Blog #1

 Ashley De La Roca

Shifting the Paradigm

Renkly, Shannon and Bertolini, Katherine () "Shifting the Paradigm from Deficit Oriented Schools to Asset Based Models: Why Leaders Need to Promote an Asset Orientation in our Schools" 

Ashley De La Roca

REFLECTION: This text makes me think about my own experiences in school, and it makes me think about the students in the classroom I was doing an internship at. The text mentions that teachers play a big role in building student's assets. This makes me think about my experience in school as a student because I had many teachers, and they were all different and had different teaching styles. As a student, I considered myself not to be very good in English literature class, I found it boring, but in high school, I had a teacher who changed that around. This teacher believed in all his students. Because of this teacher’s scaffolding and way of caring for students' learning, I was able to become the student I never thought I could be. It also makes me think about the students I was with in my internship last semester because I saw myself in them. This specific group of students felt left out from the student community and the school community. However, the teacher they had was such an incredible teacher to them. This teacher not only cared for their learning but also cared for them as human beings. This teacher was a civics teacher and spoke no spanish. Her students spoke little to no English. This is where I connect the text to my personal experiences because although her job was to teach civics, this teacher also was teaching them English. This teacher wanted each and every one of her students to know that they were not any less than the rest of the other students for not speaking English. This teacher created a safe space for her students in her classroom without speaking their language. 

This is how I relate the text to me and my experiences.