Prompt 1: Key Understandings
As a teacher leader,
what are three key understandings you learned from the Payne text that you
would deem appropriate for sharing with a colleague, administrator, and/or
parent? Describe why these understandings
were selected.
The first
key understanding that I learned from the Payne text was that there are hidden
rules among economic classes. When you
have lived most of your life in one economic setting it is difficult for you to
see any other way of life. When I first
read this text, I was a kindergarten teacher at a charter school in downtown
Dayton. I was a first year teacher and full
of excitement with my first “real” teaching job. It was a real wake-up call when I would talk
with my students and their parents/guardians.
I was naive to think that they valued education in the same way that I
did. Our principal at the time asked all
of the teachers to read this text to help us understand our students
better. The Payne text helped to open my
eyes and see the differences in the values of my students and their families. This helped me to change my thoughts with how
to approach parents and guardians with educational or behavioral issues in my
classroom. I now knew that they were not
going to put a high value on education as I would, but they would see it as a
time their kids were not at home. It
also taught me that when discipline was handed out it was from mom and usually
would not help matters at school. These
hidden rules also helped me to better understand what these kids’ lives were
like at home and how that affected them in the school setting.
The second
key understanding that I learned was how important support systems are in
poverty. Payne broke support systems
into seven different categories. I take
for granted having a variety of these support systems, however I can see where
someone in poverty would lack many of these friends, families and resources to
make it through tough situations. Teachers
need to be role models for their students.
We need to show them how to use coping strategies, problem solving
strategies, and where to find helpful resources. We also need to teach how to use positive
self-talk to provide motivation and encouragement to finish tasks and procedural
self-talk so that our students can complete a task in the correct step by step
manner. Support systems are needed every
day to survive. If students do not have
the support they need, they will not become the successful members of society that
they could have been with proper support.
The most
important key understanding from the Payne text was that “the key to
achievement for students from poverty is in creating relationships with them.” People who live in poverty put a great deal
of value in relationships. Therefore,
teachers need to spend more time creating meaningful relationships with their
students. This will help them to
complete their work, behave in a respectful manner, and care more about their
learning. Students from poverty will
work harder for a teacher that they know and trust.
References
Payne, R. K., (2005).
A Framework for Understanding
Poverty. Highlands, Texas: aha! Process,
Inc.
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