software for consistency assurance data tracking) and allow students to turn and talk between exemplars, justifying the score points they offer, before I share the correct score point.
Day 2: The second day of our peer-review process involves students walking to 12-14 stations around the classroom and closely reading and evaluating their peer's work based on the same rubric Ms. Davis and I use to evaluate them, Students are expected to use a Google Form to assign a score, justify it using evidence from both the rubric and the writing itself, and then to offer some form of constructive criticism (usually based in the rubric language of the score point one higher than the student achieved.) You'd be AMAZED how accurate the aggregate data is when students base their peer evaluation in evidence and text, instead of warm and cool feelings.