Weekly Share 6/17/23 - Summer Reading Recommendation #2 - Hacking Deficit Thinking
As most schools have now wrapped up the 2022-2023 school year this week, I wanted to share a few books I think would be great individual or group reads to support the inclusive schools and classrooms we need to ensure all students feel seen and valued. My last post highlighted We’re Gonna Keep On Talking by Matthew R. Kay and Jennifer Orr. This time around I am going to highlight Hacking Deficit Thinking by Dr. Kelsie Reed and Dr. Byron McClure.
Reed and McClure, two school psychologists, provide a list of eight concrete steps, which they call reframes, for educators to make the transition to focusing more on strengths and less on deficits. The why for this shift is outlined early by the authors: “Deficit thinking is a distorted lens, focused on student weaknesses, that blames students and their families for student difficulties rather than acknowledging the impact of our practices and broader structural inequities.”
The eight steps to fix this “distorted lens” are described in the eight reframes below along with one excerpt from the countless highlights I made. What I love most about this book is that each reframe is broken down explicitly and each section ends with things you can do tomorrow to start to shift from the deficit mindset to a more strength-based approach.
Reframe 1: We Can Shift to What’s Strong
“Use failure as a tool to improve your practices. A human-centered design mindset begins with not knowing the solution to a challenge, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is doing nothing.”
Reframe 2: Our Problems Exist Within the System
“Address the root cause of the problem, not the child. Examine the conditions that are perpetuating the poor outcomes. Students are people, not outcomes, not data points, and not statistics. If students aren’t learning or growing as measured by outcomes, then you must examine what’s happening from an ecological and systemic approach.”
Reframe 3: Humanize Your Data
“Why are we asking the same questions and continuing to implement the same solutions without involving the people directly impacted by the data? Because the reality is that any disparity in outcome for a group of students reflects something WE are doing wrong.”
Reframe 4: We Can Hack Deficit Thinking
“...deficit thinking is particularly insidious. It expects historically marginalized students to work harder, be better, and achieve more to experience the same educational outcomes as their peers.”
Reframe 5: Build on Student Strengths
“When students use their strengths, it gives them a chance to shine, and they are more likely to experience success. This builds self-efficacy and gives them a reason to persist, even when tasks are challenging.”
Reframe 6: Differences Are Strengths
“When we create an anti-deficit environment for students with learning differences, the goal is not to assimilate students into the environment. The goal is to change the environment, not the students.”
Reframe 7: Tap into Schoolwide Strengths
“We actively do away with our deficit and White-centered schools when we acknowledge the existing issues without becoming defensive. Change at the school level cannot happen unless we talk about it at the school level.
Reframe 8: Educators Deserve to Flourish
“One of the most detrimental outcomes of deficit thinking is its impact on our belief that we are powerless. Again - because deficit thinking blames our students and families for problems, we are left with the belief that the work we do as educators will never be enough.”