By Austin Petroski
Following numerous visits to School Board meetings by Iowa City students talking about racial biases they felt in their classrooms, the board is now considering unconscious bias training for the district’s teachers.
The Iowa City School Board discussed the training at a work session Tuesday.
The incidents noted by the students included some of them being punished more severely for committing the same action as another student of a different race. Their complaints also included hearing inappropriate comments from teachers and staff.
Kingsley Botchway, the district’s director of equity and engagement, discussed the issue and answered questions about the request for unconscious bias training.
“This is hard work, talking about bias on particular issues,” he said.
Botchway said this has been a concern for school administrators and noted that they are focusing on trying to bring about discussion on specific cultural problems as well as how to bring about more equity across the board.
In the fall of 2014, Botchway and two others began conducting training sessions in all of the schools in the district. The meetings focused on eliminating any biases teachers might have relating to their students, cultural competency, along with how different students might react to different situations and how teachers’ cultures could affect their students.
The meetings were done during teacher in-service times and allowed them to stay on the clock. Botchway said this is an important part.
“We want to make sure teachers are being paid for this training,” he said.
However, these meetings were only done once per year at each school.
Iowa City West High Principal Greg Shoultz talked Tuesday about the efforts in place to eliminate bias in education.
“It is a concern for us whenever we hear teachers are struggling with this,” he said.
Shoultz said the schools have addressed thess issues for a number of years and continue to have ongoing training.
He noted that situations happening in classrooms are a reflection upon the community and that schools need to work to fix the problems.
“Our goal is to learn how to erase them when they come in the class,” he said.
Shoultz said the schools have worked on making sure they have culture-conscious classrooms to make every student feel comfortable. He also said he would like to see data related to unconscious biases.
School Board member Brian Kirschling said he believes students could help the board learn more about the issue.
“I would like to see us facilitate student involvement,” he said. “They are better at the conversation than we are.”
