First, let’s try to comprehend the definition of microaggressions. These refer to the day-to-day environmental, nonverbal, and verbal slights, dismissals, or rude comments, either accidental or deliberate, which convey harmful, threatening, or derogatory messages to individuals based solely on the fact that they’re from a disenfranchised group. In this article, we’ll see the way microaggressions appear in the classroom.
During my teenage years, me and my friends opposed the biased routines and rules that were forced upon us by our school authorities to adhere to. We were punished with in-school suspension for wearing a cap in the school building or dozing off in class. We felt like staying in the “Twilight Zone,” where factors that our teachers thought important were illogical to us.
They seemed to have an obsession with teaching us “black boys” to obey and act in accordance with middle-class values. They failed to succeed because we just had the development of the situated-identify conflict, showing different behaviors in school and in the community. For some reason, our teachers failed to deduce that their acts were microaggressions, and accidentally or intentionally mistreated the kids of color.
They didn’t observe the resultant adverse effect this had on their bonds with minority students and the formation of our distrust for them. At the time of writing this piece, millions of teachers across the globe are carrying out odious microaggressions, which will ultimately suppress student performance. This is why I want to discuss the way microaggressions appear in the classroom, with the anticipation that it’ll help teachers accept what they’re doing and finally discourage them from carrying out these acts of microaggressions.
Let’s see 33 microaggressions that are committed by teachers daily.
1. Punishing students for dozing off in class.
2. Considering a student’s way of speaking or dialect an issue.
3. Saying students’ names inappropriately, even after they’ve rectified you.
4. Punishing students for wearing hoodies and caps.
5. Disregarding religious customs or their details.
6. Scheduling due project dates or assessments on cultural or religious holidays.
7. Engaging and supporting or concentrating on one race, gender, or class of students while disregarding other students during class.
8. Setting low expectations for students who belong to particular neighborhoods, groups, or feeder patterns.
9. Explaining students’ emotional responses according to their sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, or race.
10. Giving students roles or tasks that strengthen specific gender roles or don’t provide all students with flexibility across responses and roles.
11. Communicating racially charged political views in class, presuming that the class doesn’t have the targets of those views.
12. Communicating improper humor in class that demeans students from different groups.
13. Organizing debates in class that put students from groups who might represent a minority view in class in an uncomfortable position.
14. Using the term “illegals” to mention undocumented students.
15. Requiring students of any specific group to “represent” the views of others of their gender, race, etc., in debates or class discussions.
16. Calling students out due to their backgrounds.
17. Developing school or classroom procedures or assigning class projects that are racist, sexist, heterosexist, or encourage other persecutions, even unintentionally.
18. Denying to admit students’ experiences by questioning the validity and trustworthiness of their stories.
19. Communicating heteronormative examples or metaphors in class.
20. Using sexist language.
21. Misusing pronouns even when a student, transgender or not, has already mentioned their desired gender pronoun.
22. Classifying the gender of any student based on traditional gender norms or your opinions.
23. Having a belief that all students can access computers and applications and are skilled in using them for communications regarding academic work and school activities.
24. Organizing projects that overlook dissimilarities in socioeconomic class status and unintentionally impose penalties on students with little financial resources.
25. Commending non-white students when they use “good English.”
26. Having a belief that students of specific ethnicities must not speak English or have to speak another language.
27. Requiring students with masked disabilities to spot themselves in class.
28. Stopping students from working on assignments that discover their personal social identities.
29. Overlooking student-to-student microaggressions, surprisingly, when the interaction doesn’t relate to the course.
30. Requiring students who have non-obvious disabilities to discuss them publicly or “out” themselves.
31. Requiring that students become engaged in necessary reading where the leading characters are always white.
32. Utilizing pictures of students of only one gender or ethnicity on the school website.
33. Making suppositions about students and their backgrounds.
I can continue for a long time, but I’ll end the list here. Let me know if I missed anything.