This week I chose a passage that succinctly describes the benefits of a descriptive review:

“The Prospect Center processes are also useful and are more widely associated with the powerful and respectful way they allow teachers to assess children, not as students with “deficits” of understanding but as full human beings making sense of the world. Perhaps the greatest contribution the protocol offers in this regard is the sensitive and specific questions they offer presenters when preparing their framing question and presentation.” (Knoester 149)

I chose this as my most valuable passage because unlike some other passages, it does not merely describe proper protocol for a descriptive review, nor does it advocate for them as a useful administrative tool – something to be used to assure productive staff meetings. I feel it gets to the true core of why this author so heartily endorses descriptive reviews: because they require teachers to appreciate the full humanity of their students, and figure out ways to help that human being given their new perspective on him or her. I particularly like the line about assessing children “not as student with ‘deficits’ of understanding but as full human beings trying to make sense of the world.” It sounds like the obvious way we all know we should see our students, but too often we do in fact approach our students from a deficit-based angle. I also like the alternative that it offers to the deficit-based model – that our students are not principally students but rather “human beings trying to make sense of the world” – as we all are. Even if I don’t remember some of the more procedural advice this article provided, I will always remember and try to apply that one phrase to my students, and give descriptive reviews of my students to myself.