A Framework for Understanding Poverty Blog
My reaction to Payne's notes at the end of every chapter on "what does this information mean in the school or work setting" gradually shifted from, "oh, I should try this" (when it's under my control) to "well if I tried to do ALL of this, when would I get ANYTHING ELSE DONE?"
Everybody has great ideas, and everybody wants to take up a bunch of your class time to implement them until the next education guru comes along and shifts the system again. We get this all the time, right?
But, in this case, first of all I understand that a lot of the time you'd be teching content along WITH these additional skills and second ... what good is it to my students, honestly, to know that Frost wrote "Fire and Ice" if they, as Payne suggests, are eliminated from job interviews in the first two or three minutes, not for lacking the necessary skills but simply for being unable to present themselves in a way that is socially acceptable and recognizable? Maybe the better question is how am I going to teach them all these necessary life skills when I'm so bound to the English I curriculum.
Throughout the book I was impressed with how dead-on Payne's lists were of expectations for student behavior "do the students in your school exhibit the following characteristics ...?" Well, yeah. One thing that I never would have thought about is the emphasis on whether or not the student LIKES us as teachers. Of course coming from the middle-class achievement-oriented mindset my emphasis in school was always on MY performance, but Payne notes again and again that, because these children depend most strongly on their relationships, they will only work hard if they LIKE YOU. Not sure how to deal with this one, but point made.
We talked in class last week about what speakers we wanted to hear from, and Elias made a good point; we know these kids are IN poverty, now what do we DO about it? I guess here's a place to start. Because for all of the heartwrenching situations in this book, some of the most critical resources these kids need, according to Payne, are things that WE CAN GIVE THEM. I'm not sold on everything she says (splitting kids into low- and high-achieving groups, for example), but I'm definitely sold on the idea that our students need a lot more than money to break the cycle that they're in, that even if they GOT money it wouldn't necessarily help (love the story about the family who sold the refrigerator to go camping), and that we can at least attempt to teach them, in the schools, and yes, even on a teacher's salary, some of the acceptable ways to interact with our sort and some key emotional strategies for making it work for them in real life. "In the final analysis," Payne says, "as one looks back on a teaching career, it is the relationships one remembrs."
Well, I could have told you that much. Here's to building relationships that will make a difference in the lives of our students, and in the best of all possible worlds, in the lives their families for generations to come.
Everybody has great ideas, and everybody wants to take up a bunch of your class time to implement them until the next education guru comes along and shifts the system again. We get this all the time, right?
But, in this case, first of all I understand that a lot of the time you'd be teching content along WITH these additional skills and second ... what good is it to my students, honestly, to know that Frost wrote "Fire and Ice" if they, as Payne suggests, are eliminated from job interviews in the first two or three minutes, not for lacking the necessary skills but simply for being unable to present themselves in a way that is socially acceptable and recognizable? Maybe the better question is how am I going to teach them all these necessary life skills when I'm so bound to the English I curriculum.
Throughout the book I was impressed with how dead-on Payne's lists were of expectations for student behavior "do the students in your school exhibit the following characteristics ...?" Well, yeah. One thing that I never would have thought about is the emphasis on whether or not the student LIKES us as teachers. Of course coming from the middle-class achievement-oriented mindset my emphasis in school was always on MY performance, but Payne notes again and again that, because these children depend most strongly on their relationships, they will only work hard if they LIKE YOU. Not sure how to deal with this one, but point made.
We talked in class last week about what speakers we wanted to hear from, and Elias made a good point; we know these kids are IN poverty, now what do we DO about it? I guess here's a place to start. Because for all of the heartwrenching situations in this book, some of the most critical resources these kids need, according to Payne, are things that WE CAN GIVE THEM. I'm not sold on everything she says (splitting kids into low- and high-achieving groups, for example), but I'm definitely sold on the idea that our students need a lot more than money to break the cycle that they're in, that even if they GOT money it wouldn't necessarily help (love the story about the family who sold the refrigerator to go camping), and that we can at least attempt to teach them, in the schools, and yes, even on a teacher's salary, some of the acceptable ways to interact with our sort and some key emotional strategies for making it work for them in real life. "In the final analysis," Payne says, "as one looks back on a teaching career, it is the relationships one remembrs."
Well, I could have told you that much. Here's to building relationships that will make a difference in the lives of our students, and in the best of all possible worlds, in the lives their families for generations to come.
posted by Miss Marshwater at 5:21 AM
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