Students on the Margins: Education, Stories, Dignity

Proposes educators should focus on children's personal stories as a means to enhance dignity and, therefore, learning.

The focus of teaching is not on what we teach or how we test but, more fundamentally, on the quality of relationships, according to Jaylynne Hutchinson in Students on the Margins. Amid much talk of educational reform that focuses on pedagogy, curriculum, and policy, Hutchinson attests that when we don't pay attention to students' personal stories, students can become marginalized from the process of learning, not only via race, class, and gender, but also psycho-socially. Using story as a metaphor for paying attention to the meaning children create in their lives, she suggests how story can become an active part of the classroom and curriculum, asking teachers to pay attention to relationships and to create the space to accommodate stories in the classroom.