Basic Strategies

1 INTERRUPT
Educators from all grade levels and all parts of the country emphasize this point: You must speak up against every biased remark, every time it happens. Letting one go, then speaking up against the next one, sends an inconsistent message: that sometimes bias is ok; other times it isn’t. Letting the first instance go without comment also sends the message to anyone within earshot that it’s ok to say bigoted things.

So interrupt it. Every time. In the moment. Without exception.

“Stop what you’re doing—whatever you’re doing—and address it,” says Soñia Galaviz, a fifth-grade teacher in Nampa, Idaho.

So if Galaviz is teaching a math lesson and she hears a student make a biased remark, what does she do? “I say to myself, ‘Hold on, let’s stop.’ The parallelogram lesson can wait. And I go back to all the work we did the first two months of school, discussing classroom culture and sharing our own cultural stories. I address it in the moment. I never let it pass. Anytime you let it pass, it’s an opportunity missed.”

Usually, such moments have stopped happening by mid-year or earlier, based on that early work, Galaviz says. But once, many years ago, well into the second half of the school year, a student casually used the n-word in class. “I went ‘Errrrrrh. Hold on a second.’ I tempered my own response, so I wasn’t angry or out of control. And I asked why in the world he would say such a thing.”

In the end, Galaviz worked lunch hours and after school with the student, having him write what turned out to be a 15-page paper on the origin and history of the n-word. It was a lesson the student didn’t forget. When he was in high school, he came back and thanked Galaviz for teaching him the negative power and ugly history of that word.

These moments are rare, Galaviz says. But early, firm intervention sends the message that bias will not be tolerated.

Nancy Brakke, a music educator in Tacoma, Wash., admires and encourages these “instant” responses. “No anger, no recriminations, no lecture—just a calm, straightforward ‘stop,’” she says.

Connecticut teacher Christine Sipes describes just such a moment: “I was a new teacher on lunch duty, and a veteran teacher came up to me and said, ‘Have you heard the one about the Italian and the …?’ I immediately said, “I don’t like ethnic jokes.’”

This may not stop every so-called joke; the person still may tell such “jokes” to others. But it begins to marginalize the behavior. The more often it is interrupted, the more likely it will be curtailed.

2 QUESTION
As mentioned in the opening chapter, asking simple, exploratory questions in response to bigoted remarks can be a powerful tool: “Why do you say that?” “What do you mean?” “Tell me more.”

Galaviz, the fifth-grade teacher, also serves as an adjunct faculty member at Boise State University. One of her students, preparing to begin student teaching, said to Galaviz, “You can tell kids whose families don’t have an education.”

As it turns out, Galaviz, who has multiple degrees and solid educational credentials, grew up in a lower-middle class family, the daughter of parents who had to drop out of school to begin working. She didn’t immediately challenge her student’s comment. Instead, she said, “Tell me more. Tell me what you mean by that.”

She says that approach accomplished two things. One, it led the speaker to encounter his own blind spots or bits of ignorance, as she teased out the reasons behind his thinking. Two, it helped her better understand his thinking and gave her more time to frame and tailor her response.

Galaviz says that this doesn’t work if you pepper the speaker with aggressive questions. “What exactly do you mean by that?” Aggressive questioning can be counterproductive, closing off communication rather than opening it. The gentle-but-clear “tell me more” approach extends the conversation rather than shutting it down.

Tone matters in these moments. Your goal is to understand the roots of the speaker’s prejudices, then help add context and information to dispel them.

Don’t think for a moment that we all don’t have some sort of prejudices. “I call them the ‘uglies,’ and we have to acknowledge the uglies within ourselves if we’re ever going to make lasting change,” Galaviz says.

Amber Makaiau is an ethnic studies teacher at Kailua High School in Oahu, Hawaii. She recalls a moment when she faced the “uglies” in front of her students.

Makaiau periodically checks in with students about classroom culture—what’s working, what’s not working, any issues to discuss. During one of these check-ins, a student asked Makaiau why she pushed the Filipino students to talk more during classroom discussions but did not similarly push the white students.

“I said, ‘Hmmmm,’ and it surprised me. They had a good point,” Makaiau says. “They got to see me work through this surprising realization right in front of them, and I was able to change my behavior accordingly. Teachers need to be open to that. We are there to learn as much as the students are.”

3 EDUCATE
Hate isn’t behind all hateful speech. Sometimes ignorance is at work, or lack of exposure to diverse populations. Other times, people simply don’t know the negative power behind certain words or phrases. So a good first step in a moment of bias—particularly if it’s the first time you’ve encountered it with someone—is to explain why the term or phrase is offensive.

So if someone says, “That’s so lame” or calls someone a “bitch,” not knowing the discriminatory or sexist power behind these words, you can offer background and context to encourage the person to choose a different expression.

Barbara Hemann, an Iowa teacher who has multiple sclerosis, shares this example:

My most obvious symptom is my foot dragging as I walk, creating a limp. A student once said to me, ‘What’s with the gimp?’

I don’t think the student meant to be disparaging in any way, so I sat down and told him that although I was not hurt by his comment, that many people who have a disability would be, and that he should always be respectful and use respectful language if he was going to ask someone about a disability. I told him that I welcomed questions, and I would always take time to answer those questions.

I think the student left with a lifetime skill.

So unless you are dealing with a longstanding pattern of behavior, give the speaker the benefit of the doubt, and allow that person to make a change. “Be kind,” Hemann says. “Nearly everyone is fighting a great battle.”

It is not your “job” to educate everyone else about bias. People do need to take responsibility for their own ignorance. Self-education— the realization that one lacks knowledge on a subject and will seek it out on one’s own—is vital.

That said, you are in a school, and education happens in schools. So it’s a natural fit to wrap education around moments of bias or stereotyping.

Consider this moment, shared by Vanessa D’Egidio, a second-grade teacher in New York City: A group of second-grade girls was overheard on the playground, laughing and making negative comments about classmates’ clothing. They found fault with clothing that wasn’t name brand and laughed at others whose clothes were faded and frayed.

“Another teacher pulled the group aside to discuss what she overheard, explaining to the students that what they were doing was teasing, bullying and very hurtful toward their peers, regardless of whether it was to their faces or behind their backs,” D’Egidio says.

Afterward, the second-grade teaching team collectively decided to follow up with a community meeting of all second-graders.

“During the meeting, we did not single out the students who had done the teasing, but we brought up the issue of teasing someone about their clothing or something else about them through gossiping,” D’Egidio says.

Teachers role-played different scenarios, showing how gossip can be hurtful. Then they asked students for examples of more considerate behavior.

“The teachers reminded students that words can hurt, whether they are used in private, overheard or said directly to someone,” D’Egidio says. “We also highlighted the importance of being an ally, the importance of speaking up against teasing, and the importance of everyone working together in a community to create a safe, caring space for all.”

4 ECHO
It’s powerful to be the first voice that interrupts bias. It’s also powerful on another level to be the second, third or fourth voice to join in the interruption. In group settings, if someone has said something biased, and not one but four people speak up, the echoing power of those voices can have a multiplying effect.

As the echoing voice, you can reiterate the anti-bias message or you can thank the first person for speaking up—or both!

Consider this, from a high school teacher working with ninth-graders:

I overheard a side conversation where a student said, ‘That’s so gay.’ I was shocked. I thought that phrase was rarely used. (Maybe I just wasn’t aware.) Immediately, another girl in the group said that was a wrong thing to say. The first girl giggled and said she was just being funny. The second girl said it’s not funny because it hurts people. I was impressed, so I jumped into the conversation. I told her, ‘Thank you. I have a lot of respect for you speaking up like that, and I totally agree with you.’

The Dynamic

1 SPEAKING FROM AUTHORITY
When you communicate from a position of authority, your words often carry more weight—and sometimes you cannot gauge whether the listener genuinely understands or simply is unwilling to talk back. If the response is silence, don’t assume that your message has sunk in. Watch closely to see if behaviors change, and be ready to speak up again—and again—if needed.

From a position of authority, your words also affect people within earshot. If a principal hears a student in the hallway using a casual sexist slur and she stops to tell the student that biased language is not tolerated at the school, others will hear an antibias message from the top. This can have a ripple effect—both to curb slurs and to empower others to speak out against them. Imagine that same principal delivering a message against slurs at a school-wide assembly. That’s another case in which speaking from authority can have a huge impact.

Perhaps more important, if someone in authority does not speak up, it empowers a different sort of behavior. That lack of action tells everyone within earshot that slurs are allowed in hallways, classrooms or the office.

A teacher from upstate New York describes the rural, largely white community in which she lives, where casual and not-so-casual bias sometimes is allowed to thrive. But it does not thrive in her classroom, where she has the authority to set the tone and speak out. She states it flatly, and takes responsibility for the work: “I am the only person who can stop the bigotry in my classroom.”

A teacher from another part of the country learned her lesson on this issue from moments when she did not speak up.

I often just did not pay attention to hurtful comments or bigoted behaviors. [Then] I began to make a personal connection to my own life and how bullying had impacted me as a youth. Bullying and bigoted behaviors have so many layers and are presented in so many ways. This is when I realized that I was contributing to the problem by not speaking up and speaking out.

Every week, she found herself in situations where she needed to speak up against comments that were intolerant. The result?

I discovered that the more I speak up, the more I hear [my students] speaking up, too. This is one of the ways we create that safe space around us, where our young people know that they are accepted, appreciated and heard.

An elementary school principal in the Pacific Northwest says that he routinely interrupts when he hears biased words being used—either with teachers or with students.

I step in. I say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ The vast majority, with students, is kids using words they don’t really understand. They just know the word is negative, a put-down. So I make it public, but I don’t make it punitive. It’s a teachable moment, and I want everyone within earshot to know it’s not okay to speak that way here.

2 SPEAKING TO A PEER
There is power in a peer relationship. When a friend or trusted colleague tells you something, you often hear it more clearly than if it comes from some other source. Peer relationships also are problematic. Explaining to another teacher why offensive language should be avoided might result in a reply along the lines of “You’re not my boss.”

So there are considerations to be made:
• How close are you to this peer? (Strong friendship, mild but positive acquaintance, nothing more than “hello” in the hallway?)
• What is the nature of past interactions? (Happy but shallow, feelings of real affinity, some tension over other issues?)
• How does this person best receive communication? (Written, verbal, with humor, in group settings, as a quiet aside?)

Weigh your response based on relevant factors. Some examples:

Teacher-to-teacher
An early-childhood educator from Wisconsin had someone she considers a good friend speak excitedly about some bargains he had found at a neighborhood yard sale. She continues: He said quite conversationally that he had ‘Jewed down’ the owner. I asked what he meant and watched as his face went from puzzlement (at my ‘ignorance’) to embarrassment (he knows quite well that I’m Jewish). I let him flounder for a bit and then tossed him a lifeline—his promise not to use that phrase again, regardless of who is in the room.

Student-to-student
A Georgia high school student describes himself as the only African American in his circle of friends.

They do not necessarily say mean-spirited things or bully me directly, but they always make a point to mention that I am the ‘token black.’ I usually laugh it off or ignore it, but recently it became too much. I was having a bad day, and I could not hold back my annoyed feelings any longer. I began to yell at them explaining how racist it was that they called me that … and how mean they were being. When I finally finished, they stared at me until one of the boys started laughing. They all laughed and made fun of me, and I realized that all I did was fuel their fire.

Looking back, the student says he would have changed his approach.

I would have confronted it much earlier, when I first realized that I had a problem with the way I was being treated. I should have pulled my friends aside or talked to them individually, explaining my issues with the situation—not with anger or revenge, but with calmness.

3 SPEAKING TO AUTHORITY
Speaking up to an authority figure is tricky. It carries risk. Are you questioning your principal’s leadership skills? Or are you challenging a senior teacher in a way that might backfire? Will you face punitive reactions? Is the power relationship so imbalanced that you won’t be heard at all—or worse, will be mocked for being overly sensitive or “whiney”?

Ask yourself some questions:
• Should I write down my issue, present it in the form of a letter or memo? Would that avoid an initial face-to-face confrontation that could get ugly, allowing the person in authority to absorb the message before we speak about it?
• Should I seek an ally or allies?
• Am I jumping over a level of authority (going to the superintendent before speaking with the principal, for example), and will that lead to problems later?

In 2004, when Emma Fialka-Feldman was in high school, she wrote a letter to teachers and administrators at her school about the lack of response to the use of the word retard as a casual slur at her school. Emma’s older brother has developmental disabilities, and she was angered by the use of the word.

I wrote a letter to my teachers and administrators at the beginning of the school year, reminding them the power they have to teach their students not only about academics but also social values, such as respectful language. … I was nervous. I wondered that their response would be.

A few days after the letter arrived in all teachers’ mailboxes, Emma’s biology teacher stopped her in the hallway.

He said, ‘I know there have been times I haven’t said anything. I am sorry, and I plan on calling out more students now.’ I was speechless. My teacher was coming up to me to apologize; I thought students always did the apologies. … I am honored to have gone to a school district that could learn from its students.

Emma’s letter has been republished widely and included in at least one anthology. Here is a brief excerpt:

Changing the culture of any high school to promote values of respect and responsibility does not happen overnight. … It happens little by little. I can’t and will not tell every single person I hear use the r-word to stop saying it. I need your help. In the classroom, when a student uses the r-word, tell them to stop. By saying it in front of the classroom, the entire class knows that they can no longer use the word because you don’t tolerate it. When they eat in the cafeteria or walk down the hallways they will also learn that they can no longer say it on school property because every time they do, a teacher will tell them to stop … [and] they will bring what the teachers, staff and administrators taught them into the larger world.

Student-to-teacher
A teacher in the Northeast related this story:

Two teenage girls, both pregnant, are walking down the hallway of their high school. A teacher passes, clicks his tongue and says, “I bet neither of you even knows who the baby daddy is,” and keeps walking by. The students say nothing.

What might they have said?

“It’s tough,” the teacher says. “Teachers have power, and students know that. They certainly could have said, ‘You can’t talk to us that way,’ but even that might be risky.”

The teacher relating the story suggested that the girls together might approach an administrator and describe what happened and ask what can be done. Or they could tell their parents, and the parents could contact an administrator. This work isn’t easy, and the power involved in some relationships makes it tough to find an effective avenue for change.

4 SPEAKING TO A PARENT OR VISITOR
When the person making a biased remark is a parent or a visitor to your school, ask yourself some questions. Do you have an ongoing relationship or is this person a one-time visitor? What kind of relationship does this person have with the school? (Someone with a history of antagonistic interactions with the school may require a different response than someone with positive or neutral relations, for example.)

The basic advice for speaking up to visitors is to be quick, calm, firm and straightforward. Whenever possible, tie the moment to classroom rules, school policy or some other principle.

If a father visiting on parents’ night casually makes a biased remark, a possible reply would be, “Oh, we don’t use that word in our classroom. Our classroom rules prohibit the use of hurtful words.” Don’t engage in a debate over whatever term was used, just refer again to the rules, if needed, and move on.

If you have a relationship, draw on that. (“Oh, Maria, I know you didn’t mean to be hurtful using that word, but we don’t say hurtful things in our classroom.”)

If it is someone with a history of offensive behavior or antagonistic relations, stay firm and straightforward, and move on to the content at hand. (“We don’t use that word in this classroom. Thank you. Now, we were discussing the art project planned for the spring …”)

An ELL/Spanish teacher in Illinois held a parents’ night. The father of one of her Spanish class students told her he insisted that his son take Spanish so he could “show those Spanish-speaking factory workers who’s boss.”

I have to say I was taken aback by the tone of the comment. [But] I am grateful this parent shared his opinion. I added additional parents’ nights to discuss the presence of immigrants in the United States and the challenges they face. As evidenced by the surveys, the meetings ended on a positive note. All participants indicated they had a better understanding of immigrants.

The Location

1 IN THE CLASSROOM
In your classroom you have the advantage of time and authority. You—working with students—can set ground rules and limits about slurs and hurtful comments. You can interrupt a moment, suspend the planned lesson and devote the time needed to discuss and explore the impact of what was said.

(We know that you are inundated with mandatory curricula, testing and other things that fi ll classroom time, and we also know that the issue of creating a safe and welcoming environment for all students is something you believe in—and something worth the classroom time.)

“We talk about intellectual safety in our class, that we’re a community where inquiry and reflection can happen—and a community where everyone can feel safe,” says Amber Makaiau, the ethnic studies teacher in Oahu, Hawaii.

This gives students the language to speak up throughout the year, Makaiau says, both in and beyond the classroom. In the classroom, they can use their shared language (“I don’t feel safe when you use that term”). Outside the classroom, they are empowered to speak up against biased remarks because of the understanding they have reached inside the classroom.

Makaiau describes the classroom as a place where teachers and students can “unpack” language. “So if someone says, ‘We have to respect each other in our classroom,’ we don’t stop there. We take it further, to explore how different people from different cultures define respect, and how we balance its many meanings within the classroom.”

The need for a prompt and strong response to biased remarks in the classroom has been explored earlier in this guidebook. Some teachers, though, move beyond spoken responses and require follow-up action from their students.

“If someone says something inappropriate or offensive in my class, I stop what I’m doing and have them write a letter of apology,” says Tracy Oliver-Gary, the AP history teacher from Burtonsville, Md. “It might be something sexually offensive, or something involving bias—anything that may offend another student in class and make them feel targeted. It happens, and I say, ‘Start writing the letter.’”

2 IN THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE
The teachers’ lounge is a place where uncomfortable peer-to-peer situations may arise. Conversation might be more casual there. Insensitive comments and biased assumptions may be voiced more frequently.

For example:

A fellow teacher made a joke to other staff about the band students, referring to them as ‘band fags.’ Needless to say, I told him it wasn’t funny and certainly not appropriate.

A colleague I barely knew expressed sadness that his Jewish and Hindu students were all going to hell [based on his Christian beliefs]. I was left breathless. It took me a few seconds to recover enough to tell him—firmly but gently—that I did not share that belief, for a lot of reasons.

The level of the peer relationship must be considered. How close are you to this person? There also must be some sensitivity about who else is present, who else might hear any interaction and how they might react.

All those factors are at play, but the basic strategies still apply. Do speak up. Don’t antagonize. Do keep your eye on the goal: to keep communication channels open and help someone realize the effect of biased comments.

Consider this incident:

Two educators were talking in a teachers’ lounge at a school in the Pacific Northwest. Each had a sibling from the same family as a student. The teacher of the younger sibling said, “Those parents don’t care a thing about their child’s education. They don’t even come to parent-teacher conferences.”

Hearing that, the second teacher—the one who relates this story—took a breath and considered how to respond. She had visited the family’s home and knew some of the pressures and realities the parents faced: living in poverty, working multiple jobs, having unreliable transportation. Getting to a parent-teacher conference was not a case of not caring; it was a simple impossibility, given their situation.

“That’s a bold statement, to say a parent doesn’t care about a child’s education,” the teacher says, recalling the moment. “What was going on was that this teacher had not worked to engage herself with the student’s family, to understand what was going on in that home. She hadn’t done her job.”

Can one teacher tell another teacher, “You’re not doing your job”? Not without some sparks.

So this teacher took a different tack. She told the teacher, “You know, I’ve had a completely different experience with the older sibling.”

She then described the family circumstances that were working against the parents’ school involvement.

“I put a face on it. I made it real for her. And she got it. I saw the light bulb go off, and she realized she’d made some assumptions based on her own thinking about ‘those’ kinds of families.”

3 IN HALLWAYS AND COMMON AREAS
Hallways—like buses or playgrounds—are places where student-to- student bias can thrive if no one speaks up against it. A middle school student related this story:

A boy in the hall—a popular kid with lots of friends—routinely cackled at a girl with hearing aids when he passed her in the hall. As she got near, he’d shout the line from a cell phone commercial: ‘Can you hear me now?’

His friends and classmates (including those worried about fitting in or losing his friendship) laughed at his “joke.” Other students—and adults—within earshot didn’t join in the laughter but said nothing in response. They allowed cruelty to have the last word. The student with the hearing aids spoke with the principal about it, and the principal objected, saying, “We don’t have that kind of bullying here.”

You have mere seconds in the hallway to speak up. The bustle of students moving quickly between classes creates its own kind of chaos. So any intervention needs to be quick, clear and pointed.

A teacher overhearing the boy’s remark might say, “Jacob, that’s not funny. If you say that again, I’ll be forced to call your parents in for a conference.” That might encourage one of the bystander students to say, “That’s a stupid thing to say. Stop it.” If more students joined in, the pressure might be enough.

The hallway is where you need to have your comments ready. They must be brief, no more than a sentence or two, and they must be easily delivered above the din.

Advance strategy also can come into play. Three teachers can promise each other they’ll all speak up, together, the next time it happens—because it will keep happening if no one speaks out against it.

Other speaking up also can occur, including saying comforting words to the target of the abuse and asking how she would like to be supported. (She may be suffering so greatly that she wants no added attention, for example.)

Had the principal responded in a more supportive fashion, he could roam the hall, waiting to encounter a similar incident himself, then simply take the bully to his office and address the situation seriously, outlining consequences if the behavior continued.

4 IN THE CAFETERIA
Cliques, racial and ethnic lines, socioeconomic class—so many factors are at work in the cafeteria. National surveys of students continue to indicate that the cafeteria is the place on campus where dividing lines are most clearly drawn.

Because of that, a group at one table can easily fall into biased remarks about some other group across the room. These remarks are overheard by passersby—other students, teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers.

It’s a ripe landscape for speaking up.

Advice from teachers who have spoken up in cafeteria settings indicates that sitting down is a key strategy.

As with so many things, it’s about relationships. If you sit down on a regular basis—not just to scold but to get to know students better—you become more relevant and can have more impact with these groups. A teacher who just walks by and says, “Don’t say that” is more likely to get eye-rolling and whispered sneers than improved behaviors.

If you sit down and use some of the strategies in this guidebook (“Why do you say that?” “Tell me more.”), you have a better chance of building a relationship, deepening your own understanding of the prejudices at work, and tailoring your comments accordingly. If any of the students are in your classes, you can continue the guidance there as well.

If you have existing relationships with any students at a table where slurs are being casually tossed around, speaking individually to that student also can be a tactic. “Why do you listen to that? You know it’s wrong to say those kinds of things.” Planting the seed that encourages the student to someday speak up is a good strategy to employ. Again, these are lessons you can offer in your classroom, with an eye toward improving behaviors in the cafeteria.