Teaching with Poverty In Mind: Fall 2016

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Our text for the Fall 2016 semester is: Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen. We had a great discussion on Wednesday to set the stage for reading the book.

Our next planned meeting is November 30th, 2016 at 7:30am in the ECVHS Library. Please try to read as much of the book as you can between now and then.

As for our meeting this past Wednesday, here are the notes from that meting:

How is poverty currently affecting our students?

• Not thinking ahead: parents not re-applying for free and reduced lunch. Some districts do this automatically.
• Do poverty and language issues go hand in hand?
• Students coming to school tired from working: Sleepy students while at school.
• Stress that looks like apathy. Adults under stress may not be their best, we see the same from adults. They seem like they “don’t care,” but it might be a stress issue.
• Sometimes it’s hard to tell who is affected by poverty and who isn’t.
• Is poverty relative for students who may be coming from extreme poverty in other parts of the world?
• The mentality of: “I just get what I get--I must accept my circumstances.”

What have you done to mitigate the effects of poverty?

• Teach critical thinking skills? Is there a difference in critical thinking skills between students living in poverty and students not living in poverty?
• Is poverty related to parenting quality?
• With good things: focus on a problem and how it was solved (turning a problem into a good thing).
• Can flipping the classroom be part of the solution? Lectures on their own time, working on projects and group work in time.

Please feel free to respond to this post, or the text itself, in the comments section.