Leadership magazine Sept/Oct 2015 V45 No 1 | Page 16

staff. However, these activities are most effective if they are iterative, because people
generally need time to become comfortable
discussing issues of identity and culture. A
benefit of having teachers do this work with
each other is that it can serve as practice for
getting to know their students.

2. Develop a schoolwide, assets-based
view of students.

Carrying out the Paseo
or Circles of Identity
Each participant draws a web of circles that looks like a diagram of a molecule. The participant writes her name
in the center circle and words or phrases
that capture an element of her identity in
the other circles.
Then participants split into two concentric circles, with each member of the
inner circle facing a member of the outer
circle. A question on identity or equity is
then asked. Every pair answers the question, with the person on the inner ring
taking two minutes to answer, followed
by the person on the outer ring taking
two minutes to answer. After each question, one of the rings is asked to rotate to
create new pairs. Once the participants
have answered all the questions, they
debrief as a group on what emotions surfaced and what they will do differently as
a result of the activity.

Examples of questions are:
• Describe a time when one of the elements of your identity worked to your
advantage.
• Talk about a time when your perceptions of a student’s identity caused you
to do something that moved him or her
forward.
• Talk about a time when you noticed
an inequity and said or did something to
address it.
16

Leadership

Research shows that students learn better when they feel understood and cared
for. Principals can encourage teachers to
get to know their students by promoting the
concept of asset-based instruction in their
schools. Such instruction recognizes students’
st reng t hs a nd helps
students feel they can
contribute to their own
educational growth. The
strengths that students
bring to school – the
knowledge, resources
and competencies that
families use to maintain
households and communities – are what Moll, Amanti, Neff and
González (1992) called “funds of knowledge.”
One way to take inventory of these funds
of knowledge is to use what Pat Thompson (2001) called the “virtual school bag.”
Teachers can only describe the contents of
students’ virtual school bags if the teachers
know their students well. This happens over
time and in a variety of ways – for example,
by creating classrooms where students feel
their voices are heard, having lunch with
small groups of students, or corresponding
with students in their journals.
Taking such steps to build rapport with
students is the first part of developing what
Zaretta Hammond (2015) calls learning
partnerships.
In Hammond’s formulation, once rapport is established, teachers and students
form an alliance to tackle a specific learning challenge. Because the student trusts the
teacher, the student is less likely to withdraw
and more likely to try to rise to the challenge. In that phase, teachers help students
become independent learners and expand

their intellectual capacity. The alliance thus
promotes students’ cognitive insights.
When school leaders encourage their staff
to get to know their students, including the
strengths they bring from their homes and
communities, they set in motion a chain of
events that lead to greater student agency,
which creates deeper, more self-directed
learning. In the Common Core era, when so
much more is being asked of learners, this
student agency is critical.

3. Foster academic mindsets in students.
The learning partnerships described
above are one method of helping students
develop positive academic mindsets, which
research suggests are
an important factor in
academic performance.
Farrington, et al. (2012)
give specific examples
of mindsets associated
with high academic performance:
• I belong in this academic community.
• My ability and competence grow with
my effort.
• I can succeed at this.
• This work has value for me.
According to Farrington and her colleagues, these mindsets can be cultivated in
students. However, educators should be particularly vigilant with regard to students of
color because these students are more likely
than their white counterparts to face contexts with pointed challenges to the development of positive mindsets.
Although the research is not entirely clear
on the specific classroom strategies that
teachers should use, Farrington, et al. offer
findings from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2004) on general school conditions that promote strong
student engagement and positive academic
mindsets.
The conditions include, among others,
presenting students with challenging but
achievable tasks; communicating high expectations for student learning and providing supports that allow students to meet
those expectations; making evaluation