Practice 2

Shift lens from seeing problems to seeing assets

Overview

Can wanting to get better be a bad thing?

The cultural narrative – including but not only for schools – tends to focus on what is “not good enough,” with media attention and accountability systems designed to highlight what is going wrong.

A focus on school improvement – when not thoughtfully framed – can have the perverse outcome of limiting our field of view to only those things that we have “problematized.” An unbridled focus on improvement can inadvertently cause us to fill our attention with weaknesses, perennial challenges, everything that is going wrong. This repetitive focus on the negative trains our brains to associate our work with failure and inadequacy, seeping into our culture and, in schools, into our students’ psyches and identities. What gets missed in this view is a deep look at the many assets present in our schools. Where our strengths are. The result is a culture of lack; a culture that centers problems and can only see problems. It sees students as problems. Parents as problems. Teachers as problems. But fails to leverage and celebrate assets.

There are specific practices that leaders at all levels can implement to upend our usual way of doing business and still pursue the best version of who we can be, starting with assets and strengths rather than what’s wrong. Trabian Shorters called this practice “asset framing.” Father Richard Rohr contrasts this mindset by talking about “life energy” as that lens which points toward what we aspire to rather than “death energy” which often taps into and amplifies fear about what we want to avoid or threats of consequences for non-compliance.

Language is a powerful shaper of how we understand the world, and language is key to enacting this practice. One example is looking and listening for the language we use to describe students who struggle academically. Do we call them “low students,” which makes their scholarly performance the primaryidentity through which we understand them (and they understand themselves, and how their peers know them)? How does using language like “low students” limit how likely we are to think about student strengths – whether as makers, athletes, artists, thespians, friends – that are likely to be needed to address the areas of challenge they face?

Quick Start Actions

Strengths Mapping.

Create a common visual display of the strengths of all staff, including non-instructional staff. Strengths should include professional strengths (e.g. meeting facilitation or Excel formulas), personal strengths (e.g. empathy, listening), and vocational strengths (e.g. cooking, volleyball, DIY projects). Encourage teachers to do same with students in classrooms. Actively attend to tapping into personal and vocational strengths of team members in meetings, projects and communication.

Celebration Audit.

Engage a team of teachers to review school using the lens of “What is celebrated here?” Walk school looking at what is featured on walls; listen to morning messages and read newsletters; listen for what is being said to students in the halls; review processes. Evaluate whether what is celebrated is what we want to be celebrated and adjust accordingly.

Exhibition of Superpowers.

Similar to a talent show - and could be integrated into or as part of one - this is a community gathering to celebrate a broad range of unique talents and skills where every child has an opportunity to showcase in either a passive display or active performance something that they have a unique skill or talent in. Anything from skipping or tying shoes to drawing a spider web or singing a song to changing tires or making a TikTok.

Resources

A Cognitive Skill to Magnify Humanity

In this podcast, Trabian Shorters explains the origins of the practice of Asset Framing as an alternative to the conventional lens of closing gaps.

Understanding Asset Framing

This brief article provides additional insight into how operationalize asset framing.

Cognitive Biases

The deficit lens is but one cognitive bias that we bring, either because we are socialized to do so or because our brains are wired for short cuts. This article illuminates a range of additional biases that can distort thinking and decision making, but with attention can be overcome.