Category: Poverty

Poverty in Education: School-Wide Changes to Support Students in Poverty

5/15/2015

Welcome back to the last post in my series on poverty in education! If you haven’t done so already, please check out the first three posts in the series:

Poverty In Education: Prevalence
Poverty In Education: The Brain
Poverty in Education: 6 Strategies to Help Students from Poverty Succeed

In the previous post, I shared with you things that you can do as a teacher RIGHT NOW in your classroom to help your students from poverty succeed. Teachers are miracle workers, who create life-changing moments on a daily basis without enough time, materials, or energy. Teachers just seem to find a way when the odds are stacked against them. But sometimes, we play the blame game. This student can’t read at grade-level, this student can’t pay attention, that student has no patience - “I can’t change that!”. I challenge you, in that moment, to repeat this mantra: “If they don’t have it, it is my JOB to teach it.” (You might even say it is your moral imperative to teach it.) This includes socio-emotional skills. We must model patience, cooperation, positivity, and respect if we want our students to demonstrate those skills.

But we also need the support of everyone around us - it is difficult to create a culture of hope in just one classroom. Leadership and administration need to encourage system wide changes within a school to make the biggest impact. According to Eric Jensen in Teaching with Poverty in Mind [1], there are five factors to consider as you form school-wide policies, action plans, and beliefs.

Support of the Whole Child
Hard Data
Accountability
Relationship Building
Enrichment Mind-Set

Support of the Whole Child
As we learned in my previous post on the effects poverty can have on the brain, low-SES students are constantly dealing with stress. They don’t always have the energy or patience to focus on school when their lives outside of it are difficult. Ease that burden by providing students with as much support as possible, even outside of academics.

Survey student needs and find a way to provide these support services
Include parents and try to provide on-site programs in areas of need
Develop community partnerships - tutoring, health services, etc.

Hard Data
Most teachers have accepted the importance of using data in the classroom. But data should also be used to measure the effectiveness of your outreach programs and school climate initiatives.

Determine your area of need and decide how to collect data
Once data is collected, analyze for areas of strength and weakness
Implement a plan to address weaknesses
Reevaluate and collect new data to assess plan

Accountability
Students, teachers, the community, everyone with a stake in the education game in your community needs to be accountable for their role in students’ success.

Increase teachers’ control and authority
Value teachers
Redesign staffing roles to include more collaboration

Relationship Building
Students need secure attachments and connections with caring, positive adults.

Model good relationships by having strong feelings of respect amongst staff.
Build relationships between students.
Build student-staff relationships by being consistent, respectful, and positive. Do not demean students when you discipline them.

Enrichment Mind-Set
Students from Low-SES backgrounds are often lacking in enrichment activities outside of school. Try to offer them as many opportunities to build knowledge about the world around them through non-academic experiences.

Have nature as a presence within the school grounds - a garden, plants in the classrooms, etc.
Teachers should make sure students are engaged as much as possible with the content
Provide extended school days or years

Remember, despite the negative effects poverty can have on the brain, there are concrete strategies you can implement in your school or classroom to turn the tide in the right direction. “Because the brain is designed to adapt from experience, it can also change for the better. In other words, poor children can experience emotional, social, and academic success [1].

No longer should our schools be mere perpetrators of social standing. Education should be the greatest opportunity for all students.

1. Jensen, Eric. Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do about It. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2009. Print.

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Poverty in Education: The Brain

3/24/2015

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Welcome back to my series on poverty in education. Hopefully you saw the first post, Poverty in Education: Prevalence, which discussed the prevalence of poverty in America - specifically the 16 million kids living below the federal poverty line [1]. Schools are increasingly charged with the important but arduous task of educating these students and closing the achievement gap between, among others, students from low socioeconomic (low SES) backgrounds and students from high-income families. But that is easier said than done when a different gap is at play - the word gap. As you remember in my last post, “a child from a high-income family will experience 30 million more words within the first four years of life than a child from a low-income family” [2]. Additionally, a new book making waves in education circles, called Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert Putnam is arguing there is another gap, according to this article. (The book is next on my to-read list!) The gap that Putnam refers to is the connection gap.

“‘Poor kids are incredibly isolated from everything … What they most lack is some adult who is steadily caring for them. It’s not just love, but providing them with the kind of guidance that people coming from [well-off] homes are increasingly surrounded by. I don’t just mean guidance about careers, but guidance about life’” [3]

Low SES students are coming in to school incredibly behind their peers, with less access to support, and unfortunately, our current school system struggles to make any changes in status. According to a recent report from University of New Hampshire Carsey School of Public Policy, “it is now harder for children born into poverty to move into higher socioeconomic classes than in the past” [4]. The report has graphs for every state that show the opportunity gaps between high- and low- income families going back to 1960. (I highly recommend looking at your state to see where you fall. Interesting information!) Unfortunately these graphs show that social mobility and “the American Dream” are becoming fantasies instead of realities; our current system is just replicating poverty.

So how do we go from replicating poverty to empowering our students from poor backgrounds to further their education and status?

Step 1: Understand how poverty affects the brain.
Step 2: Make classroom-level changes, both in thought-processes and actions
(Check back for later posts on schoolwide strategies to implement at your school.)

Poverty and the Brain
I just finished reading the book Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen that explains the science behind poverty and the effects it has on the brain. I highly recommend it as a way to help understand, empathize with, and teach your low SES students. There is also a great

study guide from ASCD that asks thoughtful guiding questions to ponder as you read.

The most important understanding to take from the book is that “chronic exposure to poverty causes the brain to physically change in a detrimental manner” [5].

Children growing up in poverty are more likely to be exposed to risk factors that will adversely affect their physical, socioemotional, and cognitive well-being than high-income families. Jensen’s primary risk factors include the following:

Emotional and social challenges
Acute and chronic stressors
Cognitive lags
Health and safety issues [5]

Our poor students are not choosing to misbehave or perform poorly in academics -- they just have bigger obstacles to overcome every. day. that our high-income students don’t have to face.

Emotional and Social Challenges
This section of Jensen’s book was eye-opening for me. In it he explains that there are only 6 emotional responses that are hardwired into our brain.

Emotions Hardwired

Sadness
Joy
Disgust
Anger
Surprise
Fear [5]

This means that everything else (empathy, shame, cooperation, patience) needs to be taught and modeled. Students from low-income backgrounds often miss out on learning these emotional responses at home, due to overworked and overstressed caregivers, among many other reasons. (The connection gap!) Therefore, these emotions need to be taught in the school setting. I know there have often been times when I have been exasperated with a student who didn’t show some of these emotional responses - like cooperation or patience. Instead of showing frustration, I should have asked myself - “Have I taught and modeled this emotion? Is this student even capable of this emotion at their developmental stage?” Just as I would not expect a kindergartener to decode 3 syllable words, I can’t expect appropriate emotional responses from someone who hasn’t formed them yet.

Acute and Chronic Stressors
Not surprisingly, low SES students are more likely to experience chronic and acute stressors than their more affluent peers. Look at the following list of side-effects from stress, and it won’t be hard to understand why these students struggle to be successful in an academic setting.

Stress…

is linked to over 50% of absences
impairs attention/concentration
reduces cognition, creativity, and memory
diminishes social skills and social judgement
reduces motivation, determination, and effort
increases the likelihood of depression
reduces neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells) [5]

The two side effects of stress that stood out the most to me (as I’ve lost the most sleep and pulled out the most hair from these issues in my classroom…). were impulsivity and learned helplessness. Jensen explains that impulsivity is actually an exaggerated response to stress (think survival of the fittest). So every instance of a stressor will increase a students impulsivity and ability to defer gratification. In addition, “exposure to chronic or acute stress is debilitating”[5], presenting itself as learned helplessness, when students give up or become passive about school. This is actually an adaptive response to life conditions [5]. Again, our students aren’t choosing to act impulsively or to give up - these reactions are just survival mechanisms.

Cognitive Lags
The most interesting finding in this section was the connection between socioeconomic status and language. For example, socioeconomic status had an extremely high effect size (1.0) on the difference between low-income and high-income 5 year olds performance in language [5]. This makes sense because we know there is a huge discrepancy between the quantity, quality, and type of communication between low-income and high-income households.

Health and Safety Issues
This section of Jensen’s book reminds us of Maslow’s hierarchy. Unless our students’ basic needs are met, we will struggle to educate them. Low SES kids are more likely to suffer from issues like malnutrition, environmental hazards, and insufficient health care. Consequently, their immune systems adapt to these conditions and “diminish their ability to concentrate, learn, and behave appropriately” [5].

Change for the Better
It is so imperative that we understand the physical changes that occur in the brain when our students are growing up in low-income households. While I attempted to highlight the major “a-ha” moments that I had, I really can’t get at everything that Eric Jensen explained in the book. Once we have an understanding of where are students are starting, we can start to make a plan about how to reach them and support them. I want to leave you with the idea that Jensen stresses throughout the book: We can change things for the better.

“Because the brain is designed to adapt from experience, it can also change for the better. In other words, poor children can experience emotional, social, and academic success.” [5]

“Child Poverty.” National Center for Children in Poverty. n.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.

Hart, B. & Risley, T.R. “The Early Catastrophe:The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3” (2003, spring). American Educator, pp.4-9.

Sparks, Sarah D. "Education Week." Education Week. N.p., 9 Mar. 2015. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.

Klein, Rebecca. "These 9 Graphs Show The Sad State Of Child Poverty In America." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 Mar. 2015. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.

Jensen, Eric. Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do about It. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2009. Print.

Tune In
Check back next week for posts on schoolwide and classroom level strategies to implement to address the needs of your low-SES students.

What was your “aha moment” when reading about science behind poverty?

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Poverty in Education: Prevalence

3/10/2015

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Welcome to the first part in my series on poverty in education.

Poverty in America
What two “rich” countries have the highest rates of child poverty? Greece? Ireland? Would you ever guess that the United States has the 2nd highest rate of child poverty amongst rich nations?[1] Right now, there are 16 million kids living below the federal poverty line, or 22% of all US children. [2]

I just read an interesting interactive article on CNN that inspired this post and connects to my series of posts on poverty within education. This article was about children living in poverty in Silicon Valley - ironic since Silicon Valley is home to some of the country’s wealthiest companies. John D. Sutter investigates the rates of child poverty in the country, highlighted by videos of homeless “towns” and children living on less than $2 a day. This is a reality check that you need to see. Child poverty absolutely is an issue in America.

The Gap
Everyone is talking about “the gap” in America - not the preppy clothing store - but the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

“While average income before taxes for the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. families rose 10 percent from 2010 to 2013, inflation-adjusted incomes for the poorest 40 percent of families actually declined, according to the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances.” [3]

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, meaning the number of children living in poverty could increase, especially if we don’t take action. The unfortunate thing is that poverty is often a cycle. The cycle of poverty, and how education can further it or break it, is near and dear to my heart.

Unfortunately, the gap between the rich and the poor only furthers an even more important gap, one that all educators, especially ones in literacy and early-childhood placements, need to understand. The word gap.

Part of the idea behind this comes from this study. The study found that “a child from a high-income family will experience 30 million more words within the first four years of life than a child from a low-income family.” [4]

The difference in oral language abilities is only compounded as kids get older. Oral language ability is one predictor of reading ability. If students reading skills are delayed, another cycle starts: the Matthew effect.

The Matthew effect basically says that students who are good readers become better readers (because they read and comprehend more), and students who are poor readers continue to struggle and widen the gap (because they choose not to read, and then fall behind when they need to “read to learn”). While not all students living in poverty will go down this road, there is a high percentage that they will struggle in this area, which often leads to higher drop-out rates and lower wages. Disheartening, I know.

But how do we break this cycle?

Breaking the Cycle
Education is one of the best ways to break the cycle of poverty.

John D. Sutter, in his article on CNN, argues that one way to break the cycle of poverty is to invest in early education and child care for all. I strongly believe in improving our early education access in this country. Check out this page to see how you can help the movement.

But what about the kids who have already entered the cycle? How do we educate them?

Check out my additional blog posts in the poverty series:
2. Poverty in Education: The Brain
3. Poverty in Education: 6 Strategies to Help Students from Poverty Succeed

Sources
1. Measuring Child Poverty: New League Tables of Child Poverty in the World’s Rich Countries. Firenze: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2012. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
2. “Child Poverty.” National Center for Children in Poverty. n.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
3. "US Income Gap Widened During Economic Recovery: Federal Reserve." International Business Times. n.p., 4 Sept. 2014. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
4. Hart, B. & Risley, T.R. “The Early Catastrophe:The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3” (2003, spring). American Educator, pp.4-9.

Please join me in the conversation on poverty below. How does poverty affect your students and/or your school?

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I am a passionate educator who wants to travel the world in the pages of a book
and in the shoes on my feet, and somewhere along the way, inspire students to want to do the same.

Poverty in Education: School-Wide Changes to Support Students in Poverty

Poverty in Education: The Brain

Poverty in Education: Prevalence

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