learning for individual minds

Barack Obama’s press conference today, announcing Arne Duncan as his nominee for Education Secretary, included a wonderful reminder – to look at all kids, all students, as *our* kids, not as “these kids”. It is all too easy, perhaps especially with teens, to look at them as some homogenous, unsatisfactory group, as in “these kids don’t try hard enough” or “these kids just don’t have what it takes” or some other dangerously untrue generalization. And not only is this not true in the general, it is also not true in the specific. One kid, one student, may be going through a hard time, or never have been given the care or tools or attention or resources they need to succeed, but every kid, every student can do well, in their own way. What we expect of them matters and that we connect with them matters. They are all *our* kids and all will benefit if we see them as such.