The 40 building blocks to good education-- What do you have and can you build more?

 What are the "building blocks"

Shannon Renkley and Katherine Bertolini wrote a truly inspiring piece called, "Shifting the Paradigm from Deficit Oriented Schools to Asset Based Models: Why Leaders Need to Promote and Asset Orientation in our Schools" which described the building blocks of education and how we can build these up before we have to counter act the absence of one. I hope other aspiring teachers were as inspired by this text, promoting the ideas of, "...identifying each child's jewels and using these to help the student grow..."(26). They also mention how The Search Institue found a list of 40 assets students may have that strive behaviors and decrease behaviors where they are absent. These "external assets" include family support, positive family outcome, other adult relationships, caring neighborhood, caring social climate, caring school climate, parent involvement in schooling, community values youth, youth as resources, service to others, safety, family boundaries, school boundaries, neighborhood boundaries, adult role models, positive peer influence, high expectations, creative activities, youth programs, religious community, time at home. The internal assets include achievement motivation, school engagement, homework, bonding to school, reading for pleasure, caring, equality and social justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility, restraint, planning and decision making, interpersonal competence, cultural competence, resistance skills, peaceful conflict resolutions, personal power, self-esteem, sense of purpose, and positive view of personal future.

How can we obtain them and eventually pass them on?

 As a child, I was blessed with two totally opposite sides of the coin: my father, and my mother. Both divorced. One remarried with a college education, fulfilling and high earning job, and a beautiful house. The other never remarried, never graduated college, and has never owned a home. I like to think I developed the skill set of the former. I see my childhood where one side pushed these ideals and the other did not. One took me to Barnes and Nobels to pick up a new book every week and one was too busy to be present in my development. I thrived under my father's house while I was socially ostracized while in my mother's. These skills are extremely eye opening and important to consider when teaching or raising children. The same idea in my last blog post on avoiding poverty, you can take action to prevent this. Look to ChatGPT on how to be more caring, where you can join a religious community or any other asset you feel that you are lacking. Think about how you have got them or can get them so we can influence the youth in our life to possess them too.