Teaching with Poverty (The Impact and Strategies) (July 2013)
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Teaching with Poverty (The Impact and Strategies) (July 2013)
- 1. Teaching with Poverty: The Impact and Strategies By: Matt Bergman
- 2. About Me @mattbergman14 • bergman-udl.blogspot.com/ • learn-lead-grow.weebly.com/
- 3. Essential Questions for Today: ● What is poverty? ● How does poverty impact our classrooms? ● What strategies can we use to overcome the challenges of poverty in our classrooms?
- 4. % of Americans Living in Poverty Source: US Census Bureau
- 5. We see the impacts of poverty in our classroom Lack of motivation Cognitive lags Chronic tardiness Inappropriate behavior Lack of parental involvement High transience rates
- 6. But do we understand what poverty really is? Poverty is “the extent to which an individual does without resources.” - Ruby Payne SOURCE: Payne, R. (1996). A framework for understanding poverty . Highlands, TX: aha! Process, Inc.
- 8. In the United States, the official poverty thresholds are set by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Persons with income less than that deemed sufficient to purchase basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, and other essentials—are designated as poor. In 2011, what was the poverty threshold of a family of 4? $23,018 SOURCE: Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. United States: ASCD.
- 9. Source: US Census Bureau
- 10. How Poverty Occurs… Situational Generational Absolute Relative Urban Rural SOURCE: Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. United States: ASCD.
- 11. Situational
- 12. Generational
- 13. Absolute
- 14. Relative
- 15. Urban Poverty
- 16. Rural Source: William P. O'Hare, The Forgotten Fifth: Child Poverty in Rural America (2009).
- 17. Source: William P. O'Hare, The Forgotten Fifth: Child Poverty in Rural America (2009).
- 18. Barrier = Poverty Many of our students come from poverty, which we cannot control We can control how we can help our students in our classrooms
- 19. Strategies We Can Use to Overcome the Challenges of Poverty in our Classrooms
- 20. Tip 1: Build Relationships "No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship." James Comer (1995)
- 21. Tip 2: Create a Stable Environment
- 22. Tip 3: Encourage a Growth Mindset Lowering expectations does not work!
- 24. Tip 4: Reading is the Key to Vocabulary Development
- 25. 36%of low income parents read daily to their kindergarten aged child. SOURCE: Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. United States: ASCD.
- 26. The Matthew Effect Keith Stanovich
- 27. What can we do? Provide access to a variety of reading materials Opportunities to read in school Supports in place Reading through a social lens
- 28. A. Variety of Materials in our Classroom
- 29. B. Opportunities to Read in School
- 30. C. Supports in Place
- 31. D. Reading through a Social Lens
- 32. 4 A’s Model: What assumptions does the author make? What do I agree with from the text? What do I argue with from the text? What do I want to aspire to from the text?
- 33. A mother’s role is critical in the development of vocabulary. According to research, by the time MOST children start school, they will have been exposed to 5 million words and should know about 13,000 of them SOURCE: Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. United States: ASCD.
- 34. Tip 5: Developing Vocabulary Strategies “The achievement gap is largely a vocabulary gap.”
- 35. How do you choose words to teach? Tier 3 – Domain Specific Tier 2 – General Academic Tier 1 – Everyday words that we use Beck, I.L., McKoeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: The Guilford Press.
- 36. What can we do? Multiple opportunities Meaningful interactions
- 38. Tip 6: Oral Language is Important! Teachers use Academic Vocabulary and “smart words” in the classroom. Embed higher-level synonyms and explanations within language. Never use slang.
- 39. Tip 7: Increase Engagement
- 40. One last thought… “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at.” Theodore Roosevelt
- 41. Thank You! ● For questions: ● mattbergman14@gmail.com ● For more Web 2.0 ideas! ● @mattbergman14 (Twitter) ● learn-lead-grow.weebly.com/ (Website) ● http://bergman-udl.blogspot.com/ (Blog)
- 42. References Beck, I.L., McKoeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: The Guilford Press. Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. United States: ASCD. Payne, R. (April 2008). Poverty and learning: 9 powerful practices. Educational Leadership, 65(7), 48-52.
Editor's Notes
- My name is Matt Bergman and I am a teacher, author, and speaker from the Milton Hershey School (Hershey, PA) and 100% of our population comes from poverty or some type of social need.
- With over 46.3 million Americans living in poverty, it is an issue that impacts every single school and classroom in the country.
- We see the impacts of poverty each day in our classroom.
- But do we really understand it?
- We usually equate poverty to having limited financial resources…
- http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109074/chapters/Understanding-the-Nature-of-Poverty.aspx
- Cost of living varies based on geography. For example, someone who is classified as poor in New York City may not feel as poor as compared to someone in Appalachia.
- Just like the extent of poverty varies based upon geographical location, the way that a family finds itself in poverty often varies.
- Poverty can be situational – a sudden crisis emerges (health issue, job loss, divorce). According to research, we know that many of our students living in poverty come from unstable situations.
- Generational – where 2 or more generations of a family are living in poverty. They are often not equipped with the tools to move out of this type of situation.
- Absolute is rare in this country, but does occur in many parts of Appalachia. Families face the struggle of day to day survival, often struggling to find shelter, food, and running water.
- Relative refers to the economic status of a family who meets the poverty thresholds set by the government.
- Urban poverty occurs in areas of 50k or more. Individuals facing urban poverty deal with stressors (violence, crowding, noise) and are often left to rely on often inadequate large-city services. Many of our kids @ my school come from urban areas and struggle with a survival of the fittest mentality. They always feel like they are fighting for position or respect. This often comes from their family or living environment.
- Rural poverty occurs in areas of less than 50k. Families experiencing rural poverty often do not have access to quality resources and support for disabilities.
- This is one of the fastest growing areas of poverty in our country. In fact, there are more people living in rural poverty (15-20% of the population) than urban (10-15%).
- James Comer was right when he said that no significant learning occurs without a significant relationship. It doesn’t mean that we have to be buddies or friends with all of our students, but it does mean that we insist on high quality work and offer support. Many of our At-risk learners who are facing poverty often lack long-lasting, stable relationships in their lives. We often expect our kids to understand how to react and behave in certain situations. Many "discipline" issues sometimes emerge when teachers expect more than what students are currently capable of. This may mean teaching our students how to act appropriately and talking about the behavior and how it impacts others.
- Creating a positive and stable environment means developing a classroom of respect. Ruby Payne, is an expert in the realm of working with students in poverty, and through her research found that students who felt respected by their teachers experienced the following situations: The teacher calls me by my name. The teacher answers my questions. The teacher talks to me respectfully. The teacher notices me and says "Hi." The teacher helps me when I need help. It all comes down to Maslow’s Hierarchy…where students need to feel safe in order to learn. This may mean that we need to rethink sarcasm and the way that joke with students. Because many of our students are oblivious to this and may feel it’s an attack rather than a joke. Immediately the “survival of the fittest” mentality begins.
- Children who are raised in a poverty-stricken environment often need help developing a "growth mindset," which places importance on attitude, effort, and strategy. These qualities are what help our students become resilient and successful. It doesn’t mean that we lower our expectations of students, but it does mean that we have to meet them where they are at. In fact high expectations have been found to be a critical element in a student’s cognitive growth.
- For example, students in my Principles of Management Class had the opportunity to go through the Kauffman Foundation’s Ice House Entrepreneurship program. The book discusses how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. As part of the culminating activity, we had students develop their own business ideas and pitch it to a Shark Tank of business experts that I organized. The “sharks” gave both positive and negative feedback. The students learned more from this experience than a book could ever teach them. They needed to feel the pressure of reality, taste of failure, and the sweetness of a successful idea. This experience helped create a growth mindset for my kids to want to learn more to fulfill their dreams.
- Reading is a critical element of not only a child’s cognitive develop but also vocabulary development. Poverty and educational levels tend to correspond to one another. When it comes to vocabulary growth, many of our children living in poverty do not receive the same enrichment (usually @ home) as those not living in poverty. They may not have the resources or an adult who is available to do so. Many parents living in poverty had bad experiences with school and have passed this onto their children.
- FOR EXAMPLE, 36%of low income parents read daily to their kindergarten aged child. This is compared to 62% of upper-income children.
- It comes down to the “Matthew Effect,” which is a term that was coined by psychologist Keith Stanovich. Extensive research on reading and language disabilities The "Matthew Effect" refers to the idea that in reading (as in other areas of life), the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If a student has negative experiences with reading early on in their career, they are more likely to experience difficulty and avoid reading altogether
- So how can we level the playing field when it comes to reading? I believe it begins with high expectations and creating an environment of growth.
- We need to provide access to a variety of reading materials in our classroom. There was a study done outside of LA and they found that affluent and middle class students had significantly more access to reading materials than students in poverty (newspapers, books of varied reading levels, etc.). It may sound simple, but our students need opportunities to read in order to stimulate their brain. One school I know collects used or old newspapers from local businesses and families so that their students have access to reading materials. I have a teacher who brings in copies of Time Magazine, Business Week, and Forbes when he is done reading. I make sure that I have them placed throughout my room for kids to access during down times.
- We need to provide opportunities to read in school. One of the schools that I used to work for used the first 15 minutes of class (in a block schedule) each Friday for students to read. Teachers, administrators, and students would use this time to read whatever reading material they chose. And test scores dramatically improved!
- Many of our students in poverty are intimidated by reading. They shut down when it is time to read. One student of mine would automatically start acting out when it came to reading. He was embarrassed that he couldn’t understand the text. Perhaps we needed to think about potential barriers that could exist and provide supports in place to address them. This really changed my perspective and so I began looking through the article and pre-teaching vocabulary before we read the article. Initially, I gave him the opportunity to listen to the reading assignment by copying and pasting text from a digital copy into Voki, while reading silently. As I saw how successful this was, I began having students who were finished with assignments very early, record themselves reading the article on a free podcasting program called Audacity. Other teachers have used reading stations, where students can either read silently or go to another part of the room, where they can read aloud. By providing options during reading assignments, we could develop their reading ability.
- We need to give students an opportunity to talk about what they have read by focusing on reading through what the University of Pennsylvania calls the social lens. This gives students an opportunity to connect with what they read with what they already know. Literature Circles are a great way to do that. For high school students, I have found that you really need to have structures in place.
- One model I follow is called the 4 A’s Model: It provides them with another way of connecting with material and structures their conversations. I have students read the text and analyze it through these questions. I then allow students to “speed date,” where they will talk with a person in the room for a certain amount of time. I often will have one person talk and the other listen. When the activity is done, I will have the listener paraphrase what they just heard.
- Research has shown that poverty impacts what Jensen refers to as the “trajectory of the reading brain.” The brain needs stimulus to grow. There was a study done by Hart and Risley that measured the amount of daily verbal interactions between a parent and child in the first 36 months of life. The child from low socio-economic background on average had only 500 words spoke to them, while affluent parents spoke 1500 words per day.
- Lack of vocabulary is the #1 reason students don’t’ comprehend a text. They read to know 90 - 95% of the words in a text in order to be able to understand it. In fact, vocabulary knowledge is the most important factor in reading comprehension. By 5th-grade, students with low vocabulary struggle in all content areas. Vocabulary is not only essential for reading and content area achievement in school; vocabulary knowledge is also important for graduation success. It has also been studied that vocabulary knowledge is closely related to earning potential.
- Average student learns 3,000 new words each year. Low SES students typically need to play catch up and that begins with meaningful and strategic vocabulary instruction. In successful schools, it is not just a language arts job. Everyone is helping create meaningful vocabulary connections. That begins with knowing which words to focus on, which research has shown us as your Tier 2 level words or general academic.
- Brain research has shown us that students need to have at least 6 meaningful interactions with a vocabulary word to understand it. How are you activating prior knowledge? Writing prompts are a great tool to have students practice using vocabulary. At the Milton Hershey School, each class begins with a writing prompt called a Do Now. This idea is so that students can begin thinking about a particular topic or reflect on their prior knowledge. Word Splashes – incorporate vocabulary into a short story How are you representing concepts differently? For example if you are teaching about lobster. Perhaps you show a video clip. Provide a model / diagram. How are you allowing students to interact with and express what they know in different ways? Perhaps students make a song with vocabulary terms. One teacher I know has students draw a comic strip or stick figures to represent each step of a science lab or process.
- Word walls are excellent tools for students to have available. It’s an accumulation of your tier 2 words throughout the semester, a unite, etc. Not only do they serve as a visual, but you can design activities around a word wall like: Word Splashes Categorizing different words Fly Swat Game You can put them on a poster, bulletin board, or simply use your chalkboard.
- Research from Marzano and the University of Penn found that students experienced vocabulary growth when teachers insisted that students speak using Academic Vocabulary, speaking in complete sentences with proper subject-verb agreement. Students also experienced success when teachers encouraged students to use “smart” words: delighted instead of happy accurate instead of good hypothesize instead of guess illustrate instead of draw comment instead of tell seek instead of find Research also found that using slang prohibits academic growth
- Finally, giving our students opportunities to become engaged with content, which may mean representing material differently (video clips, songs, etc.), providing different options for expressing what they have learned (dance, song, skit, etc.) and providing movement (through Kagan structures, activities, etc.)
- Poverty is an obstacle that has had a major impact on schools, businesses, and society and general. Although we may not be able to solve the root causes of poverty, it is important to do what we can with what we have, where we are at….in our classrooms.”