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Racial and ethnic identities of students and their families impact the way teachers and other school staff see children and understand their successes and struggles. Likewise, families respond to racially and ethnically biased misunderstandings of their students through engagement with the school and advocacy for their child. This chapter illustrates three types of bias which impact Emily and her 8-year-old son, Lewis: Emily's experiences illuminate the power of implicit racial and ethnic biases on students and families, the advocacy needed to address them, and how teachers can mitigate the negative impact of preconceptions in their teaching practice.

Vignettes

Emily and Lewis’ story

Emily and her children lived in an affluent town, more than 90% white with a median income of approximately $150,000/ year. This figure was more than double the state’s median income. Emily’s own income —less than $40,000/year— made her an outlier. Located outside a large city in the Northeast of the United States, this community of about 40,000 residents was home to six elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. Emily’s youngest, Lewis, attended their local elementary school, which was both whiter and more affluent than the other schools in town. As a single, White mother living in affordable housing with three Black children, Emily’s family were outliers on many fronts. Lewis, in grade 3, was not thriving. Academically, he struggled to stay on task. His energy fully expended at school, he would arrive home and collapse from sadness and exhaustion. He hated school.

Emily approached the school with the idea of testing her son for Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, while the teacher and special education coordinator acknowledged that her son was struggling, they dismissed her concerns with “Oh, he’s just a troublemaker.” This was not the first time she’d heard this view from school employees. One day she picked her sons up from the afterhours program at their school. Looking for her children, she found them, not in their activities, but sitting in the office with the head of the afterschool program. Emily shared that “she had a very stern look on her face. I asked, ‘Why are they here?’ ‘They’re always causing trouble’.” Probing, Emily got the full story. Lewis had been talking in chess class, breaking the “silent rule” the chess teacher had imposed on her 1^st through 3^rd graders.

While both family and school acknowledged a problem, they disagreed about the root cause and therefore, they disagreed about how to address it. Emily saw indications of ADHD while the school saw a discipline issue. According to Emily, the educators rejected the possibility of ADHD, “just insisting that he was being stubborn and difficult.” Unable to change minds and faced with a disciplinary approach to what she believed was a common problem for many students, she pulled her son out of school and enrolled him in the state’s online accredited public school. She researched and engaged free and low-cost community supports. In a matter of months, Lewis was diagnosed with ADHD and began receiving support.

Eventually, Emily returned to the school, this time accompanied by her son’s team. And this time, the teacher and special education liaison listened. They accepted that Lewis’ behavior was caused by his ADHD rather than by deliberate, defiant behavior and created an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to support him. The entire process took more than 6 months. Emily summed up her experience this way: “If I were a different parent, with a White child, from a wealthy family with two parents – it [taking Lewis out of school] never would have happened.”