Students in Poverty
Teaching with Poverty in Mind
In order to engage our students who are living, or have lived, in poverty, we must examine and understand the way that their learning needs are different than the students who have not had those experiences.
The period to the left conveys, from bottom to top, the biggest needs that our students in poverty have. From bottom to top, it conveys the urgency of the needs, for example, food and shelter are needs that EVERYONE has, which are often unmet for our students in poverty.
Eric Jensen, in his text Teaching with Poverty in Mind, identifies SIX types of poverty:
1) Situational Poverty
2) Generational Poverty
3) Absolute Poverty
4) Relative Poverty
5) Urban Poverty
6) Rural Poverty
Eric Jensen has done the most work in our field in researching how poverty impacts learning and students' brains
The list above conveys the seven ways that poverty impacts our students' lives, in and out of school.
Living in Poverty literally changes our students' development. This is directly connected to ACES, as poverty is an ACE.
This TED Talk explains poverty's impacts on the brain and some major takeaways from Jensen's work.
Educating with Poverty in Mind is a Restorative Practice!
We can integrate preventative restorative measures to navigate the needs of our students' in poverty by creating an educational environment that meets their needs. We can also integrate responsive restorative measures when students' poverty impacts their ability to successfully engaged in school behaviorally or cognitively.
Because poverty does directly impact the brain's development, those of us in education have to supplement our students' learning of the responses in the lighter shades above. These responses, like compassion or gratitude, can be developed within our students through our instructional design and engagement of them.
All students need us
Our instructional design and curricular designs must include differentiation for our students with the social/emotional and learning needs that result from living in poverty.
Our schools are for ALL of our students
If our instructional methods or systems do not fit the needs of our students, it's our job to create educational opportunities that DO.
