Читать книгу Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership - Sharon I. Radd - Страница 22

 What examples can you think of—in your work or outside of school—where stories shape the reality?

 Who benefits from the way the story is told and who is disadvantaged, marginalized, or judged negatively?

 Where do you see competing stories that keep you or others stuck in conflict?

 What keeps you/them from developing a collaborative or mutually acceptable story?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, so resist judging yourself or others negatively. The way that stories shape reality and understanding is common throughout the world and across cultures. However, it's important that you begin to notice them and their impact. Our purpose is to highlight the role of stories and how they can encourage or inhibit your progress toward equity.

Specific to your work, you use certain stories to understand and explain what is happening in schools related to inequality and inequity. As you proceed through this chapter, consider whether or how the stories you tell discourage and disempower you from taking the actions needed to produce better outcomes for students. In our experience, we hear stories told by well-meaning people that say problems in the neighborhood, the family structure, the child's self-esteem, the child's motivation, the child's resilience ("grit"), the parenting, and so on result in certain students' (children living in poverty, children of color, children with disabilities, ELs, and so on) difficulties in school. This is what we call a deficit orientation (Scheurich & Skrla, 2003)—when people blame students, their families, their circumstances, and their communities for the symptoms and results of inequities rather than identify and correct the systemic causes of inequality and inequity. For example, when educators describe parents as uncaring and unwilling to do what is best for their children, or when they focus on the "rough neighborhoods" that children must "endure" when they are not "safe and protected at school," these are deficit-oriented views.

These sorts of deficit views can too easily creep into the stories people tell to make sense of the hard work of schooling. An overwhelming education system that is in constant flux, the enormity of social issues (health, violence, food, housing) that impact students' school lives, and high-stakes pressure all contribute to frustration and discouragement. While these stories serve as coping mechanisms to effectively help teachers keep going, they also perpetuate a deficit orientation that blames students, families, and teachers for not succeeding in a system that is oriented toward their failure. Once these stories become part of the narrative, they circulate in an insidious and powerful way. Recognizing if and how you use a deficit view as a coping mechanism is the first step in reframing it.

To disrupt and reframe these deficit-oriented stories in yourself and others, you will need ongoing reflection and vigilance. Thus, the next step in your equity learning is to make visible the stories you and your colleagues tell, then identify how those stories inevitably create barriers to innovative thinking about how to better serve youth, their families, and their communities. We use this next section to highlight the stories Ezra heard—that educators often tell—about why equity efforts don't work or don't matter. As you read, consider your own connection to and beliefs in these stories; we ask you to log your reflections at the end of the chapter. Then, we explain how Ezra disrupted and eventually shifted these stories.