Poverty in the Classroom

What is Poverty? 

Poverty has a profound impact on how students perform in school. To understand the effects one needs to understand the definition of poverty. According to our text, Teaching with poverty in mind

“Poverty is a chronic and debilitating condition that results from multiple adverse synergistic risk factors and affects the mind, body, and soul” (Jenson, 2009, p.6). 

There are many types for poverty and as a teacher it is important to understand the cause.   

• It may be temporary as a result of a change in family dynamics due to new adult in the household or an adult leaves the household.  This type of poverty is referred to as situational. A natural disaster such as Katrina or Hurricane Sandy could also cause this type of poverty. 
• Another type of poverty is generational. To be considered generational it occurs in at least two generations born into poverty. This is often what is depicted in the media, families that have been poor and don’t know any different. 
• Other types are absolute (when a family does not know where they will get their next meal or where they will be able to find shelter), relative (when a family’s income is not enough to cover the standard cost of living in their region. This is not the same in all places), urban and rural (based on location of families and resources available). 

A teacher does not just need to understand the type of poverty; they should also understand the effects poverty has on the student. Poverty may impact their behavior and their learning ability. As our poverty reading stated:

  “One of the social issues facing children of poverty is emotional trauma. The emotional climate can often be very stressful and emotionally depriving. The lack of emotional nurturing can lead to feelings of alienation, inadequacy, depression and anxiety.”  

These students need an adult role model to  provide them a view of the future available for them that is not stressful, traumatic, nor depressing.  These students need to have hope.

I volunteer at a Title I school this year (Johnson Street Global Studies). Although according to the Department of Ed’s definition of a Title I school does not necessarily correlate to poverty, this school does. There is a high percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch based on their parents’ income. In the 2010-2011 school year, 234 students qualified for free lunch and 16 qualified for reduced lunch prices (NCES Johnson Street 2011-2012). There are a total of 344 students , so that is over 73% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. This is a stark contrast to the school I volunteered at in Davidson County (Wallburg Elementary) last year.  The statistics for Wallburg  had only 30% of the students (267 of 888 students) qualifying for free lunch. (NCES Wallburg Elementary 2011-2012)

My Experience:

There was a stark contrast when I first entered the Kindergarten classroom at Johnson Street to the second grade classroom I volunteered at last year in Wallburg. The students in Johnson Street were not as focused. One student in particular (I will call Charlie ). Charlie is a 5 year old African American male. After talking to him and his teacher over the past few months, I have seen the impact of poverty on his young school career. Charlie had a very hard time focusing and learning his letters. When I talked to him about books, he said “I don’t have no books”. He loves when I read to him and his teacher appreciates my time to spend one on one with him. That helped a lot with his learning the letters.  He is the lowest reader in the class. Lower than even another little girl (I will call Sarah) that English is a second language for. She is also suffering from poverty. I believe Sarah’s poverty is situational and will probably result in generational if Sarah doesn’t excel in school. She is very bright; she just does not have enough support and reinforcement at home. Charlie I believe is situational, but not temporary.  

During the holidays I found out from the classroom teacher that neither Charlie nor Sarah’s parents were able to provide Christmas for them. Charlie’s mom had also just suffered a miscarriage and had no insurance so she was having problems scraping enough money together for food. I fortunately was able to coordinate colleagues to collect gifts and cash for food for Charile’s family and gifts for Sarah. I could not imagine 5 year olds not having a Christmas.  We tried to make the gifts educational (books, Legos,and Leap Pad). That was before this class.

Since starting this class and reading about the different scenarios and approaches, I realize it is more important to identify the type of poverty and no pity the children (as I initially did) but empathize. It does not help the students break the cycle with pity and hand outs only. Although handouts have their place in the solution it is important to promote the students self worth and confidence. Although life may not be fair monetarily, they are not doomed like in the cast system. They have strengths and can learn to use those strengths to excel.

On of the effects of poverty that I believe I as a teacher can control and help my students suffering from poverty deal with are poor diets and lack of energy. Both Charlie and Sarah get very distracted and tired just before lunch (which is quite early 10:55am). When I asked them if they had breakfast Sarah shrugged her shoulders like she did not understand what I was talking about and Charlie said no there was nothing to eat. First try to get them to eat breakfast (the school offers free breakfast) and get the students up and moving periodically throughout the day.  I found a great article on line How Poverty Affects Classroom Engagement that talks about having students engage in slow stretching while taking slow deep breaths can increase their oxygenation. Yoga training has been shown to increase metabolic controls so children can better manage themselves.

Another is helping encourage students. Charlie is a little problem child at times. He acts out looking for attention and once he gets it he does not want to lose it. He has potential and understands letters and words , but there are times he just refuses to say them. Then he will ask if I am going to hit him because he is naughty. Charlie just needs encouragement and a positive adult role model. He is only five and has an outlook that he is naughty and will be hit. As a teacher I would want to let Charlie know it's alright to make a mistake, and there are no physical or mental consequences. I want to encourage my future Charlie’s to embrace learning and love coming to school because it’s a safe structured place of encouragement. 

pictures:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Summer_kids_eat_lunch_-_Flickr_-_USDAgov.jpg
http://www.hpe.com/news/x402898598/School-bus-routes-under-review
http://otherwords.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/poor-child-196x300.jpg

 

 

Evernote and Skitch in the 21st Century Classroom

There are a couple of great free 21st century internet tools that every classroom teacher should use, even if just for preparing for their class. Evernote and Skitch.

The Evernote family of products help you remember and act upon ideas, projects and experiences across all the computers, phones and tablets you use. You could also incorporate these tools into your lessons by having students use Evernote to work  collaboratively on a notebook or to save their works in process.

Evernote is an easy-to-use, free app that helps you remember everything across all of the devices you use. Stay organized, save your ideas and improve productivity.

Evernote lets you take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders--and makes these notes completely searchable, whether you are at home, work, or somewhere in between. It is like saving your work to the cloud, but with folder structures you control.

According to the article 10 Evernote Tips for Schools the author key headline is "10 Great ways students can use Evernote to study Smarter and not Harder".  Another article i found on the Evernote blog was by Buffy Hamilton. Ms Hamilton's said "Evernote would be a perfect solution for the students’ need to archive and organize traditional and non-traditional sources of information."  With Evernote's ability to search pictures for text, studnet scan even take a picture of a document they need and save that image to Evernote and be able to search the text of the picture later.



Skitch:

Skitch is There are a couple of great free 21st century internet tools that every classroom teacher should use, even if just for preparing for their class. Evernote and Skitch.

The Evernote family of products can be used to help people organize and complete projects across all the computers, phones and tablets they use. Teachers could also incorporate these tools into their lessons by having students use Evernote to work  collaboratively on a notebook or to save their works in process.


Evernote lets users take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders--and makes these notes completely searchable, whether they are at home, work, or somewhere in between. It is like saving work to the cloud, but with folder structures you control.

According to the article 10 Evernote Tips for Schools the author key headline is "10 Great ways students can use Evernote to study Smarter and not Harder".  Another article i found on the Evernote blog was by Buffy Hamilton. Ms Hamilton's said "Evernote would be a perfect solution for the students’ need to archive and organize traditional and non-traditional sources of information."  With Evernote's ability to search pictures for text, studnet scan even take a picture of a document they need and save that image to Evernote and be able to search the text of the picture later.


Skitch:

Skitch is a popular free screen snapping and annotation tools available from Evernote. Because Skitch is part of the Evernote family you can save all of your Skitch files directly to a designated notebook in Evernote and also easily add your Skitch files to an Evernote document). In Skitch, you can take a photograph or screenshot and write directly on it to make your point quickly. You can also use Skitch like a whiteboard or a drawing tool.  In this video a young girl demonstrates how easy it is to use Skitch.

 

As the girl demonstrated Skitch is very easy to use. Basically the editing and annotation tools can be found on the left side of the window including Arrow, Text, Shape, Pen, Colors Crop and resize. Some of the options open up additional selections. There are also hot-keys users can select to pick the tool for the effect they are looking to make.
Once the changes or annotations have been completed the user can rename the finished image. There are also options to  share the image or delete it to start a new one.

Key Benefits of Skitch include the ability to: 

• Uploading and synching Skitch notes or screenshots to Evernote, with available sync options.
• Being able to search through Skitch notes for text annotations, including handwriting.
• Importing previous screenshots from Skitch 1.x.
• Pixelate and Highlight tools
• Ability to modify the width and height of the screenshot before capture.
• Ability to easily click and resize shapes
• Ability to multi-select images for easier deletion.
• New keyboard shortcuts

Using Twitter with your Professional Learning Network

Twitter is a great social media tool that a teacher can use to communicate with the classroom and parents. Twitter can also be used for professional development. A teacher can use Twitter to assist in creating their Professional Learning Network.  According to the article "Building a Professional Learning Network" if a person follows the right 10 people, those 10 people could be enough. Their professional network could be only 10 people.

In the 21st century, networking has moved from face to face meet and greet and trying to get meetings with other  professionals to social media and instant contact. This has both positive and negative repercussions. A teacher can interact with their favorite teacher, author, or inspirational speaker without leaving their hometown. But it also can be overwhelming at times wiht access to so many people and tweets.
It is important for teachers to have a strong professional learning network to bounce ideas off of and get best practice advice from. Twitter allows teachers to connect with other teachers across the country, or the globe.

Another informative online article on the benefits of using twitter to build a professional learning network is "10 Great Guides for Better Professional Learning Network". The article discusses the importance of a Professional Learning Network and professional growth. 
  
The following is a quote from the article "50 Great Ways to Grow Your Personal Learning Network"

"Twitter has quickly become one of the best tools in any online learner's arsenal. Use these tips to make the most of your Twitter interactions"

Below is a video from  "Teachers Guide on Creating Personal Learning Networks"  about the importance of PLNs and the use of social media to create, engage, and maintain them.

 

Twitter is easy to use, you only need to type 140 characters at a time, and you can see what other people with like interests and questions are saying. Once you sign up you can just follow for a while and then as you get the hang of it start tweeting .

source:
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/01/10-great-guides-for-better-professional.html
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/11/teacher-tutorial-on-creating-personal.html
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/twitter-expanding-pln
http://www.onlinecollege.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/pln/twitter.jpg

Consequences for Teachers Using Social Media

Should teachers and school staff be held accountable for how they use social media in their personal life?

Teachers are at many times held to higher standards as they are role models by the choice of their profession. A local teacher was faced with this harsh reality in Guilford county.  According to a WFMY News 2 story,  Page High School teacher, resigned in November after inappropriate images of him surfaced on one of his social media accounts.


Guilford County Schools have established social media guidelines. The guidelines advise their staff to keep their personal lives personal. They have specific guidelines for Facebook since it has become such a well known/ used social media site. also prohibit teachers from becoming facebook friends with their students or their students parents.

I think that Guilford County is very clear on their policies but not necessarily the consequences. Employees of the school district are reminded that their personal online presence should reflect the same respect and professionalism exhibited in their professional online accounts. Even though this may not seem fair to some, I believe it is very appropriate. In this case the person in question was a role model for many young people. This is not how we want our young men to behave or take pictures. This is on the border of "sexting" which is a huge issue for teens and younger.  I believe the teacher made the right choice of resigning, because he would have lost the respect of his peers, students and parents.

Entering the field of education, I think that their should be more emphasis on this. As an adult returning to school, I see the pit falls of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I am not so sure young teachers that have grown up posting all of their life events and having everything out there, the good, bad and ugly understand the workplace repercussions. I know in my place of employment we will search potential candidates social media sites to get an idea of their lifestyle and dependability.


Teachers are up against even more challenges with folks looking at their social media sites, potential employers (school districts) as well as students current and future, and parents of those students will all be "screening" the teacher by seeing what information they can find on social media sites. This is why I believe school districts do need strict guidelines and consequences for misuse of social media even in their personal life. 












http://www.gcsnc.com/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=288157

http://schoolcenter.gcsnc.com/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=291859&pagecat=3704

WFMY News2 (2012, November 30) Page HS  teacher resigns for inappropriate photos. Retrieved January 21, 2013 from http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=256722

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