Potential

"Helping students achieve their literacy potential." 

That's our tag line… our motto, if you will. It's on our website and is at the top or bottom of many of our communications. I take for granted sometimes that people know what it means, and I think many people do. It seems important to explain it, though, because potential is something that adults often say kids have. And all students do have potential. I'm not sure we're using the word the same way, though, and I'd like to define the term the way we're using it. 

Longman Dictionary defines potential this way: "If people or things have potential, they have a natural ability or quality that could develop to make them very good." That definition seems pretty subjective. Natural ability, very good, these are the phrases of an opinion placed on someone that they've somehow got what it takes to get to some predetermined good place to be. "

Johnny has the potential to be a good writer one day." What is a good writer defined as and just when is one day? 

Another definition the Longman gives for potential is, "the possibility that something will develop in a particular way, or have a particular effect." Now, that definition seems a little closer to what many of us think of when we think of potential. Possibility. The full limit of an ability deep within a person that has yet to be completely realized or developed - that's what we mean by potential. 

One thing that formal education has done is create the idea that all children learn at the same pace and should be ready for the same material at the same time as all of their peers. To use modern parlance, this is bologna. Every student has the potential to learn information, but how and when that happens varies greatly from one student to the next. Two questions we ask ourselves when trying to understand a student's potential:

1. What is the true end goal?

2. How do we get the student there?

Many times, the stated end goal for a student isn't actually what it should be. For example, is the true end goal for a child that s/he be able to read a grade level passage in a certain amount of time out loud?  Probably not. The true end goal is that the child be able to get meaning directly from print. 

Now that we have the true end goal stated, the question of how we get the student there is much easier to answer and makes the activities we choose for the student more appropriate and engaging for them.

Literacy Dr helps students achieve THEIR literacy potential. That may mean that we need to ditch the practices that haven't been working for the student and find those that will. It may mean that some students will take a little longer to learn some concepts while they learn others quite quickly, ahead of their peers. It may mean that we have to change the scaffolding the school is using to support the student and work with other educators to understand the student's unique needs. It may mean that we have to reach out to other professionals to help us understand any quality of the student that we need to understand in order to best help them. 

Knowing a student's potential means really knowing the student. One size fits all curriculums, IEP goals, or activities don't always work. Our goal is to meet our students where they are and partner with them on the journey to see how far they can go, to help each student reach their literacy potential.