Early Childhood Education Commons^™

A Call For Strength-Based Teaching, Molly Weinberg

Art of Teaching Thesis - Written

Teaching practices centering a deficit lens of the child do not provide the space needed for every child to thrive in the American public education system today. This is why I call for strength-based teaching. A strength-based approach to teaching calls for the decentering of deficits and the centering of strengths, knowing our students, the room to make mistakes, freedom from labeling, acceptance and value of all student differences while simultaneously honoring all student knowledge as official knowledge, and the centering of marginalized voices. Our school system today relies primarily on state standards and standardized testing to measure intelligence, forcing …