Understanding Poverty
Differentiating instruction: Understanding poverty
|
Key Questions to Consider |
|---|
|
What values and principles do I hold that may differ from my students coming from a background of poverty? How can I best address language issues my students from backgrounds of poverty face in their academic and social success? Which cognitive skills should be addressed during instruction to most benefit this population of students? How do I create a learning environment so that every student feels safe and respected? |
Given that learning is enhanced through relationships, it is important for educators to understand the economic background of students in order to establish mutual respect. To be able to work with someone effectively, it is important to realize their mental model of the world will not always match ours. For example, most educators have a middle class view that too often conflicts with their students living in poverty. Here, poverty is more clearly defined as generational poverty, two generations or more.
Living in poverty means being concerned about survival in the present and entertainment to ease your mind from the frustration of your basic needs not being met. In contrast, living in the middle class means being concerned about achievement and working toward a secure future. Hence, the educator must understand the behavior of people in poverty being driven more by fight or flight and how important it is to provide a safe, respectful, and trusting environment if academic pursuits requiring future orientation and abstract thought are going to be successful.
Language as a key to success
Language is another critical factor in the understanding of poverty. The mind develops around the brain’s use of language. When considering the casual and formal registers of language, it is important to understand that people in poverty are usually limited to the casual register, which lacks vocabulary related to abstract thinking or future orientation. The casual register is generally concerned with you, me, here, and right now, and there is little dependence on the written word. In contrast, the middle class uses the formal register, the register of school and work, providing more abstract and future oriented vocabulary, leading to more verbal and written communication.
This vocabulary opens to a world where such communication is critical to success; where words or the rule of law rather than fists settle disputes, where credit is not the same as cash, where impulse control leading to future reward becomes more valuable than immediate gratification, where entertainment doesn’t provide near the return of skill development, hard work, and effort. One’s vocabulary will direct one’s mind and behavior. As educators provide models and opportunities for people in poverty to experience the vocabulary related to planning and being proactive, such behaviors follow.
Understanding poverty provides educators with the ability to build positive experiences for people in poverty to transition into a higher level of survival. Students and their families respond to respectful, safe environments that acknowledge their mental models. Educators can present opportunities that provide a scaffold to access the formal register and stimulate the development of a mind that develops around positive connections with others.
Resources
Aha! Process: Dr. Ruby Payne
http://www.ahaprocess.com/
(outside link)
Useful as a resource for professional development, the company works with
educators and other professionals to help raise the achievement levels of
individuals from poverty.
There are no comments.