Implementing an Anti-Bias Curriculum

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Each year when I teach my class, Multiculturalism and Anti-bias in Education, my students, all of whom are studying to become teachers, go beyond the borders of their comfort zones and try to empathize with what it is like to walk in the shoes of someone different. The vast majority of my students are white, female and middle-class. Yet the children they will be teaching are increasingly diverse. The vast majority of my students view the world through a cultural lens that may be very different than the ones that their future students may be viewing the world through. It is so important that my students have the ability to empathize with other world viewpoints, and to see that other cultural perspectives are just as viable. It is important that they do not view people of color as foreign, or exotic, but as normalized. Through the class, we talk about infusing anti-bias curriculum into the day-to-day curriculum, so that it just becomes the norm, rather than "Tacos on Tuesday", or what we call a "tourist curriculum".