Asset vs Deficit

 

 Main Argument: In her article, Renkly argues that there is an innate harm created by deficit based teaching (the system that is currently in place) and that this can be remedied with introducing, adapting and having the education system live in asset based thinking. 

Beginning reflections: In the introduction of the article, Renkly explains that currently in a deficit based approach educational model that school functions in a reactive way instead of a proactive way. To expand on this idea a bit, reactive decisions are made when teachers or other adults in the building receive data or information from students-- typically in the moment, and react to it, they make changes. For example, in a situation where a student is escalated to the point where they are either unsafe with themselves or others, a reactive measure would be to remove the child from the classroom. Typically what happens after that is that when the student is deescalated, adults try to teach the child tools for when they are escalated in the future. Proactive teaching is recognizing when the child is beginning to get escalated and recognizing and giving them de-escalation strategies or asking if they want to take space before they are entirely escalated. My question is what else a proactive approach would include in an education system?

Middle Reflections: One thing that I noticed about the application of an asset based approach was that the studies done on secondary students (grades 6-12) yielded favorable results. The more assets a student had, the more success they had. I am also wondering when students can learn these assets. It's fairly obvious-- at least to me-- that not every student will be born with every asset. While we can use the assets that students possess to teach them in specific ways, we also need to target specific gaps. Asset and deficit based thinking does not replace teaching students core subjects. I'm also thinking that we have to understand a student's deficits within the 40 competencies that make up the asset based approach to be able to teach them the skills and mindsets they need to build (I suppose this would be done in elementary school if the application is happening in secondary).

Ending reflections: "No matter how old a child is,

they all need adults that are willing to mentor them, catch them if they fall, and encourage them

to get back up and try again. This can only be done with an asset model" (26) The part that catches my attention specifically is the idea that encouragement can only be done in an asset based model. I would love to find out more information about how a deficit approach innately goes against the encouragement of children. Additionally, I noticed that throughout the article, the only information that was given about how to implement an asset based approach is that teachers, administrators and the school community should all agree about it's importance and to potentially include this in the school's mission. I would have loved to hear more concrete steps on how to implement asset based approaches in schools that are so focused on deficits and how deficits relate to test scores. 

Connection: This reminded me a lot about the TFA (Teach for America) conference that we had on asset vs deficit based approaches. When we learned about it in TFA it was complemented with the idea that multiple truths can be true at the same time and we used deficit and asset based approaches to identify our personal thought patterns. I thought that the multiple truths at the same time was especially helpful and to connect it to this reading and my reflections so far: an asset based approach may identify and celebrate a student's successes in being empathetic, being a problem solver and having good communication. However, these assets do not negate the severity of a student who cannot read. 

Our Education System: Past and Present

Main Argument: "The Broken Model" by Sal Khan (Chapter 2 of his book, The One World School House ) situates the current education system among both its historical antecedents (the Prussian model) and its current reality while examining and deconstructing, in essence picking apart the traditions that we hold to be "normal" in the education system that we perhaps shouldn't -- with an emphasis on test taking in school. 

Beginning Reflections: Khan opens his argument by positioning the current realities of the education system among a longer list of current traditions and customs that while we are keeping them, are doing practically nothing to serve us in our modern era. He says "parts of the system we now hold sacred-- for example the length of the class period of the number of years assigned to "elementary" or "high" school are in fact rather arbitrary, even accidental" (62). This reminded me a lot about the video that we watched, "A Short History of Public Schooling", not because of their similarities but moreover because the video pushes on the idea that the current schooling model is accidental. The video introduces the idea that almost every aspect we recognize as normal in our education system was a deliberate choice towards pushing students to become subordinates, to recognize their place in the world (as being a cog in a larger factory machine) and most importantly, to realize the importance of this place-- there is no other option than to do it. 

Connection: This reminded me a lot of the four teaching ideologies that I learned in a class on Curriculum and Ideology at RIC that I took last semester. The idea behind the four teaching ideologies are that there are four ideologies-- or frameworks that frame your view on students, on teachers, on the student-teacher relationships, and on assessments. All of these core beliefs stem from a common goal that each ideology holds. The four teaching ideologies are: 

- scholar academic: who view the ultimate goal of education as transmitting information from teachers to students to have master academic subjects/academic disciplines. 

- social efficiency : Who view the goal of education as wanting to produce effective members of society that will work, social efficiency believes that students can meet the needs of society as students become contributing members of society. They understand and firmly believe that students can be successful members of society if they learn the behaviors needed to succeed.

- learner centered: focuses on the needs of the "individual", as opposed to the needs of academics or society. People who subscribe to a learner centered ideology believe that learning is a way to aid students in their growth, that because of the importance of growth, students naturally learn from their environment and so a teacher's role is to help a student maneuver their environments by providing "units" for the student to learn from. 

- social reconstruction: This ideology recognizes that society has many problems-- racism, sexism, economic inequalities, the list goes on. A social reconstructionist ideology asserts that the way to "fix" these problems is to use students by not teaching "undesirable" patterns. 

Beginning reflections; It's clear to me that while currently different educators may have different ideologies and anyone who has gone through the education system will recognize that they have parts and pieces of each ideology from different teachers, the ideology of the beginning of the public education system (Horace Mann's education system) was created around the social efficiency ideology. Because of this, our modern education system has many routines and traditions that support a student's role in becoming a "productive" member of society (it's important to note that social efficiency defines "productive" as someone who produces, someone who contributes to the economy and capitalism). Khan also asserts that if we "redo" the current education system, that our systems and routines as we know them would have to change. 

Middle Reflections: In Khan's reflections about the historical impact of the "Committee of Ten", he explains that this committee pushed that some subjects be made mandatory and other, more specialized subjects be made optional. If a student were able to take a specialized class, the student's work should be to create meaning, not just to be "merely receptive" (79). What was most interesting about this to me was that there is a current system that identifies the rigor in an activity (Blooms Taxonomy, as pictured above) as a tiered system that holds recalling facts at the bottom to the creation of something on the top. It made me wonder about whether Bloom's Taxonomy was created to reflect the current education system or if it was created to model what an ideal education system would be. It also made me wonder what the "Committee of Ten" would think of Bloom's Taxonomy. 

Ending Reflections: The last portion of the chapter heavily discusses testing in school. It asserts that the tests we have do not necessarily test the information we want to know. We typically (we as educators) look at tests to measure how much a student has "mastered" an idea. However, (both looking at where remembering is on Bloom's Taxonomy and what Khan says about testing) typically only measure how much a student is able to memorize in a certain moment: "tests measure the approximate state of a student's memory and perhaps understanding..." (92). Test taking, at least in my opinion (and I think Khan would likely agree with me) is a measure at how well a student can take a test-- whether they understand the way the test is formatted, if they remember what they need to, do not have any testing anxiety that prevents them from accessing the information they need, etc. The way to measure the mastery of an idea by a student, at least in my opinion, would be to follow Bloom's Taxonomy or a different system that tests rigor. One thing that surprised me was that Khan didn't say we should be done with tests altogether. He suggests that we can use tests, but to be specific about the ways we understand what they are measuring. I think I partially agree with him and I partially disagree. I think we could have tests if tests were not viewed as summative assessments, there should be different activities, whether it be a project, a one on one conversation with a teacher, or something else, that tests the mastery of a student. Additionally, I think that tests shouldn't hold the weight that they do in regards to the relationship that testing  has with funding. A lot of (at least public schools) view testing as one of the most important things that a student can go through because it directly impacts the funding that a school gets. 

But, not only is this relationship between testing and funding already making it more difficult for students who do not have the same outside resources, or even in school supports and resources, but also testing itself, at least testing as it is, is incredibly racist. Testing (especially in its relationships to immigration and voting) was created to exclude, specifically exclude anyone who is not white. 

Overall, I found myself agreeing with the majority of what Khan argued and I enjoyed reading his work :) 

Should I "see" color? My reflections on colorblindness:

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Vocabulary: 

• color blindness: an assertion that color can't be seen. It's typically used to "combat" racism from a privileged perspective: I can't be racist if I can't see color. 
• color insight: now referred to as color consciousness, the understanding and recognition that different races exist and these differences impact life differently 
• racism (most palatable definition):  discrimination towards a group of marginalized people
• culturally responsive teaching: an asset based pedagogy that incorporates student's cultural backgrounds and perspectives into teaching. I highly (highly highly) recommend that every educator read Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond (I hyperlinked a free pdf to the book, please read it, bookmark it, internalize it, it fundamentally changed my classroom practices and understanding of students)
• subaltern: marginalized groups (popularized by postcolonial studies)
• categorical identities: membership based identities (ex: race, gender, religion, etc)
• antiracism: actively opposing racism and actively promoting or working towards racial equality through conscious and deliberate choices 
• cultural appropriation: the (disrespectful) misuse of characteristics of culture of a marginalized group from a dominant group 
• implicit bias: unconscious beliefs 
• compounding oppression: marginalization from intersecting identities multiplies together, not adds

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    Acknowledgement of race (for white people specifically*)exits, just like every other sociological concept we have constructed, in a spectrum (enjoy the spectrum I made :) ). 

    Note: to see this image clearer, click here

    To make matters more complicated, the way I see it, there's an invisible Y axis on the spectrum that identifies white people as how they see race outside of themselves and how they see race within themselves.[Note: quadrant 1 would also hold being "color brave" because of the active work that people would be having to have conversations about race.] 

Within it all though, is color and an innate and specific either acknowledgement or refusal to acknowledge race (race through skin color).  

Note: to make this image bigger/clearer, click here 

    Main Argument: Which, of course, brings me to the discussion of "Colorblindness is the New Racism" (Margalynne J. Armstrong and Stephanie M. Wildman) who assert the importance of racial consciousness (or what they label "color insight") as an antidote to color blindness, while naming the harms of color blindness. In addition, the chapter mentions some classroom techniques (secondary focused) about how to talk about race and different activities to do within classrooms for students to notice race. 

"Color insight provides an appropriate antidote to the colorblindness, one that remedies the omission of context in racial discourse" (p65). I agree that color consciousness is the first STEP towards breaking a cycle of racism, but I would disagree that it is the antidote. Color consciousness/color insight as described in the chapter is the observation and recognition of race within the classroom, within everyday life, etc. However, I would argue that color blindness isn't at the 0 (zero) point in the scale, it is actively doing harm (-), where racial acknowledgement would act as a neutral place holder. In the case that color blindness is causing harm (because the dismissal of people DOES cause harm, because the invalidation of people's accounts DOES cause harm, etc) work needs to actively be done to push towards racial equity. Additionally, the authors jump into writing about strategies and activities that classes can do to have their students notice race. While White people may not notice race, people of color notice race all the time. My partner is Black and every time we step into a new space he'll let me know "oh there are only x number of Black people here"... which isn't something I even noticed. At all. (Privileges of being white passing).

Anyway, in my opinion, a much more accessible method to combat the active negative harm that color blindness is enacting is to adapt practices of culturally responsive teaching. Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain (a groundbreaking work in the world of CRT by  Zaretta Hammond) follows a ready for rigor framework that has four principles. 

1) Awareness (understanding the three levels of culture, acknowledging sociopolitical context, knowing your own cultural lens, etc)

2) Leading partnerships (reimagining the student/teacher partnership, building self efficacy, etc)

3) Information processing (providing appropriate challenges, helping students process content using methods from culturally relevant examples, teaching cognitive routines, etc) and

4) Sustaining a community of learners and a learning environment (creating an environment that is intellectually and socially safe, using principles of restorative justice to manage conflicts, etc)

I feel very deeply that not only do the competencies, frameworks, and principles of CRT address the demographic of the learners in front of us (at least for me), but also that it is much more accessible because these are techniques that can work across grade levels. 

The authors continue on to discuss how we (in the United States) are a "nation of cowards" and how our inability to talk about race makes it "difficult to dismantle racial inequality", furthermore that "white people may fear engaging in the topic of race makes them seem racist" (66). There is generally, a fear not only that perpetuates racial ignorance but also worsens racism. People are afraid to talk about race, and people are afraid of racial differences. For example, in California in 1998 there was a bill passed, Proposition 227 (or Prop 227) (passed at 61%) that reduced and strictly limited the dual language schools in California. Considering the ethnic and language demographics of CA (at the time and now), this was a decision that affected many students and families. Prop 227 wasn't repealed until 2016. There was a general fear of the unknown, fear of Spanish and a general lack of understanding about literacy scores in DLE (Dual Language Education)**. We are not only a nation of cowards, we are a nation of uneducated cowards. 

One thing that I appreciated about these authors in general was a deeper understanding of intersectionality. They mentioned many times throughout the chapter the idea that categorical identities all work together to impede equality, they absolutely do. One thing that I was thinking about as I was reading their thoughts on intersectionality is if they thought intersectional oppressions compound (similar to how Gloría Anzaldua believes in her monumentally important book, Borderlands/ Las Fronteras about the intersectionality of being Chicana and LGBT+) or if they think it's non-compounding. 

Connection: As I was reading and writing I was thinking a lot about the examples that were given in the chapter to help students be able to visualize race, it reminded me a lot of a presentation I did when I was in my first year of college. I was the first undergraduate student to present at MABE, the MultiState Association for Bilingual Educators. I presented on identity and education (building dual identities through voice, value, and narrative) where I approached my research and assertions on tenants and realities of postcolonial education. I had about 55 participants present and during the presentation, I had my participants participate in an activity. It was a fairly basic "spaghetti/marshmallow tower" building structure activity where the team that built the biggest tower won a prize. However, I needed to make it abundantly clear to my participants that resources impact outcome (something easy to talk about but hard to understand), so I made my groups all different sizes. One group was a group of one, some groups had 4, some groups had 6. Groups had all different amounts of materials-- ranging from number of spaghetti and number of marshmallows to some groups having a blueprint of how to build the biggest tower and some groups having tape to hold their structure together. At the end of the activity, I revealed the realities of the different groups and all participants were able to clearly identify how different resources impacted outcome (which I of course later in the presentation connected back to narrative of teachers and narratives of students). Regardless, reading the ideas that the authors had to help students visualize race reminded me a lot of the project that I did at MABE, it can be easy to talk about something, it can maybe even be easy to imagine something, but the affects of taking time out to notice and live your observations changes your relationship with reality. 

* it's important that I name my audience 

** many DLE students will start reading in both languages below benchmark however not only will they catch up to their peers, but they will SURPASS their peers by 6th grade (I believe, I could be wrong about the exact grade)

Note to readers/request: If you're commenting on my post-- HI! Second of all, does my XY graph make sense to you? Would anything make it make more sense or does anything seem like it needs to be added or taken away from one of the quadrants?

Note: AI was used for this response. In my ideas about how I wanted to word and describe my quadrants when making my X,Y graph, it was really helpful to use AI to tighten up my ideas. I used ChatGPT and said: "I'm working on a project where I'm making an XY graph for how white people view race, the x axis ranges from color blindness to color consciousness with 0 being racial consciousness and the y axis is how white people view external race, so the space of coordinate (1,1) would be someone who recognizes race AND recognizes that they have implicit bias that makes racism worse. Lets' talk through the other quadrants." 

REFLECTION: Privilege, Power and Difference by Allan Johnson

 Privilege, Power, and Difference 

by Allan Johnson

Johnson argues that privilege, power and oppression exist because of intricate systemic reasons that push and pull the strings of who does and does not have power. More than this, the idea of privilege and oppression are entirely made up, sociological, and only have the power that we give them. Lastly, Johnson says that it's privileged people's jobs to work alongside oppressed people to eliminate or reduce oppression. 

Beginning Reflections: As I was reading the entirety of the text, I couldn't help but feel like a lot of the "revolutionary" thinking and writing that Johnson was doing was not only antiquated, but also incorrect. While I agree with many of the beliefs of Johnson, I disagree with many. The author identifies himself very frequently as a white, Catholic, heterosexual man and it's clear that he's writing to other people in positions of cultural power, or to those who are privileged. When he identifies himself, he is able to understand intersectionality (if you haven't heard of intersectionality, I HIGHLY recommend you read this interview by the professor [Kimberlé Crenshaw] who coined the term), however when it comes to overlapping oppression, he doesn't much more than he explains how a Black woman he was having a meal with was both a woman... and Black. Intersectionality ALSO includes class. Johnson's assertion that class was an is an entirely different world is not accurate. When I was a Senior during my Undergrad, I took a class on Marxian Economic Theory which identifies race and class, under capitalism as UNSEPERABLE, completely. Johnson states that it is fundamentally different because despite the fact that you are born into identities (including race, class, gender, etc), you can change class (intro, page xi). On a technicality, sure. But if you are a lower class individual, especially a person of color, who already is at a disadvantage with being hired, how are you expected, how can you even imagine being able to change your class. You can't. Class isn't as moveable as we once thought and this is again, a statement and idea that ages Johnson's argument. 

Middle Reflections: Once again, I find myself fundamentally disagreeing with Johnson. In Chapter 3, Johnson opens by saying that oppression does not exist because we did anything (*loud buzzer sound*). This is true in the way that carbon dioxide exists without us doing anything. Needless to say for both, our existence withholds, perpetuates, and worsens the existence of both.  Racism doesn't exist because *we* created it, it exists because we feed it, and grow it, and reap the benefits of it. Privilege is only privileged because of the scarcity value that it holds-- the idea that there isn't enough privilege in the world and because of this everyone wants it. Privilege is not a finite resource. The current reality of racism is not passive, it lives and breathes and grows because of us. And just because I feel like I can't not say anything: Johnson says "talking about power and privilege isn't easy, which is why people rarely do" (15). Once again, loud buzzer sound. He is so privileged to even mutter the idea that people don't talk a lot about it. Oppressed people talk ALL THE TIME about privilege and power. What's the best way to hold your keys in case something happens at night. ¿Viste como esa mujer nos vio cuando estábamos hablando en frente de ella? I'm afraid at what my parents might think of me if they see me dressing up for the Pride Parade. Talks of privilege and power for the oppressed isn't something you can turn on and off, it's something that just is (and it really upset me for him to be saying this). [Personal thoughts, if we are going to be reading and learning about oppression... why are we not reading from the POV of the oppressed....????)

Ending Reflections: Being privileged without feeling privileged (36). Again, what a privileged perspective. Of course a typically upper class, white man will not have heard about privilege when he was a kid. He would have heard of luck and the American Dream and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and because your grandpa did x thing now we are where we are and we do so much work from this cushy office job where we embezzle money and now we have millions... They don't know the reality of oppression because it has never HIT them. 

Personal Connection:  I actually didn't know for a while what my personal connection was going to be simply because I felt that my entire engagement with the writing was personal. But here it is, the idea that a privileged person doesn't know she's privileged. A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers (E) and I were at dismissal when a student asked E, "why does everyone say you and Ms. X look alike??" and in a voice only E could hear, I (Latina), said "two white blonde woman working at the same school." The next day she asked if I could sit down for a little "chit chat" and told me that what I said to her was racist..... First of all, you can't be racist to white people. Second of all, that's not even what racism is. Third of all, if that's the adversity she had faced in her life WHOOOOEEEE and then I couldn't help but think about when I was only told that I was going to college to meet the "diversity quota" or that people can't typically pronounce my last name-- even though its phonetic, because it looks "foreign", or that E herself mixes up the names of two of her black students but does not mix up the names of her white students (name equivalencies similar to Lucy and Lucia). E did not know racism because it has never HIT her, and then on top of that, to tell me that I was racist... I was fuming... (still am).