Adding Asset Thinking in CTE and All Education
My mother was the judgiest person I know. From childhood, she pointed out all kinds of ways I could improve from the hair out of place to a cream on my elbows to walking straighter to not being so loud (or quiet) when I spoke. I never escaped. From an early age, I held the belief that my behavior, looks, and connections with the “right” friends affected my ability to be happy. I was so intimidated that as an adult I spent an enormous amount of time dressing my daughters and myself before we presented ourselves for inspection when we visited. The good news is my mother lived seven hours away, so the inspections didn’t happen very often.
Seeking perfection is exhausting, and I figured out with time and distance, perfection didn’t result in happiness, just continuous stress. Living in a “deficit” household meant I always worried about meeting the expectation of the pastor, the neighbors, the teachers, the colleagues, the relatives, and even my friends. Every day was an effort to meet the expected requirements to be enough, be accepted, and even be liked! Meeting those requirements meant we could avoid others’ judgments.
The problem with the educational deficit model approach is that it first identifies areas of concern or potential challenges that may impact academic performance. If students are unable to easily speak the English language, wear the latest label clothes or can’t afford the latest gadget or have an observable disability, they may feel “less than” or invisible, or be shamed or bullied by their peers. For people who may already be vulnerable or who have not yet developed emotional defenses, a model that first highlights deficiencies (without also highlighting gifts and talents) may exacerbate the very problem we seek to address.
For Career and Technical Education (CTE), the federal legislation referred to as Perkins V highlights the need to address a long list of student potential vulnerabilities when they enter our programs. These vulnerabilities serve to identify the categories or “special populations” into which students may fall. The idea is by pointing out the perceived deficits (and addressing them), educators can better help students be academically successful.
The challenge of beginning with deficit thinking is that we seldom move on to identify and highlight the assets. While my mother was great at finding fault, she never got to a point where she highlighted my assets. What did I do well? What were my gifts and talents? Our students are too often in the same situation. Being low income is not a character flaw in a student; nor is not speaking English or having a parent in the military or being male in a health care field. Being a member of a special population is only a small part of a much larger identity that is still unfolding for a child or young adult. As CTE educators, we have the opportunity to help nurture those assets and compliment the challenges by recognizing the gifts and talents of all our students. This will serve to create an understanding of the whole child.
After decades of work in CTE and STEM education (and on myself), I finally understand that we—students and all of us—are not just a collection of holes that need to be filled. From birth, we are assets in the world, born with our own gifts and talents to be revealed over time as we grow. The gifts and talents together with our weaknesses define who we are. I may not have the gift for organizing my day, but I have natural abilities related to empathy and compassion.
Unfortunately, most of our education system uses a deficit model. As each child walks into a school, they are observed and tested for deficits. Can they hear, see, learn, and behave “normally”? If not, how do we address their deficits? And if we don’t, whose fault is it? Seldom are educators taught to ask the student about their assets or identify them to point out to the student! How can we talk about equity in a classroom if we do not first talk about the whole child? As every child explores their unique qualities, we should acknowledge what they find with equal parts empathy and celebration.
Finding success and failure in education is about taking risks and constant learning. Failure (and success) can happen for many reasons. It is too often blamed on some weakness or deficit in the child, rather than a lack of clear instructions, lack of previous exposure, or failure to have a good breakfast or a bed to sleep on at night. An education system that uses a lens to only address the deficits of the child teaches them to first judge themselves. If they are not doing well in school, their own judgment may become “I am not smart enough” or “I find this subject uninteresting.”
I recall years ago working on a scholarship program to attract the “best and brightest” students in computer science and information technology programs at the university where I worked. I was told to recruit from select high schools. As we discussed all the schools in the surrounding area, I was told to avoid a particular high school as “none of their 1200 students scored high enough” on a standardized math assessment to meet the baseline requirements for the scholarship. No one? In an entire school? I was told not to discuss this practice with anyone. Apparently, it was a well-kept secret.
That conversation has haunted me for years. Twelve hundred students in one school, all kept from even applying for a college scholarship for lack of academic preparation and performance. Why did this happen? Why was it okay?
Maybe there was a time when I, too, would have shook my head and said, “Those people . . .” Now I think about the assets that may have been lost. Not just about the lost enrollment of these students for advanced degrees, but about the loss of ideas and perspectives and abilities that they each brought into the world. What have we lost, and what have they lost? Did they graduate feeling “less than”? And whose responsibility is it? The parents, the school system, the educators? Or is it mine? How do I contribute to this world of “deficit thinking”?
I challenge myself, and each of us, to think about the face of a child. A mother or father or relative cares for that child. They brought their beautiful baby home with love and tenderness and did their best to raise them. They then handed their precious child to the schools to provide a quality education. Yet, for one school—and likely many others—we failed that precious gift.
Maybe it is time to work harder on ourselves and rethink our education system starting with each child and his, her, or their many assets as well as needs and vulnerabilities. Equity is not about making all children “normal” or “perfect” in some measurable way. It is rather about seeing each student as the gift they already are and starting from there.
FEBRUARY 28, 2022