Start with Strengths

As I've been writing, podcasting, and speaking over the last two years or so, I've made a number of connections across the country. Sometimes they are people I admire, or places that might be good collaborators, or just kindred souls. It's always nice to find like-minded folks, and it doesn't bother me to talk with people who want to challenge my ideas either. But the most meaningful interactions I get the privilege of having are conversations away from the podium. The nature of this work means I share things that are personal, which always feels weird, but inevitably someone will come up to me afterward, and they will share a similar experience. It's almost as if watching me embracing some of my own struggles (which pale compared to many) gives permission to embrace their own struggles and start to see them differently. So many of us have been deeply programmed to believe our struggles are due to our deficits, when in reality they are structural and overcoming them has created a set of strengths others may not even know about. Starting with strengths is a fundamental premise of poverty informed practice, but it's not as easy as it sounds. Let me try to explain.

Because I have chosen to share about my little movement on social media, people reach out to me on those platforms as well. I'd like to share one of the messages I received (with identifying information redacted of course), so you can see a problem you might not have anticipated. The note I received said this: "Chad, Have you heard about or worked on programs that simply prove existing skillsets? As a poverty survivor (former homeless) I find myself looking for certifications and classes that cover skills I have because I can't admit to their origin in a professional setting... Poverty survivors have to keep their street skills secret until an acceptable experience proves those skills exist- like certification. I know I'm not the only one but I never see or hear anything about finding a way to recognize the beneficial skills born out of horrible experiences." I did not have a very satisfying answer for the person who sent me the message, but it has stuck with me since the day I received it. Dr. Donna Beegle talks often about living in a country where we the poor for being poor, and here was a real life example in my inbox. This individual felt s/he had to hide the source of his/her strengths, and find "training" to cover for how s/he had really acquired these tools. That can't be ok.

Think about the opportunities this provides as poverty-informed practitioners. I see two in particular. The first opportunity is for those of us in perceived positions of power to share some of our struggles, especially if and when we received some key help. I think we need to normalize and de-stigmatize help every chance we get. So, for example, I have begun to be much more honest about the situational poverty of my 20's, which I had always blamed myself for. For many years, I would hide from my crooked path through college, and my loan defaults, and other errors which always felt like personal failures. Now, maybe some of this stuff was on me personally, but my shame around it, and the consequences of hiding it were very responsible for not getting the help I needed to get moving. And every time I disclose pieces of it, someone identifies, and I wish I hadn't waited almost 20 years to be brave about sharing it. If I'm honest, my current relative stability makes it easier to talk about it, which also indicates the depth of the shame around these issues.

The second opportunity is the chance to help the people we serve re-frame their struggles as learning and strengths. This is as simple and as complicated as changing intake procedures. In education, we so often start with an analysis of your weaknesses, often with academic testing. Testing is perhaps not a positive historical experience for our students, and then even more unfortunately, we tend to discuss it in a deficit model. This is the issue in well intended developmental education across the country. I know this because I led well intended work like that for many years. But now I see very clearly we were inadvertently telling students we would "fix" them before they started something meaningful. Instead, I would suggest intake start with a simple request "tell me what you have done." This seemingly small change can change everything in my opinion, particularly if we know how to respond. What if when we made this inquiry we listened, took notes, and just seemed interested? What if, even better, we took the opportunity to search for transferable skills in their prior accomplishments? What if, from the minute of arrival, we started talking about possibilities, and showed respect and awe for the skills it takes to survive in the crisis of poverty? Could the discussion change, and could the follow up tests etc. be framed differently then? A poverty informed program must think carefully about who the first point of contact is, and ideally that person(s) would be adept and nimble at translating life skills to college goals. Imagine a student coming in with the accumulated shame and doubt the crisis of poverty creates, and the first conversation they have celebrates the amazing tools they have developed to get to our door.

So often, I feel inadequate in this conversation because figuring out what to actually do is a struggle for me. But I'm committed to the idea, and I'm committed to doing the work through my own strengths. I heard the indefatigable Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab say at #RealCollege2019 that step one in building the movement is to change the discourse. I think that is where my efforts are focused. One of the strengths I acquired along my journey is the ability to listen, communicate, and change people's minds. I'm so impressed and intimidated by folks who make structural change, and sometimes my own efforts feel too small and too easy. But in the same way I'm asking us to approach our students from a strengths-based perspective, I'm trying to give myself the same grace. While I am committed to a bias for action and for not stopping at navel gazing, I am trying to embrace my own strengths to change the discourse in my sphere of influence. For those of you who might struggle with the same insecurities I do (warning self-disclosure:)), I want to tell you a story. Last June, I was in an important meeting, with important people, and making the case for being both poverty and trauma informed. At the end of the meeting, the most important person in the room turned to me and said "I need to learn more because I don't really understand this 'poverty-informed' thing you are talking about." My heart sank and all my insecurities came back to the surface. I left that meeting, but rather than retreat, I leaned into my strength to change the discourse. And 18 months later, the college I left has the words "poverty-informed" in their strategic plan, my new college has a goal of "poverty-informed" infrastructure, and the hashtag #povertyinformed appears in my social media feeds daily. It took the relative safety of my middle-aged, middle-class privilege to make that happen. Let's not make others wait. What if we celebrated the strengths of the people we serve from the moment they arrive? What could we unleash with the simple change to starting with strengths?

A Sense of Belonging

One of the challenging things about leadership is it is not a "do it by yourself" thing. Most of us who end up in positions with some influence made our way there in part because at some point in our career we were good at accomplishing tasks and projects. However, when we are asked to lead others, accomplishing tasks on our own isn't the appropriate skill set in many ways. So you have to develop a new skill set, one that allows you to help other people understand what you are trying to do, and then embrace and execute it. It's a very difficult change, and I think it helps explain why so many of us struggle when we get into a leadership role. The tools in our tool box which worked so well no longer serve us. It can be very disconcerting, and on our worst days make us want to walk away from what we are doing and retreat to what we know. If this sounds personal, well sure it is. Every career transition I've made has involved some level of dealing with this incongruity, and I think it's complicated for people like me who felt like outsiders early on and always will. Now I'm not sharing this to have you feel sorry for me and my career (I'm just fine), but to hopefully draw the parallel to the students and individuals we serve. Students in the crisis of poverty have an extensive set of tools they use to cross our threshold, but those tools don't always work in our colleges. So what do we do?

As I've tried to boil down this idea of poverty informed practice to something other folks can embrace and execute, three elements keep repeating: meeting basic needs, creating a sense of belonging, and accelerating progress toward stability. I would never rank them because I think they all are interdependent, but today I'd like to talk about the importance of a sense of belonging. I would argue one of the consequences of pursuing college from the crisis of poverty is a feeling of not quite fitting in anywhere. On a personal level, this makes sense to me. It's been a long time since my family or I struggled financially (and our struggles were far less than many), but if I'm honest, the residue of feelings from those days persist until now. Every time I share these feelings with students or colleagues who are or have been in the crisis of poverty, they can identify. This happens almost without exception. Think about that. It means students come to us with a belief the people around them don't really want them there. Our students are pretty sure they are impostors, and all too often we inadvertently confirm those feelings. So how do we help them know they do belong?

September 24th was our first Student Success day at Minnesota State College Southeast. I was a latecomer to the project as it had been initiated by my predecessor, and our Student Services team took the lead in planning it. My role was limited to support, encouragement, and participation. None of us were sure how it would go, but I'm pleased to say it was a hit at both campuses. Essentially we shut down classes for a day and faculty, staff, and external partners created workshop opportunities for students. Our student clubs and leadership groups also provided learning opportunities (on things like food insecurity!), and the afternoon was reserved for connecting with advising. The sessions offered were wildly eclectic, which reflected the grassroots nature of this day. There was financial aid and scholarship presentations, but we also had things like horses on campus to demonstrate equine massage. There were sessions on managing stress as a student and there were sessions on tuning pan drums (Did I mention we have really unique and cool music programs at MSC Southeast:)). There were lots of other sessions and activities and as a relative newcomer, I was able to see a thread that pulled it all together. My friend and mentor Dr. Donna Beegle talks frequently about identification theory as a tool for connecting with people in the crisis of poverty. My non-academic version is it's hard for people to hear you if they can't see something of themselves in you. Our eclectic sessions and informal atmosphere provided exactly that for our students, Students saw college staff in new ways. Students experienced sessions that connected with personal interests. And students saw college staff as people who wanted them there with us. The college was making every effort to be "us" rather than be "other." It was a pretty spectacular day, and I can't wait for the February version.


If you try to remember a mentor who made a difference in your life, they probably did lots of things. I've been lucky enough to have several good mentors, but they all had one characteristic in common. For me, they created a sense of safety, which was really another way of saying they made me feel like I belonged where I was. If you accept the poverty informed premise that we must love the students we have (not the ones we wish we had), how would you create the same experience for them? Would you be vulnerable enough to let them know a little bit about you in case they see themselves in your story? Would you fearlessly inventory your policies, practices, behaviors, facilities, and anything else you could identify to make sure there aren't messages of exclusion? This is the work it takes to begin to change our current outcomes and benefit our students, their families, and our communities.

I want to end by acknowledging how difficult this work can be. In recent years, I have given up a lot of the professional distance I used to maintain, and I'm encouraging you to do the same. I should be perfectly clear, we must all still be professional and ethical, but I think we have to be willing to let down our walls a little and let the student stories into our world. Being connected to the "why of the what" allows us to persevere when student journeys are non-linear, and on the days where our emotional investment leaves us in a place of vulnerability. Just this week, I had to deal with the fact a couple of students I had been pretty close to (in my prior life and in my new one) did things which were just not ok. Not only did that hurt me at a personal level, I'm always fearful it will lead to others thinking the work of including these students isn't worth it. That is the emotional risk of choosing to love the students you have and believing in them unconditionally. Sometimes it doesn't work out. I used to worry a lot more about these things, but in recent years, I've channeled my friend Cara Crowley and my answer is "So What." We don't stop doing the right thing because someone else didn't. We don't assign one person's behavior to an entire group (or we certainly shouldn't). This work can be lonely and uncomfortable on those days, and make no mistake there are people out there waiting for those moments of struggle to push you back to where you were. Can you imagine how the students feel in the same scenario? That's why creating a sense of safety and genuine belonging matters every day. That's why we do things alongside our students, and not just on their behalf.