All students have unique strengths and needs that vary over time and are expressed differently. This year, the world has experienced extraordinary unforeseen challenges with the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racial discord. This collective trauma is contributing to heightened levels of stress and uncertainty. Schools are working to identify how best to support students in navigating these experiences, engaging with their learning, and making progress toward their goals. Assessing perceptions of wellbeing is one way to do this.

Student well-being is commonly valued but not commonly measured in schools, leaving teachers to rely on what they see (e.g., overt acting out behaviors) and believe is important to address. Given that students respond differently and not all responses may be directly noticeable to the classroom teacher, many students and needs could be overlooked. Further, many existing resources to understand student functioning take a deficit-based approach – asking what is wrong with students and trying to “fix” them (e.g., Youth Risk Behavior Survey).

The current system has led to overidentification of students who have historically been marginalized by the system, reinforcing implicit bias, rather than supporting reflection on structured inequalities. Now, more than ever, it is important that schools take an assets-based approach – one that values subjective experience and creates space for students to directly voice how they are feeling and functioning, and invites them into the problem-solving solutions. Interventions grounded in a strengths-based approach are less stigmatizing and more equitable than those grounded in a deficit-based approach.

Read the full article about future of learning by Christina Theokas and Joe Erpelding at Getting Smart.