About

Kathleen M. Budge & Grant A. Chandler, 2023

On a recent Wednesday morning, Grant was conducting a workshop for a group of amazing teachers who were lamenting the pressure they felt from administrators, as well as local and state policy makers, to focus almost exclusively on improving reading and math scores on end-of-year high-stakes assessments. Many felt they couldn’t slow their routines down to focus on relationship-building or respond to other needs. This pressure left them feeling hopeless and demoralized.

Let’s be honest. We need to change the educational landscape. Two plus decades of policymaking has too often conditioned us to see children as test scores and failed to result in improved academic achievement. Too many of us find ourselves herding children toward a finish line imposed by people who have never met the children in question. And this isn’t the only reason things need to change. Our own entrenched assumptions underlying most approaches to discipline and classroom management; together with, the systemic marginalization, degradation, and disrespect of specific groups of children, play out in an obsession with “fixing” students rather than the system. Children of color, those who identify as LGBTQ+, those with disabilities, those who live in poverty and those who are immigrants or refugees are too often treated as though human dignity must be earned rather than the birthright it is. 

In our post-pandemic world, where chronic student absenteeism is a problem in too many schools nationwide and educators are leaving the profession in record numbers; it is time to acknowledge that schooling must become a much more humanizing endeavor. When we value our students’ humanity above all else, we optimize learning.

Teaching and learning begin with seeing each child as the distinctive and irreplaceable human being they are. When something is distinctive it is unlike any other.  We give it tremendous value because it is a one of a kind. When something is irreplaceable it is cherished and treasured because there can never be another just like it. Honoring each student as distinctive and irreplaceable, we understand and internalize the existential reality that if we lose a student, we lose something that is precious and cannot be replaced.  This is the foundational principle guiding the humanizing approach to schooling we call Powerful Student Care.

We chart the course for educators to learn how to extend Powerful Student Care in our book by the same name (Note: Hyperlink here). Consistently bearing in mind the fact that each student is distinctive and irreplaceable is only the first step. Supporting students to believe this of themselves and of others, educators must shift their primary focus away from the actions they take to that which is actually experienced by their students. Our aim is for each student to experience a sense of community defined in the following five guiding tenets:

1)    Each student is welcomed to be part of our community.

2)    Each student is a valued member of our community.

3)    Each student is here to do well.

4)    Each student is here to develop self-efficacy and agency.

5)    Each student is here to experience the joy of learning academically, socially, and emotionally.

Rather than another item on educators’ long list of “to dos,” Powerful Student Care is a way of being with our students. Once educators become attuned to the over-arching principle—honoring each student as distinctive and irreplaceable—and aware of what it means for each student to experience the five guiding tenets; they predict, plan for, and respond to the needs and interests of their students through their “every day” professional practices, such as establishing the physical environment, rituals and routines, methods of instruction, curriculum, and use of time. Such care is also realized when educators co-create the learning experience with students by giving them a voice, choice, and some level of autonomy; as well as the values that establish the norms in how the classroom/school is operated (e.g., it’s safe to fail because we learn from failure; persistence is needed to learn; we are all in this together.)

In our book, we utilize scenario-based learning to illustrate the tenets of community in the provision of Powerful Student Care.  One scenario involves Willow, an 8th grade Mexican immigrant who learned English at her school and who is struggling to find a pathway to her dream of going to college and becoming a television journalist. When Willow is less and less responsive in class, Dr. Nichelle Hill-Edwards, Willow’s math teacher, begins to ask questions. Through a series of conversations with Willow, Willow’s mother, and other colleagues, Nichelle discovers Willow is not experiencing a belief on the part of others in her desire to do well at school.

Willow is facing bias and discrimination on several fronts, including a practice to exclude students served in the ELL program from visitation with university representatives during the school’s career day. As the school’s counselor tells Nichelle, those students “go to the community college. Besides, Willow’s family doesn’t have the means to send her to the university. Why should she see reps when it isn’t possible for her to attend college? Isn’t that cruel?” 

In response, Nichelle extends Powerful Student Care in three ways: 1) she connects Willow with a high school counselor who will believe in her and be more responsive to her aspirations, 2) she creates and uses a series of closing rituals in her classroom designed to help her assess and stay in touch with how students are experiencing each of the tenets, and 3) she enlists the support of the school administrators to change the discriminatory and exclusionary counseling practice Willow confronted.

Above all else, educating children should be an endeavor that humanizes each child, and this can only happen in schools that are more equitable, inclusive, and socially just. The tenets of community in Powerful Student Care provide the foundation. Cultivating a community with and among our students that respects difference, holds in highest regard the intrinsic worth of each student, and prioritizes the actual experiences of each student is where we need to begin.