Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

This week I heard my colleague comment on a child’s behavior that involved microaggressions. During our conversation about work, she expressed that she has an African American boy in her classroom with challenging behavior such as not listening to her, climbing furniture, and hitting other peers. She said “You know Black children are like that, and they don’t listen to adults and very active”. Although she was sharing her feeling with me, her comment made me uncomfortable. Fortunately, she did not share this with the family or in front of the child. I do not like her comment as it contains microinsult assuming stereotype of African American children are active and play rough. I think all children have their moments of not listening, climbing furniture and playing roughly. Her comment maybe unintentional, the way she generalized all African American children as active and rough is not appreciated and contain bias viewpoint. As a teacher, she needs to think of ways to support the child. First she should understand this child’s need by sharing her observation with the family and ask them if that happens at home and how would they handle it.

        The articles this week helped me to reflect on my perception or stereotypes lens on others. I found that sometimes I do assume a child’s behavior or family using stereotypes, but I quickly remind myself that everyone is different and should never generalize a person using stereotypical points of view. n. We could also promote anti-bias curriculum in early childhood education field as a startup to help children learn about difference and continue this kind of education on to middle school. We could also have this kind of reflection lesson in High School or earlier, to teach children to help children reflect on their experience to prevent microaggressions. Microaggressions could be intentional and unintentional, yet all micoagressions made the target feel intimidated and discriminated.