| Body | Learning about culture is inherently complex. It involves examining not only overt representations of culture (food and holidays for example), but also subtler cultural manifestations such as perspectives and values. This level of cultural examination can be difficult to negotiate in a classroom with students who have diverse and possibly conflicting ideals.
One way to approach this difficulty in the classroom is to allow students to examine their own biases so that they are aware of the lenses that color their perceptions of the world. The goal is not to change the students’ personal values but rather to empower them to tackle cultural encounters with empathy, humanity, and awareness.
Objectives: Learners will be able to:
- Identify and articulate 1-2 biases they have
- Create an approach to handling cultural encounters with empathy, humanity, and awareness.
Modes: Interpersonal, Presentational
Materials: Implicit.harvard.edu, Implicit Biases handout
Procedure:
- Have your students identify their biases by taking the tests at implicit.harvard.edu. They should complete two tests.
- Provide your students with the Implicit Biases handout. They will document their test results and their initial reactions to their test results on the handout.
- Next, use an anonymous polling platform like Poll Anywhere to document students’ results. If you don’t have access to mobile devices, you could pass around a sheet of paper and have students document their various results with tick marks.
- Discuss the results as a class. How many people have strong biases against certain genders (or other test taken)? Races (or other test taken)? Small biases? No biases?
- Give the students 3 minutes to use the Implicit Biases Handout to think and write about the class results as they relate to their own. Were the results surprising? Did they make the students feel better about their own results? Why?
- Next, discuss as a class where the biases come from. Oftentimes, people end up finding out that they are slightly biased against themselves. Why might that be the case?
- Finally, help students create an approach for handling cultural encounters with empathy, humanity, and awareness. This approach involves three phases: 1) gathering information about culture, 2) processing the information, and 3) applying the information. The approach will be documented on the Implicit Biases handout.
- As a class, share some ideas for each phase of the approach crafted in Step 7. If the students have difficulty, you may want to watch Theo E.J. Wilson’s Ted Talk and work together to decide how he gathered, processed, and applied information.
Notes:
- Culture and language are inextricable from one another. As such, we recommend using this activity at the beginning of the school year, no matter the proficiency level of the students. For beginning learners, almost all of the activity and discussion will have to take place in the L1, while more proficient learners should use more of the target language when engaging in and interacting with the activities.
- Conversations with People Who Hate Me (http://www.dylanmarron.com/podcast/) is an excellent podcast for exploring biases and the idea of approaching differences with empathy and humanity, but it may not be appropriate for younger listeners.
- Beyond Tolerance (https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/474820279/beyond-tolerance) is a great TED Radio hour to use to explore empathy and humanity as well. Some topics covered are more appropriate for older learners.
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