Finding Your Blind Spots

“In today’s unprecedented time of change, Hedreich Nichols shows educators how to dig deeply into the rich soil of their souls to find the weeds that mire down growth and inhibit their own healing and expansion. She prepares mentors of young students to cultivate their learning environment by tending to their own garden first before planting seeds of the future. Finding Your Blind Spots is an excellent framework for building self-reflective and exploratory practices in schools to ensure that the staff provides an atmosphere that facilitates growth in social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusivity as well as empowers students to become conscientious citizens in the world.”

“All educators can benefit from reading this book and completing its reflective activities. Whether you are just beginning your journey as an educator or have decades of experience, you will learn something new about biases that will impact your teaching practice. Each personal story and activity that Hedreich shares exhibits her passion and expertise and will be immediately meaningful to every reader.”

“Hedreich Nichols’s latest book, Finding Your Blind Spots, is an incredibly engaging resource for any educator willing through reflective self-examination to take on the challenge of exploring ways to enhance the value they bring to all students they teach. She invites educators on a fascinating journey of self-examination and discovery to uncover personal blind spots that inhibit or undermine even our best intentions to relate to every student. In well-documented research and analysis, chock full of practical tools and recommended strategies, Ms. Nichols craftily weaves her lived experiences as an African American child, student, Grammy-nominated singer, and teacher in the U.S. and abroad, into a persuasive case for an introspective approach to education that stresses the importance of “heart” work—work from the heart that recognizes the supremacy of developing meaningful relationships as an essential ingredient to teaching that matters, wherein all students are valued and appreciated in the richness of their diversity.”

“Confronting one’s own biases can be uncomfortable. Hedreich Nichols works to reduce that discomfort so that educators can continue moving forward and improving in their daily work in schools by connecting their reflections on bias to the instructional best practices they’re already using. As she does in her podcast, SmallBites, Hedreich focuses in Finding Your Blind Spots on actionable strategies and shows how they are manageable in the context of teachers' heavy workload.”

“In Finding Your Blind Spots, Hedreich Nichols provides educators a roadmap to conquer their hidden biases in the safe and nonjudgmental space of the pages in her timely release through Solution Tree. Her data points, personal insights, and advice tell us that she has worked hard to know what isolates students and check her own biases. This honest and helpful approach will resonate with readers regardless of where they are in their equity journey.”