Official and Unofficial Portraits

Abstract

The official portrait of the students at Mesa Vista Elementary School (MVE) is the one composed of test scores, socioeconomic levels, and violence. Many of the teachers and students at the school, district administrators, and members of the community have appropriated this official portrait. In this article, I present some of the details of the official portrait and then introduce the idea of counterportraits as they were composed by some of the sixth-grade students, their teacher, and me. I conclude this article by considering ways in which counterportraits may influence how we consider students at risk.