ABSTRACT
Parenting is a difficult job, and raising children in an age of educational labels and reforms does not make parenting any easier. Parents try to navigate the complex political policies that guide how schools assess their children, and the myriad of labels, such as “learning disabled,” “in need of academic intervention services,” and “grade-level reader” that describe and position their children as readers, writers, and learners. Parents often interpret their children’s educational performances within the context of their own experiences as students, which may complicate their understanding of their child’s life in school. Working with families in a study titled Revaluing Readers and Families (Kabuto, 2015), I became aware of how parents adapt to and navigate through educational practices and labels. Revaluing readers and families builds on the idea of revaluing, a term coined by Ken Goodman (1996b), who described how taking a value-oriented perspective allows educators to value the strengths, self-monitoring, risk taking, and self-confidence of readers. Revaluing replaces deficit-oriented labels, such as “learning disabled” and “below grade-level readers,” with a perspective that addresses and acknowledges readers’ strengths and the social and cultural complexity within which families live their everyday lives.
