As a university-based teacher educator, I engage aspiring public school teachers in my classes in a discussion every year around the following prompt:
Very frequently, I hear people say things about middle and high school students like, “That student doesn’t care, or those students don’t care.” Do you think there are students who really don’t care?
I’ve noticed over the years that most future educators are strongly on one side or the other, and very few are unsure. My hope is that the future teachers who are on the “it’s harmful to say students don’t care” side of the debate are able to persuade those on the other side. But, toward the end of these discussions, I inevitably still have folks on both sides, so I wrap things up, making clear where I stand. I add my own arguments that the “some kids don’t care” attitude is a characteristic of deficit-based mindsets that disproportionately hurt students of color. And my students know that I identify as a woman of color.
This is just one of many conversations I have with my undergraduate students to disrupt the deficit language, deficit-based perspectives, and deficit-based narratives about preK-12 students with marginalized identities. This harmful ideology is common among school leaders, teachers, teacher educators, students, and families alike. One conversation from last year stands out to me because it took place over email, and it involved a fake student.
Getting ready to teach Davy
In our teacher education program, we have used Mursion, a virtual reality training platform. It gives teacher candidates opportunities to play the role of teacher and interact with five middle or high school student avatars (i.e., fake students) in a simulated classroom setting under different teaching scenarios. One Mursion scenario I assigned was to welcome a new student into the classroom and review classroom norms. The new student, Davy, is a multilingual learner (WIDA level 3/Developing), whose home language is Khmer, the national language of Cambodia. I asked students to email me a brief plan for the session three days before teaching it.
In one of the emails I received, Gavin (a pseudonym) wrote, “Davy may not have had any experience while living in Cambodia.” By “experience,” I inferred that Gavin was pointing to experience with classroom norms, such as raising your hand to go to the bathroom. This comment raised a red flag for me. Why would he think that Davy might not have any experience with norms like these?
So, in my response, I asked Gavin, “Can you say more about this? What experience do you think she [Davy] will not have?”
He responded the next morning: “I meant that maybe Davy hasn’t been in a school system setting in Cambodia. Maybe Davy is coming from a better school system, but I doubt it.”
I needed to make sure Gavin understood how this deficit thinking about children from Cambodia, and deficit thinking about any group of children in the world, can cause harm, but I did not want to be harsh.
As a reminder, Davy is an avatar, not a real person. And I want to add that Gavin is a student with a history in my class of engaging actively, being open to new ideas, and showing care for fellow classmates and future students. I believe strongly in his potential to grow into a skilled and compassionate teacher who can meet the needs of diverse learners. That said, Gavin’s email led me to think that he had a single narrative about young people in Cambodia — they either do not attend school or, if they do, the schools they attend are inferior to schools in the United States. As author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argued in her 2014 TED Talk, a single story about a person or group of people is dangerous.
“It was just an assumption . . .”
I needed to make sure Gavin understood how this deficit thinking about children from Cambodia, and deficit thinking about any group of children in the world, can cause harm, but I did not want to be harsh. It’s not that I feared pushback, defensiveness, or dismissal from Gavin. Very simply, I did not want him to feel terrible.
Yet, I’ve learned that feeling terrible is often unavoidable when trying to remove deficit language, narratives, and perspectives from one’s thinking. I myself have felt terrible when someone helped me recognize my own deficit ideology, as reflected in my words about past students. So why do I feel so uncomfortable about making others feel terrible about their deficit ideology, when feeling terrible is a natural part of learning to minimize our harm and advance racial and social justice?
I still felt uncomfortable about being direct with Gavin — so I wasn’t. I wrote: “What makes you think Davy wasn’t in a school system setting in Cambodia? And why do you doubt she was in a better school system?”
Gavin responded quickly: “It was just an assumption. I was just thinking of ways to support Davy, even if they had no fundamental knowledge or English at all.”
Toward asset-based thinking
Oh dear! I was overwhelmed by Gavin’s response. I did not know where to begin. Should I tell him that a 12-year-old from anywhere in the world does, in fact, have valuable knowledge? Should I start by saying that a multilingual learner at any WIDA level can, in fact, understand and speak some English? Frankly, the toughest part of the email to read was: “It was just an assumption.”
Gavin is a hard-working, well-intentioned aspiring teacher who, like all new teachers, needs development. It is my responsibility, as a teacher educator, to promote his development. In our teacher preparation program, we need to do more to close all the big gaps — the ones between theory and practice, and the ones between “talking the diversity, equity, and inclusion talk” and actually doing the work.
By the time I received this last email, the end of the semester was upon us, but this conversation was far too important to leave unfinished. Fortuitously, Gavin owed me a makeup assignment, one that I took the liberty to personalize. I asked him to read a specific article about deficit ideology and then analyze our email exchange about Davy in light of this article.
Gavin’s analysis convinced me that he understood the concept of deficit ideology. And, most important, he acknowledged his own deficit ideology, as reflected in emails about Davy, and acknowledged the harm and wrong in that deficit-based perspective. Toward the end of the analysis, Gavin emphasized the importance of having an asset-based view of students. He wrote: “If I begin thinking about Davy as lower than the other students in the class, then I will not be treating them fairly. I must look toward Davy’s strengths and cater to them.”
The necessity of hope
I walked away from all of this feeling good that Gavin took an important step forward in his journey, and he was able to do so without harming a real student. I’m telling myself that just as it’s OK, and necessary, to feel terrible in doing this work, it’s also OK, and necessary, to feel hopeful.
Like many others, I think “the work” should start early, preschool and before, and be continuous up through college and beyond. I also have come to believe that key to the work is these back-and-forth exchanges between those who need immediate development and those who can facilitate that development with persistence and creativity. And perhaps, when both sides have courage and an asset-based view of the other, the work can move more quickly.
This article appears in the November 2023 issue of Kappan, Vol. 105, No. 3, p. 56-57.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leslie Duhaylongsod
LESLIE DUHAYLONGSOD is an assistant professor in the McKeown School of Education, Salem State University, Salem, MA.
