Poverty is a difficult obstacle for learning students.
What you can do
• Operate like NASA – failure is not an option. If you cannot connect people or resolve a poverty issue, who in your network or community might be able to? Use an “If not me, then who?” approach.
• Build stronger partnerships. Poverty is complex and requires a comprehensive community-wide approach. Connect with other businesses, organizations, and individuals in the neighborhood who can help. Rely on your “full resource backpack,” an inventory of who in your community may be able to assist people in moving out of poverty.
• Learn proven strategies. In spite of the lack of education in our country about poverty, there are theories that provide strategies for breaking the iron cage of poverty. The following page outlines five theories and provide suggestions for how educators and others can break the barriers of poverty.
• Mentor. Take the time to build meaningful relationship with students
You can help your students who live in poverty by implementing some of these suggestions:
• When you suspect that their peers are taunting disadvantaged students, act quickly to stop the harassment.
• Students who live in poverty have not been exposed to broadening experiences such as family vacations, trips to museums, or even eating in restaurants. Spend time adding to their worldly experience if you want poor students to connect their book learning with real-life situations.
• Listen to your disadvantaged students. They need a strong relationship with a trustworthy adult in order to succeed.
• Work to boost the self-esteem of students who live in poverty by praising their school success instead of what they own.
• Provide access to computers, magazines, newspapers, and books so low-income students can see and work with printed materials. School may be the only place where they are exposed to print media.
• Keep your expectations for poor students high. Poverty does not mean ignorance.
• Don’t make comments about your students’ clothes or belongings unless they are in violation of the dress code.
• Students who live in poverty may not always know the correct behaviors for school situations. At home, they may function under a different set of social rules. Take time to explain the rationale for rules and procedures in your classroom.
• Be careful about the school supplies you expect students to purchase. Keep your requirements as simple as you can for all students.
• Arrange a bank of shared supplies for your students to borrow when they are temporarily out of materials for class.
• Do not require costly activities. For example, if you require students to pay for a field trip, some of them will not be able to go.
• If you notice that a student does not have lunch money, check to make sure that a free lunch is an option for that child.
• Be very sensitive to the potential for embarrassment in even small requests for or comments about money that you make. For example, if you jokingly remark, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” you could embarrass one of your low-income students.
• Make it clear that you value all of your students for their character and not for their possessions
Adapted from First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide.
Teaching Through Trauma: How poverty affects kids’ brains (Listen to the audio clip)