Linda Cliatt-Wayman is a school principal for Strawberry Mansion High School, a poverty stricken and crime ridden North Philadelphia high school. This year, I watched her Ted Talk as she explained how she reformed this low-performing school and tackled problems from garbage issues to funding for more teachers. She said, “We have to make sure that every school that serves children in poverty is a real school…that provides them with knowledge and mental training to navigate the world around them.” She imposed a “non negotiable” rule, which is a behavior based program that gave students more responsibility. It was proven to be effective when the high school was taken out of the “low performing and persistently dangerous” list after five …show more content…
I had the opportunity to experience a challenging and at times tumultuous education system in Quezon City, an overpopulated city in the Philippines. Being poor placed constraints in both the students who wanted to pursue a proper education and on the academic institutions that provided them. Public school classrooms were overcrowded and dropout rates were at an all time high. Poverty stricken children were unable to afford schools that had an advanced curriculum and properly trained educators. Most students completed their academic career in high school and ended up in local call centers earning minimum wage. Eventually, they will have families they can barely support and send to school. It became a never-ending cycle with no one to lead them to a brighter future. This experience stayed and inspired me. My academic career at Saint Peter’s University provided me with the understanding in behavior modification, cognitive and personality development, economic disparities in urban communities, and cultural discrepancies. I found that these are interacting variables in academic and personal achievement. During my junior year, I had the opportunity to create an independent research project and presented it at the Eastern Psychological Association Conference with Dr. Maryellen Hamilton. The multiple socio-cultural environment of my school inspired me to investigate the linguistic factor of learning in an urban school. From my
I was surprised to believe that as a whole, a significant portion of students came from low-income families, experienced homelessness at some point, were hungry, or suffered from trauma. For one student to experience any of these problems requires a number of resources for a school, but when the majority of students are facing these issues, schools need to be particularly well equipped. Adding to this the fact that Chicago public schools are seriously underfunded, this is a tragedy. Schools are forced to cut social workers, psychologists, and clinicians from their services and ultimately, students are left without help. In my Introduction to Poverty Studies class, we learned that in order to alleviate systemic poverty, part of the solution lies in focusing on children and providing them all the resources so that can be as well equipped for life as possible. Much of this responsibility falls on public schools, but without funds, this task is
Imagine growing up in a bad neighborhood with a parent who was working all the time. Students like Marita in the Bronx have more challenges than students in affluent areas. Some of the teachers pay more attention to the kids then their parents do. Schools need to work harder than schools in those affluent neighborhoods. Students from Marita's Bargain and Kewauna's Ambition benefited from the intervention program Onegoal and KIPP Academy in order to be successful path in life
Students that live in a poor community often lack a good education because the community does not have the resources to allow the students to continue a good education. Students that are marginalized often lack the opportunity to a higher education because they are constantly being underestimated and not given the resources they need in order to be successful. In the article “Still Separate, Still Unequal; America’s Educational Apartheid” by Jonathan Kozol demonstrated the way schools in InterCitys are being forced to used methods that are nowhere helpful for students to be able to learn. Students are given many instructions to follow, but often lack the actual education they deserve. In addition, in the podcast “The Problem
The educational system in the United States fails to acknowledge the importance of integrating different cultural components such as first language in the education of minorities. Social institutions like schools tend to neutralize their structures to fit the needs of the dominant groups. For the purpose of this study, the dominant group in the context of linguistic is predicted to have more resources available to succeed academically than the subordinate groups. The achievement gap in our education system has been studied by many in the
Poverty is everywhere in this world especially in education. Poverty in education could come from the location of the school, the child’s home life, how the students feel about school and in many other ways. Poverty comes in all shapes and forms, “An appalling number of American Children live in poverty. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 14.7 million, or nearly 20 percent of children under age 18, live below the poverty line” (When Poverty…). The kids/students bring those debilitating effect with them to school every day.
Schools that are low performing have the highest rates of suspension and expulsion and the lowest graduation rates. According to Mississippi Today, “the dropout rate for students fell slightly to 11.8 percent in 2016, the lowest in five years.” If I were to eliminate funding as a barrier, zero tolerance policies would still exist- especially in public school systems in the South, amidst people of color. Zero tolerance policies are obstacles put in place for small infractions performed by students, which can lead to disciplinary actions such as: corporal punishment, detention, and suspension. These small infractions may be in the form of getting up without permission, excessive talking, etc. Schools should offer more alternative measures, which counsel students on their misbehavior and give the student an opportunity to amend his or her actions. These methods fall under a restorative justice model. Community organizations, like Nollie Jenkins Family Center, have proposed alternatives such as peer mediation and conflict resolution to help keep youth in a learning environment, off the streets, and away from a life of crime. A case study performed by Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program, discovered that after counseling students for infraction their number of juvenile arrests and suspension “dropped by 54%.” This could potentially be a catalyst in bending the moral arc in the direction of justice,
These systemic obstacles that create circumstances that hinder the education attainment of the poor can be changed, their limits lessened, by positive actions to elevate living conditions – given the school system promotes and
A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne builds a model for combating poverty by tackling it at the earliest level of perpetuation-in schools. Schools, Payne advocates, should be the first line of defense against encroaching poverty and also the most effective weapon to beat it back. Unlike most economic tools, schools should be fine-tuned and deployed according to strict frameworks. Payne identifies two types of poverty and list eight resources which makes one a candidate. The thrust is thus primarily on how to deal with poverty in schools and how to equip the students with tools and education
Educators are perhaps the best super humans out there at this point in age. They constantly have to change and adapt new skills to keep up with new technology, psychological upgrades and environmental traumas that impact students. In Eric Jensen’s Teaching with Poverty in Mind provides new techniques future and current educators should use to combat the impact that poverty has on students, mentally, emotionally and physically. Jensen’s text has strengthened my opinions on education as well as added new views towards my future career as a high school educator.
The stereotypes of people living in poverty in America are so deeply imbedded in our society. We as educators may need to examine our beliefs and open our mind to new interpretations of the behavior of those struggling without basic needs. Doing so, however, is the first step to improving our success and effectiveness with educating students in poverty and helping end the cycle of suffering. Educator’s attitudes and beliefs shape you tone of voice, your body posture, your facial expressions and your actions towards students. Working daily with students who are classified as living in poverty. I believe it is our duty as educators to work with student’s effect by generational poverty. One thing I do not see a lot of is help
A Framework for Understanding Poverty is a book, written by Ruby K. Payne for the purpose of helping educators impact their students in poverty through opportunities. This book examines experiences from all economic classes in order to evaluate the differences in education among each class. Payne talks about the different types of poverty and the resources needed to be a stable and educated person. Poverty is “the extent to which an individual does without resources”.
More likely to serve low income students is urban public schools which who are reportedly failing to educate the students they serve. In urban public schools, Numerous understudies and their families are living with serious financial disservice. Students are not proven to be the problem. The education that urban students in government funded schools get is evidently insufficient. To be a school that promotes a good academic status of students, you can’t lack basic social utilities. Poverty in urban schools can be fixed. A feature that characterizes effective schools involves coordination instruction among teachers which contributed to the weak academic performance of low income students. You must ask yourself what would be the best solution to help these students succeed? Because urban school are being run badly, they are failing. Improvement within management lies a solution. According to Chicago Tribune in the news article” Economic Inequality: The real cause of the urban school problem” findings show that the root of the problems facing urban schools can be found in gradual but extremely powerful changes in the nation's economy It takes a comfortable environment, suitable effective committed teachers, more use of instructional practices consistently and available necessities and needs. The most important statistic provided is the Growing economic inequality contributes in a multitude of ways to a widening gulf between the educational outcomes of rich and poor
Unfortunately, the school's lack of appropriate education results directly from poor government funding. So even with hard work, the lower-class student is still held down by his socio-economic status. Poverty-stricken parents are unable to offer their children the same attention and motivation as parents of a higher-class can, therefore never providing these children with the mindset that they are able to accomplish the American dream. According to Mantsios, 40 million Americans live in poverty, and the mental and physical affects the low standard of living has on them is undeniable (Mantsios 328). Citizens who live in poverty work long hours for little pay, yet return to a household that in no way symbolizes the hard work put forth. Within this environment, very few people have the positive outlook to mentor children successfully.
In today’s economic environment even the wealthiest states and districts are having to cut funding for education, while districts which were already teetering on the edge are now in an even worse position. In some schools children have to face not having enough books, paper for copies, severe overcrowding,
Every city has poverty. Travel around the world, I bet it wouldn’t be difficult to find a city that doesn 't have an impoverished community. Poverty is a global issue, but most importantly it’s a local issue to me in the city that I live in. Among the 10 largest cities in America, Chicago has the third highest poverty rate with 40-60% of our residents living under the poverty level. People who live in poverty are given less opportunities, resources and tools than people who live in the middle or upper class. Poverty is not a pleasant subject, however, poverty is real. In the daily lives of the poor, poverty becomes a network of disadvantages. The end result is that there is a lack of access to education, employment, health care, affordable housing, proper sanitation and good nutrition among many generations of the poor (End Poverty). Of the issues associated with poverty, the lack of access to an education stands out to me the most. In Chicago, education is greatly valued and is vital for all development and growth achievements in people. Education is the process in which people gain knowledge, help form and shape attitudes and opinions, and allow people to gain a set of skills that they can further use in areas outside of a school environment. However, education systems in Chicago are taking a huge deficit due to the effects of poverty. The effects of poverty are already big factors toward the concern about Chicago, and why it is portrayed as negatively as it is, but those