An Interrogation of the “If Only” Mentality: One Teacher’s Deficit Perspective put on Trial

Abstract

In this article, I interrogate a previous and harmful “If Only” mindset I held as an early childhood literacy teacher. I describe the “If Only” mentality as the idea that if only the parents and families of the students I taught changed, schools and teachers could serve their children better. This deficit way of thinking led to a number of mistakes I made as a still-new, white, middle-class, monolingual Reading Recovery teacher who was unprepared to value the home and community literacies of a population of students and families from linguistic, cultural, and economic backgrounds other than my own.