Poverty Blog

I spent the day covertly reading a book on poverty in between meeting with parent who actually live in poverty. Somehow I felt ashamed at my naivite for having to read the book and my arrogance at doing it on parent-teacher conference day. I kept it in my lap....

I was struck by a lot of different things in the book, one of them being that as a highly organized, "thinking map" oriented person, I was providing my students with life skills. Just teaching them how to read the textbook, pick out the important information, and organize it in some way is valuable. Maybe I knew this on a deeper level, but it makes me feel a lot better about time I considered "wasted" in my classroom while we learned how to take notes and fill in organizers.

Another ego-booster was the thought that just by being in the classroom day after day with my knowledge of middle class "hidden rules" I was being a role model and teaching them survival skills for school and work. As Woody Allen said, "85% of life is just showing up".

One part that made me feel less capable was the chapter on the three voices. I think I use the parent voice a lot in my classroom. I'm having a hard time deliniating between the parent voice and control of the classroom. For me, right now, they are one and the same. I can see by my kids' reactions to me that I am antagonizing them and creating conflict sometimes in the way I deal with situations, but sometimes my blood pressure just gets so high I kind of snap. I'm having a hard time remembering that these students have only been in my room for 45 minutes, so all the things I've repeated for the first 3 hours, need to be repeated again with the same patience. My poor fourth block bears the brunt of my frustrations.

The book also made me realize that I'm not doing enough with vocabulary. I know my kids' reading level isn't where it should be, but I never thought that it would be affecting their ability to process certain information because they lack specific terminology. I've moaned and complained about the district-required word-wall, but I think I can do more with it. These kids deserve more from me.

Overall, the book shed light on a lot of things that I understood subconsciously, but haven't really addressed in my classess. I'm hoping that between the book and the learning styles inventories, I can start focusing on what my students really need.