Week 6: Deficits ---> Assets

Moving from deficit-based to asset-based thinking continues to be, for me, one of the most challenging aspects of this work. We are so programmed to look for deficits, gaps, shortcomings, that is is extremely difficult to reconstruct our vision of the world with assets as the point of departure. I am constantly checking myself, as an educator and a community organizer, when my mind drifts to deficit-based explanations for what I am observing in my classroom and school community. It is SO easy to fall into this trap, and the spirit of the teacher’s lounge and ethos of the entire school where I teach is laden with this sort of discourse.

I think that the Educational Linguist’s blog post on the language we use to talk about language is so powerful. He totally flips the script on deficit-based language and challenges readers to sit with the discomfort of his descriptions. “It is a well-documented fact that by the age of 5 monolingual White children will have heard 30 million fewer words in languages other than English than bilingual children of color. In addition, they will have had a complete lack of exposure to the richness of non-standardized varieties of English that characterize the homes of many children of color.” The language used in this passage is identical to the language used to describe low-income children of color on a daily basis in academic and newspaper articles, alike. The reference to Providence Talks, the initiative launched a few years ago right here in Rhode Island, also struck a chord for me. The eeriness of his description, and the alleged program’s goal to “eradicate monolingualism” offered a powerful and telling image of what the actual organization works to do. It revealed the utter creepiness and completely oppressive framework that Providence Talks employs.

Something that I have really committed to doing with my students this year is focusing on the benefits of multilingualism and exploring the ways that we are all language learners. At the beginning of the year, we took a survey about the languages that we can read, write, understand, speak, dream in, think in, use in our community, use at school, etc. Then we compiled and graphed the data and discussed what it meant. Finally, I made a display in our room where we hung the students’ graphs and celebrated the multilingualism in our room. [Check out the lesson plan and activities for more info.]

The asset/deficit theme returned in Schultz’s article on silence. I think constantly about my students’ silence, and the ways in which our classrooms are set up to honor and value the quickest responses. As a profoundly introverted person and student, I was always so troubled by this design, but I have quickly replicated a similar system in my own room, despite my best efforts to resist. I have found that my students have made any resistance or change to this way of teaching almost impossible. There are so many students in my class who are chronic answer blurters, regardless of how many times I remind them to give other children time to think and formulate a response. This has been especially problematic during math lessons. I usually call on different students to give everyone a chance to demonstrate what they know, but I have a few hypercompetitive and impulsive students who yell out the answers to every single problem before the student I call on even has a chance to open her mouth. This phenomenon is something I am so stumped by and have tried to combat all year to no avail. If anyone has any resources or ideas I would love to check them out.