Micromessaging Scenarios

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You are a math teacher at Central Camden. Your students come from diverse backgrounds. The school year started on a positive note, but halfway into the semester you notice widening achievement gaps between students.

You’ve just returned the results of the second test and there was a wide range in the scores. Some students are visibly frustrated, while others seem indifferent or distracted.

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Try connecting with your students to find out what they are going through.
Select a student to start.

Maria
Brian
Dee
Richard

Maria visits you at your office for help. She tries to explain her confusion about one of the problems on the test, but it’s not clear what specifically she doesn’t understand. She is visibly flustered as she says, “So if the chemist has 100 milliliters of a 40% acid solution, I just, I don’t, like how can you know what percent of water to add to make it have less acid? What does the x stand for?”

What do you say to Maria?

answer

“This is really simple.” You then write out the equation and solution on a piece of paper.
“The canonical way to solve this problem is…” You go on to explain verbally how variables, constants, and coefficients are used to solve this type of problem.
“Let’s break this specific problem down and analyze where you are having trouble, and we can solve it together.”
“I am so glad you came to me for help, Maria. Let me make sure I understood you correctly. Is it the entire problem that is confusing, or is it just that you don’t know what x stands for?”
See Maria’s response
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When Brian enters the classroom, he always immediately puts his head down as if to go to sleep. Whenever you try to get him to participate, he responds reluctantly. He received a 60% on the first test and a 70% on the second test. After class, you check in with him to see if he has any questions or concerns. He mumbles, “I studied. I thought I’d get an A. This stuff’s just useless anyways.”

What do you say to Brian?

answer

“This reminds me of when I used to struggle with problems like this, Brian. “
“Didn’t you do better on this test than on the last one? Where you got a 60?”
“Let’s analyze the specific problems that you missed so we can see where you had difficulties.”
“Did you have a difficult week? Is anything going on that might have impacted your grade?”
See Brian’s response
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Dee is a very hard-working student but she struggles with certain concepts. She received a 60% on the first test and a 70% on the second test. After class, she approaches you and says, “I just got a 70% on my test. I’m really disappointed.”

What do you say to Dee?

answer

“I know math is tough for women. My mother always hated it.”
“Didn’t you do better on this test than on the last one? Where you got a 60?”
“I also used to struggle with math. Why don’t we analyze the specific problems that you missed so we can see where you had difficulties?”
“Did you have a difficult week? Is anything going on that might have impacted your grade?”
See Dee’s response
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You've learned that English is not Richard’s first language. Discussion of Richard in the teacher’s lounge reveals that different teachers have different levels of success with him. He does well in the automotive technology course, but his performance in your class has been consistently poor. What do you say to him to find out what is going on?

answer

“I know math is tough for you, especially since English is not your first language. Maybe this class is too much for someone like you.”
“Richard, you are doing really well in automotive technology. What is it about auto tech that you find easier than this class?”
“Richard, let’s analyze the specific problems that you missed so we can see where you had difficulties.”
“How are things going, Richard? What can I do to help make this class easier to understand?”
See Richard’s response
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The key learning from this activity is that we as educators need to do three things:
  • Provide our students with tools and techniques to handle micro-inequities.
  • Supply our students with micro-affirmations where possible to increase their chances of succeeding in STEM careers.
  • Become aware of our own unconscious biases and stereotypical beliefs, and reduce our resultant micro-inequities.
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The key learning from this activity is that we as educators need to do three things:
  • Provide our students with tools and techniques to handle micro-inequities.
  • Supply our students with micro-affirmations where possible to increase their chances of succeeding in STEM careers.
  • Become aware of our own unconscious biases and stereotypical beliefs, and reduce our resultant micro-inequities.
We have some students with low self-efficacy and others with high self-efficacy. We must be particularly alert when we deal with students with low self-efficacy. For example, the female student Dee may be crushed if she was told that math was tough, or that she should drop out. But if we have inoculated her against micro-inequities and helped her build a healthy resilience, she may instead say:
  • “Well, my cousin Laila does really well in math. In fact she wants to be a math teacher one day. Maybe it’s just tough for some women?”
  • “I am disappointed that I didn’t study hard enough for this test. I can do better if I study more. Will you help me with problem 7?”
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The key learning from this activity is that we as educators need to do three things:
  • Provide our students with tools and techniques to handle micro-inequities.
  • Supply our students with micro-affirmations where possible to increase their chances of succeeding in STEM careers.
  • Become aware of our own unconscious biases and stereotypical beliefs, and reduce our resultant micro-inequities.
If we reflect on the responses in the various scenarios, we notice how powerful our comments and interactions with our students are, in shaping their future. When we conduct exercises with successful adults, it is surprising how many of them remember a single positive comment from a teacher, decades ago, which inspired them to pursue a STEM career.
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The key learning from this activity is that we as educators need to do three things:
  • Provide our students with tools and techniques to handle micro-inequities.
  • Supply our students with micro-affirmations where possible to increase their chances of succeeding in STEM careers.
  • Become aware of our own unconscious biases and stereotypical beliefs, and reduce our resultant micro-inequities.
Did you notice how the responses to Brian had almost no stereotypical beliefs about why math would be hard for him? How is this different from the responses to Dee, Maria, and Richard? Let’s now see how gender and culture can impact our stereotypical beliefs.

Reflect on your responses to the students in the scenarios. Did you react differently to people from diverse cultural backgrounds? To male versus female students?

If, for instance, we pass on our unconscious stereotypical beliefs that math is tough for women, we can have a powerful negative impact on female students’ chances to succeed in STEM careers. Always consider what micro-affirmations you could use.
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Initially developed at Harvard University, and now widely used, Implicit Association Tests (IATs) are excellent self-reflective tools to help uncover implicit biases. These self-assessments can be taken via Project Implicit. Of the multiple options available, the Gender-Science IAT or the Gender-Career IAT are most directly related to this Micromessaging module.
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