I had to revise an assessment. Any assessment familiar to myself. I looked at some of the assessment engaged throughout my life as a student. I was planning to revise another assessment different from mine… that was my inicial plan; but, nevertheless, as a graduate student who plans to teach in the not too distant future, I realized that each of my steps needs to be in the right direction, toward my future students’ wellbeing. So, I took The Final Cut! and revised it with a new pair of eyes.

There are few things more frustrating than being misunderstood (Mayfield, 2020). This powerful statement explains the profound implications of living in a globalized world. With the power of technology, boundaries have been broken, and we all are a single human race; but, what happens when we don’t understand the diversity of cultures? We fear what we acknowledge as unknown, and fear can be a dangerous thing. Racism comes in different forms, and every one of those forms needs to be eradicated.

Being aware of our biases is extremely important to properly cultivate a healthy environment for our students. As teachers, we should engage in implicit bias evaluations so we can become aware of what we need to overcome and work on our biases. People are generally unaware of their implicit associations or unwilling to endorse them as indicative of their beliefs about those groups (e.g., Blair et al., 2015; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Puerto Rico is a mixed race island. We see race as a cultural phenomenon, and not as a color issue. We have a singular multicolored habitants, we are a precious color range human beings. So, as color wasn’t an implicit bias in me, the Project Implicit – from Harvard University – help me analyze my insights and revise my assessment.

The language and approach in my assessment is general and related to the course elements; but two facts became alive after the sixth unit: the probability of a cultural element that could be present in some students who differ from the Feminist Theory and/or Gender Studies and the accessibility present in the assessment for students with special needs. For the cultural element, at the beginning of the course, the students should provided their pronouns and country, as well as any important information they think the teacher should know; but a respectful and inclusive feedback is essential to guarantee the learner’s wellness and learning. Nevertheless, the accessibility of it needed some real renovations. I added general instructions and divided the questions in phases, each phase with a different color. This will help the students answer the assessment step by step – helping getting to the goal with proper feedback. Also, the assessment could be accessed using the Accessibility Tools of Word (Audio and Image Enhancer). The possibility of answering the assessment by Voice Recording is presented too, this will help students with vision and/or motor impairment.

I have a few more weeks to learn… learn to achieve, learn to teach, and teach to love!

Chapter 1 of: Mayfield, V. (2020). Cultural competence now. ASCD.

Warikoo, N., Sinclair, S., Fei, J., & Jacoby-Senghor, D. (2016). Examining racial bias in education: A new approach. Educational Researcher, 45(9), 508-514. doi:10.3102/0013189X16683408 [Link to the article in the MSU Library]