Nancy Willard knows that the way educators are taught to handle bullying isn’t working, especially when it comes to cyberbullying. That’s why she’s written several books on bullying prevention and digital safety, including the first book ever published on cyberbullying. Willard is a former attorney and special education teacher in Veneta, Oregon who has dedicated her career to empowering students and families to stand up to bullies. She also taught those empowerment skills to her adopted Guatemalan daughter. Now she wants to help schools build more culturally relevant anti-bullying programs, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic ends and more schools return to in-person learning.
A Background in Computer Law and Special Education
Before working on building student ...
Kendra Gage starts off all her new classes addressing one obvious fact: she’s white. That’s because Gage is a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) who teaches African American studies, focusing on the Civil Rights Movement and addressing racism in modern America. Gage believes in addressing her whiteness because she wants students to be aware of implicit bias─ stereotypes that affect our understanding and decisions about others beyond our conscious control─in the classroom. She feels it’s her role as an educator to highlight her own implicit bias and allow students to question their own biases. “My very first lecture in class, I say, ‘This is who I am. I am white.’ I mean, I can't hide behind that, so I do address it,” Gage said. That is ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many of the disparities impacting communities of color. Not only has COVID-19 led to a disproportionate number of deaths and severe illness among Latinos, but it has also contributed to financial struggles, homelessness, and students falling behind in school. These disparities are linked with discrimination and impact Latinos throughout their lives, according to a Salud America! research review. But despite the evidence, many Americans don’t see systemic racism as the cause of the inequity. A survey by the RAND Corporation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) found that only 42% of respondents think that systemic racism is one of the main reasons people of color face health inequities. The majority does not believe or feel neutral ...
Many people think they harbor no bias toward other people. Or they believe they know their biases and don’t act on them. But everyone has implicit bias. Implicit biases are stereotypes that affect our actions and decisions about others, beyond our conscious control. Fortunately, these biases also can be “rewired” toward more compassion for others. Download the free Salud America! Action Pack “Find Out If You Have Implicit Bias and What to Do Next.” This Action Pack will help you see if you have implicit bias, learn from others who have overcome their own implicit bias, and also encourage others to learn about implicit bias, too. GET THE ACTION PACK! Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, director of Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio, created this Action Pack. With the ...
More than 40% of Latino and Black resident physicians experience racial discrimination and bias from the patients they serve, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. The experiences range from explicit racial epithets to a patient’s refusal of care. And on top of that, most physicians (84%) do not report the incidents to their leadership. “To address the issue of biased patient behavior, interventions are needed at the institutional and interpersonal levels,” according to researchers Shalila de Bourmont, Arun Burra, Sarah Nouri, et al. Racial discrimination and implicit bias must be addressed.
What the JAMA Study Showed about Bias and Discrimination
The study conducted by de Bourmont, Burra, Nouri et al. surveyed 232 internal medicine residents from three ...
COVID-19 has been a force in our lives for the last 10 months. At this point, we know the standard procedures for safety precautions, like wearing a mask, keeping physical distance, and avoiding crowded public spaces. We’ve even started administering a vaccine to healthcare workers and the elderly, with the FDA emergency-use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this past weekend. But despite all this, the pandemic still isn’t over. COVID-19 cases are spiking in many areas across the country as people move events indoors due to colder weather and are travelling more for the holidays. Not to mention pandemic fatigue. Another big safety concern is using “system justification” to ignore safety precautions. This happens when people rationalize unsafe behaviors ...
Latino children in Santa Barbara schools are disproportionately represented in special education classes, and often incorrectly, as per a new report from the California Department of Education. “Children from Latinx families are 3.43 times more likely to be identified as having learning disabilities than their white peers in the Santa Barbara Unified School District,” according to the Santa Barbara Independent. The state flagged the district for the “significant disproportionality.” This issue highlights the potential bias against and lack of resources for Latino students who are struggling in school, especially those from Spanish-speaking or immigrant households. It also emphasizes the need for school officials to ensure students are treated with equity, no matter ...
To his students, he’s Mr. Rodríguez. To his fans, he’s the creator and author of the comic book and graphic novel series El Peso Hero. When he noticed a need for more Latino representation in comic books and literature, Héctor Rodríguez launched his long-time project as a web series in 2011. El Peso Hero is a Latino superhero who fights corruption, drug trafficking, immigration, and other real-life social and racial justice issues happening on the Texas/Mexico border. Now almost 10 years later, Rodríguez has printed several comic books, produced a radio novella and short film, and is working on developing El Peso Hero into a Hollywood production. Rodríguez first found inspiration for El Peso Hero during his childhood on the Texas/Mexico border.
Inspiration on the ...
As we reach the seventh month of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are pointing to a new cause in an uptick of cases: pandemic fatigue. “Pandemic fatigue refers to feeling overwhelmed with still having to maintain a state of constant vigilance, in this case six months after the pandemic started, and a weariness to abide by restrictions,” according to Gavi Vaccine Alliance. Understandably, people are tired of the daily inconveniences caused by avoiding the COVID-19 virus and want their lives to return to normal. However, if we fall complacent and begin disregarding guidance from public health officials, we take part in moral disengagement and it becomes more difficult for our communities to put an end to COVID-19. When we disengage morally from safety and virus prevention, ...
