Building Strength Based Ecologies In our Schools and Classrooms

A seed has within it all the necessary blueprints to develop into the plant it is intended to become.Place it in decent soil, give it adequate sunlight and water and the seed does what it is supposed to do-it  becomes a complete plant. ( Dr. Frank Fesser- Positive Education Program )

 Our current view of education and schooling continues to focus almost all our attention on fixing and remediating what is deficient in both the students and the teachers  within our buildings.

Walk into any school public school system in our country and you will see frantic adults pouring over endless amounts of performance data ( test scores ) finding those students with-in their walls that do not “measure- up”  and creating yet another plan to remediate and fix them. 

 At the same time, in the majority of our states, we have instituted teacher evaluation systems that in effect are designed to use student test scores along with “best practice” rubrics to find what is wrong with their instruction and fix them or remove them from the profession.   In practice our public schools, because of our current federal and state policies, have everyone  endlessly probing and finding what is wrong with the human beings that come together there and then attempts to “fix” them.   This view of education and schooling has lead us to more and more standards, more prescriptive methods of teaching and more testing then at any time in history of mass public education.   The entire system is now build on deficiency and remediation.

 In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.  ( Bertrand Russell )

 The current  view of education and schooling sees  living human beings as parts of a machine that can be tinkered with and fixed.  It has lead us all to a dead end!  We must find ways to break away from this deficit view of teaching and learning. To begin we all must recognize that schools are living systems. What we need is a Re-visioning of our schools. 

 Learning is the most natural things human beings do. Our species would never have survived if this were not the case.  Watch any young child for even a small period of time and you will find a creative, inquisitive learner!  Human beings placed in “good enough soil” and given an adequate supply of nutrients will grow and flourish just like a seed does when give adequate sunlight and water and placed in the correct environment. 

 What ingredients are in the soil to grow healthy children and youth?

 In Reclaiming Youth At-Risk, Brendtro, Brokenleg and Van Bockern identified  the 4 Universal Growth Needs of Children and Youth.  They include:  Belonging, Mastery, Independence and Generosity.  When these growth needs are met our young flourish. You can use these needs and the following questions as a conceptual filter as you build strength based ecologies with-in your classrooms or your schools.

 BELONGING- The need for belonging speaks to the power of attachment in human beings.  This need asks the question:   “Am I important to somebody here?”  We know that all long term learning takes place in the context of positive relationships.   All our young need to feel  important.  All children need to be seen and know by a special adult in their school. This becomes critically important for our most troubled and troubling students who simply will not learn from someone who they are not connected to.  Urie Bronfenbrenner  put it this way years ago:  "Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her."  I am hopeful that that person will be you!

MASTERY- The need for mastery speaks to the power of achievement.  This need asks the question: “ Am I good at something here?”  Children and young people are defeated by failure, yet often our schools allow children to fall year after year.  It is not uncommon in some of our schools to have 17 and 18 year olds  with only enough credits to be a freshman or sophomore.  If our young become too defeated they simply drop-out!  According to the Children’ Defense Fund, 2,857 high school students drop out every day in America. Our dropout rate in some of our larger urban school district is approaching 50%. We cannot continue to allow this to occur.  Simply put, if the student has not learned something we as the teacher need to find a different way to teach it. We must build islands of competency for all our students and we must be able to teach in a way that allows them to experience success. Tom Rath author of StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Wellbeing, both geared to leading adults in the business world puts it this way:  “ When we build on our strengths and daily successes- instead of focusing on failures- we simply learn more.”  We must find ways to “force” success on all our students!

INDEPENDENCE-   The need for independence speaks to the power of autonomy. This need asks the question: “Can I influence my world here?”  This need first kicks in at age 2. During this stage of our unfolding childhood overflows with wonder, questions and learning. This need becomes front and center again during early adolescents as young people  begin to explore different ways they may want to “be” in the world.   All one has to do is visit any middle school and you can see why the gift of this developmental stage has been referred to as “the gift of fire”.  Allowing room for structured choices will give our adolescents the ability to begin to learn from the outcomes of their choices and yet still have the protection of caring adults to provide a safety net when they make poor choices.  Leadership expert  Steven Covey has said that the quality of our lives is based off the choices we have made. Our young need practice in making choices and evaluating them with supportive adults. As teachers and educators we can provide our students with choices in more and more areas as they explore their various gifts.  In what ways can our young people influence their school ecology? Do we ask them?

 GENEROSITY- The need for generosity speaks to the power of altruism.  This need asks the question: “How can I share my gifts to help others here?” All our young people need to experience the “felt” sense of being of value to others.  Providing our young with opportunities to be generous toward others and share their gifts  develops a clear sense of empathy and caring. These innate abilities with-in all human beings need to be nurtured and experienced to grow.  We as adults can also model generosity to our students and provide them a sense of experiencing generosity of spirit between people. Often our young people do not recognize their strengths.  We can also help our students by seeing and mirroring their strengths back to them.  Lisa Delpit, author of Other Peoples Children puts it this way: “They ( teachers) held visions of us that we could not imagine for ourselves.”

 Belonging, mastery, independence and generosity represent the 4 universal growth needs of all children and youth.  This is the soil we need to cultivate in our schools to allow all our students to thrive and flourish.   These are the ingredients of a healthy ecology for our young. 

 Michael McKnight, Updated June, 2016

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