Teaching and Learning with POVERTY in Mind

What do we mean by this term? What do we think of when we hear this term?

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Poverty:

A chronic and debilitating condition that results from multiple adverse synergistic risk factors and affects the mind, body and soul.

Six types of poverty:

• Situational poverty

• Generational poverty

• Absolute poverty

• Relative poverty

• Urban poverty

• Rural poverty

RISK FACTORS:• Poverty involves a complex array of risk factors that adversely

affect the population in a variety of ways.

• The four primary risk factors afflicting families, and therefore students, living in poverty are:

• 1. Emotional and social challenges.• 2. Acute and chronic stressors.• 3. Cognitive lags.• 4. Health and safety issues.

How Poverty Affects Behaviour and Academic Performance• Emotional and Social Challenges: Students come to school

with a narrower range of appropriate emotional responses than we expect.

• The Emotional Keyboard:

As a result of this children from a poverty background are more likely to display:

• “Acting-out” behaviours• Impatience and impulsivity• Gaps in politeness and social graces• A more limited range of behavioural responses• Inappropriate emotional responses• Less empathy for others’ misfortunes

• As teachers, these can puzzle, frustrate or irritate us. (Share)• Every proper response that we don’t see at our school is one that

we need to be teaching.

Implication for us:

• It is impossible to overemphasize that: every emotional response other than the six hardwired emotions of joy, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness and fear, MUST BE TAUGHT. • Cooperation, patience, embarrassment, empathy,

gratitude and forgiveness are crucial to a smoothly running complex social environment, like a classroom.

RELATIONSHIPS:• What ALL students do bring to school are three strong

“relational” forces that drive their school behaviours:• 1. The drive for reliable relationships. 2. The strengthening of peer socialization. 3. The quest for importance and social status. Each of these shapes behaviours in significant ways. • This social side of students’ lives runs their brains, their

feelings and their behaviours – and these three run COGNITION!

• There is a complex interplay between cognition and emotions.

Possible Action Steps:• 1. Embody respect - give respect to students first, share decision making ,

avoid sarcasm, model process of adult thinking

2. Embed social skills – teach basic but crucial meet-and-greet skills, embed turn-taking skills, remind students to thank classmates

• 3. Be inclusive - refer to school as ‘our’ school, ‘our’ class, celebrate effort as well as achievement, pack acknowledgements and celebrations into every class

What is already in place at SFC that supports these steps? • How can you incorporate them personally in your

teaching/learning process?

COGNITIVE LAGS:• To function at school, the brain uses an overarching ‘operating

system’ that comprises a collection of neurocognitive systems enabling students to pay attention, work hard, process and sequence content and think critically.

Attentional skills

Ability to defer gratification, make a sustained effort.

Sequencing skills, processing skills

Short-term and working memory

Academic Operating System:• Does not include values such as love, sacrifice, duty, fairness,

humour and kindness.• BUT, as far as school success goes, these are MUST-HAVES:• * The ability and motivation to defer gratification and make a

sustained effort to meet long-term goals.• * Auditory, visual and tactile processing skills.• * Attentional skills that enable the student to engage, focus

and disengage as needed.• * Short-term and working memory capacity.• * Sequencing skills (knowing the order of a process).• * A champion’s mind-set and confidence.

Effects on school behaviour and performance:• Many children raised in poverty enter school a step behind

their well-off peers. • Cognitive stimulation parents/caregivers provide in early

childhood years is crucial.

• Most low-SES (Socio-economic status) kids’ brains have adapted to survive their circumstances, not to get A’s in school.

• It’s up to us to upgrade their operating systems.

Action Steps:• Most crucial concept to keep in mind when working with any

population of underachieving school-age kids is: brains can and do change.

• As teachers we must be prepared to help ‘rebuild their operating system.’

• Such intervention enriches students. Mindset change from remediation to enrichment.

• Enrichment: the result of positive changes in an organism that arise from a sustained, positive contrast to the organism’s prevailing impoverished environment.

• Hope Building: All students can benefit from being in a hope-filled environment. Hope changes brain chemistry, which influences decisions we make and actions we take. Hopefulness must be pervasive and every single student should be able to feel it, see it and hear it daily.

Conclusion:• We can help kids rise above their predicted path of struggle if

we see them as possibilities not problems. Students’ brains don’t change from more of the same.

• We must believe that change is possible and understand that the brain is malleable and will adapt to environmental input.

• We must be willing to change that input by providing positive, enriching experiences that build up their academic operating systems and build relationships with students that not only supports them but is secure enough to challenge them.

We need to believe that ‘Kids can change and we can make it happen!’