Roma, a teacher, hesitated as she thought about her educational life map, describing the circle she’d drawn there, where “the red is about feeling excluded and the green is about not feeling smart enough.” As the daughter of an Italian immigrant who couldn’t speak English or join the PTA, Roma brought Nutella sandwiches to school for lunch when everyone else had peanut butter sandwiches. Kids made fun of her “chocolate sandwich” until she convinced her mom to buy peanut butter so she could fit in. When a teacher embarrassed her in front of the class for getting a math problem wrong, Roma shut down completely, avoiding math for the rest of her school years.
Unlike typical professional development experiences, this exercise Roma was completing wasn’t about learning new terminology or hearing statistics about achievement gaps. Instead, 30 years later, Roma was examining her own story through the creation of a life map. As she navigated some painful memories in her school experience, something clicked. With the facilitator’s help, she realized, “That’s why I’m the teacher I am.”
All those years of feeling excluded and humiliated had created in her a deep instinct to protect vulnerable children. “I’m their mom here,” she said, describing how she wipes runny noses without thinking twice and makes sure every child feels they belong. Roma discovered something remarkable: Her painful past had shaped her into a nurturing teacher who refused to let any child feel as alone and scared as she once did.
Learning Through Life Mapping
Life mapping represents a different approach to professional learning around bias. Teachers create a visual map of the people, places, materials, obstacles, and opportunities that have shaped their journey and use colors, symbols, and labels to show connections and patterns across them (Beneke, 2020).
Maps create spaces where teachers can claim their own narratives while also acknowledging hidden patterns that illuminate how their personal contexts shape their professional responses and bring unconscious social influences to the surface (Futch & Fine, 2014). Rather than receiving prescribed solutions, teachers generate their own insights, just as Roma did.
Bias Training: The Kind That Works . . .
Research shows that for professional development to be effective, it must be sustained over time, personally relevant, collaborative, and focused on building ongoing capacity rather than delivering information (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). Teachers transform in liminal spaces—in those vulnerable moments when they start seeing how their own experiences as students shape the way they respond to students today, creating space for the kind of honest reflection that changes everything. Meaningful transformation requires approaches that honor the full complexity of human experience, including the emotional, somatic, and spiritual dimensions that are often excluded from traditional professional development (Jurow et al., 2025). Such training helps teachers cultivate adaptive expertise—the ability to continuously adjust practice based on reflection and feedback (Marshall & Horn, 2025).
Recent research by Marshall and Horn (2025) found that meaningful teacher learning occurs through agentic synthesis—the process of actively blending and taking ownership of practices as teachers recontextualize them into their specific teaching situations. This research shows why autobiographical approaches to bias interruption work: They honor teachers’ need to synthesize new content with their own contexts, identities, and experiences to develop personally meaningful practices.
. . . And the Kind That Doesn’t
Despite decades of cultural competency training and bias workshops, troubling disparities persist in how students experience school. A large-scale study using nationwide data found that counties where teachers hold higher levels of racial bias show larger test score inequalities and suspension disparities between Black students and white students than in counties with lower levels of bias, providing evidence that teacher attitudes translate into differential outcomes for students (Starck et al., 2020).
Yet most bias training follows a predictable pattern: present statistics about disparities, provide information about different cultures, teach specific strategies—and expect immediate behavior change. A review of hundreds of diversity training studies found that this traditional approach measures success through proxy measures, such as knowledge tests or satisfaction ratings with professional development, that have little connection to real-world change, while relying on brief, standalone workshops instead of ongoing professional learning (Devine & Ash, 2022). This approach exemplifies what Marshall and Horn (2025) identify as the fundamental flaw in professional development design—an overemphasis on a simple “acquire-apply model of learning” that ignores the complex, reflective process of teacher learning.
The deeper problem is that traditional training rarely examines how bias actually operates in the human mind. Research has shown that educator biases about students and families of color can lead to inappropriate decisions regarding special education referrals around student academics, behaviors, and bilingual communication skills (Cheatham et al., 2014; Harry & Klingner, 2014). But these biases aren’t conscious prejudices that can be corrected with information; they’re patterns of thinking shaped by the teachers’ own educational experiences, cultural backgrounds, and unexamined assumptions about learning and behavior.
As a result, teachers leave professional development sessions with good intentions, but no tools for the ongoing self-examination that equity work requires. Without understanding how their own life experiences shape their perceptions, they return to classrooms where split-second decisions about student behaviors, academic expectations, and family engagement continue to be influenced by unconscious patterns they haven’t learned to recognize or interrupt.
Teachers transform in liminal spaces—in those vulnerable moments when they start seeing how their own experiences as students shape the way they respond to students today.
Putting the Tool to the Test
Our research team partnered with the Division of Early Childhood Education with the New York City Public Schools to investigate how early childhood professionals' program processes, teaching practices, and individual positionalities influence their decisions to refer and meaningfully include young diverse children. We invited teachers to life map their experiences with inclusion and belonging in their own educational journeys as a way of understanding their current teaching practice, then we facilitated individual reviews of their life maps (Gupta et al., 2024). This approach enabled teachers to trace connections between their own experiences of inclusion or exclusion and their current practices with students and families.
The life mapping process begins with teachers reflecting on their experiences around a focused topic. Our focus was inclusion and belonging, so we asked teachers to identify moments when they felt included or excluded—from when they started in school as young children up to now—as well as relationships that shaped their sense of self and turning points in their educational journey.
Suri, a veteran educator in our study, discovered through her life map how her childhood experiences shaped her current practice. Growing up in the Philippines, Suri feared her teachers. “Every time they would call on me, I would just choke up.” She recalled being forced to write the letter F in cursive “maybe a hundred times,” and teachers who never reexplained things when she struggled. These memories directly connected to her current approach as a teacher. She makes a point of ensuring that all her students feel a sense of belonging. As a multilingual teacher whose first language is Tagalog, she welcomes students’ home languages and supports students who struggle to communicate in English, offering patient explanations instead of repetitive practice.
But Suri’s insights didn’t emerge immediately. Life mapping isn’t a one-shot activity. By reflecting on their life maps over time, teachers engage in the deep self-examination that research shows is necessary for transforming educational practice (Jurow et al., 2025; Marshall & Horn, 2025).
A Four-Phased Framework
Life mapping with seven preK teachers in New York City unfolded through four phases. Here’s how the process worked, with some guidelines included that might help you implement the approach in your context.
Phase 1 . Creating Psychological Safety (45 minutes)
We opened sessions by sharing our own vulnerability. We acknowledged that exploring our own experiences can bring up uncomfortable feelings and that even as facilitators, we continue discovering patterns in how our past shapes our teaching. This authenticity created permission for teachers to be honest.
- Establish ground rules that emphasize growth over judgment. Norms might include “What we share stays here.” This clarifies that the process isn’t about finding problems, but about understanding how our experiences shape our teaching.
- Acknowledge that everyone has unconscious patterns—including the facilitators. For example, one of us shared a personal experience of having felt excluded (“no one asked me about my culture”). By sharing that aloud, we modeled the vulnerability we were asking of teachers.
- Make participation voluntary. No one wants to feel obligated to share something personal if they aren’t ready.
- Name what makes this work different from traditional professional development. It’s about creating space for teachers to examine their own thinking.
- Acknowledge the emotional nature of the work. Share any supports (counseling resources or employee assistance programs) that may be of benefit to teachers.
Phase 2. The Mapping Process (60 minutes)
We began by modeling the process, showing our own maps. One of our maps was organized chronologically, another thematically. We narrated our thinking: “I used different colors to show different feelings and symbols such as clouds and rain to indicate times I wasn’t happy.”
- Provide diverse materials. Offer large paper, colored markers and pencils, paint sticks, sticky notes, and pens.
- Model the life mapping process with vulnerability. Show specific elements in your own map and share what felt risky to include.
- Give examples of what to include. Suggest people and places, obstacles and opportunities, symbols. Whatever you offer, it is important not to make it mandatory.
- Provide encouragement, not direction. Answer questions about process, but don’t guide content.
Phase 3. Reflection and Connection (45 minutes)
One of us shared our map while the other asked, “How does this connect to your teaching now?” This showed that reflective dialogue is curious, not evaluative.
- Have facilitators model a conversation that shows how questioning deepens thinking.
- Provide a structure for pair or small-group sharing. Set a time limit for sharing—for example, 10 minutes per person. Clarify that this is not about analyzing, but about listening and asking questions.
- Offer sentence stems to scaffold reflection, such as “A pattern I notice in my journey is . . . or “This experience from my past connects to my current practice because. . . .”
- Provide prompting questions, such as, “Which experiences of inclusion or exclusion stand out most—and why?”
- Circulate and notice without correcting. Listen for moments of insight and acknowledge them: “That sounds like an important connection you’re making.”
- Create space for those who wish to share insights.
Phase 4. Professional Action Planning (30 minutes)
In follow-up conversations two to three weeks after initial mapping, we created space for teachers to share what had been percolating in their thinking. Teachers began connecting patterns from their maps to specific moments in their current practice—noticing, and sometimes feeling unsettled in the best sense, by what their maps had made visible. They described, sometimes for the first time, how their own experiences with belonging, language, or exclusion shaped how they saw and responded to the children in front of them, or how they arranged the physical space of the classroom to welcome students. These conversations worked because time had passed—teachers had been living with their maps, and the distance between the initial mapping and these reflective conversations was itself generative.
- Hold space for teacher-led reflection in a safe setting. This might be a quiet classroom, a corner of the staff room, or a virtual meeting.
- Frame this as exploration, not problem-fixing. Ask, “What connections have you been noticing?” Avoid “What are you going to change?”
- Invite teachers to identify areas for ongoing curiosity. Rather than directing teachers toward what to notice or work on, facilitators use open-ended questions to wonder with teachers, asking questions such as “What stands out?” or “What has stayed with you?”
- Offer reflection prompts based on common teacher insights about belonging, language, academic experiences, or family or cultural background. For example, “How do your experiences with language shape how you support multilingual learners?”
- Support teachers in identifying next steps for ongoing inquiry.
- Build in structures for continued reflection, such as monthly reflection journals, peer partnerships, and regular team meetings with time for life map check-ins.
After life mapping, teachers described approaching students, families, and themselves with increased curiosity and decreased judgment.
Requirements for Success
The life mapping process requires effective facilitators, as well as thoughtful planning.
Skilled facilitation creates the conditions for meaningful professional growth by providing sustained opportunities for reflection. When Roma discovered that her painful past had shaped her protective instincts toward vulnerable children, skilled facilitation helped her see this as professional growth rather than as a problem requiring correction.
Thoughtful planning means schools must assess their readiness for a life mapping exercise by examining existing trust among staff, the foundation for equity-focused work in the school, and the leadership commitment to sustained engagement. This approach isn’t appropriate for contexts where teachers fear retribution for honest reflection.
Start with volunteers rather than mandating participation. Invest in facilitation skills—whether through external consultants or building internal capacity—ensuring that facilitators understand that mapping interrogates teachers’ experiences through visual materials (Futch & Fine, 2014).
Plan for sustainability by embedding ongoing reflection opportunities into existing structures rather than treating this as a one-time event. Resource requirements include substitute coverage, follow-up meeting time, and potential counseling support for teachers processing difficult memories or emotions.
A Path to Transformation
Teachers who engage in life mapping make concrete changes that emerge from their own insights. They restructure classroom interactions to ensure inclusion, create more opportunities for meaningful peer engagement, and begin having authentic conversations with families about their children’s strengths and needs.
Our preliminary results and recent evidence suggest that life mapping increases educator self-awareness and intentionality (Beneke, 2020; Gupta, 2026). In follow-up conversations in our study, teachers reported new insights about their biases and assumptions, with many expressing surprise at connections they hadn’t previously recognized. More important, teachers described approaching students, families, and themselves with increased curiosity and decreased judgment.
Perhaps most significant, life mapping can normalize conversations about bias and equity among teaching teams, creating cultures of ongoing reflection. This suggests that life mapping doesn’t just change individual teachers—it transforms professional learning culture.
What Equity Requires
The question isn’t whether unconscious bias affects teaching—research shows it does. The question is whether we’ll invest in the kind of professional learning that builds teachers’ capacity for the ongoing self-examination necessary for equity. Life mapping offers a path forward: It’s professional development that honors teachers’ intelligence, builds their reflective skills, and creates lasting change through sustained engagement with their own stories.
Reflect & Discuss
Where might vulnerability and self-examination transform your teaching practice?
What conditions would need to exist in your school for teachers to engage in life mapping?
What follow-up supports would teachers need to move from awareness to transformation?
