Impact on Professional Practice (prompt 2)

Prompt 2: Impact on Professional Practice

What are some things that you will implement (or already have implemented) and/or do differently regarding your interactions with children and/or adults resulting from your understandings of Payne’s framework?

            As I stated in my last blog entry I first read the Payne text several years ago while teaching kindergarten in a charter school in downtown Dayton.  The first change I made back then was how I interacted with parents.  After reading about the hidden rules associated with poverty I needed to communicate my students learning in a meaningful way to their families.  It was not just what their child was learning about in my class, it was how they were learning to survive in life.  When we sat down for parent-teacher conferences I had to change my vocabulary and context in how and what I was teaching little Johnny was relevant and important in their lives, not just in the middle class school setting.  I used real-world logos to teach the alphabet and their sounds such as:  C is for /c/ /c/ Cub Foods, M is for /m/ /m/ McDonald’s, and P is for /p/ /p/ Pizza Hut.

            The next change I made was in how I related to my students.  I understood more about their home lives and used this information to see what was behind their misbehavior.  Were they hungry, upset about a fight, distracted because Dad left in the middle of the night?  I spent more time creating meaningful bonds so that they trusted and respected me more and wanted to work harder with their school work.

            After reading this text for a second time several years later, I would like to put another change into my classroom.  I would like to teach my students more about the differences in languages and story.  It would be difficult to modify to a kindergarten level, but I would like to have discussions about how we use casual-register at home and with friends, but formal-register in school.  I liked the example where Payne used the story Cinderella to show both of these registers.

References

Payne, R. K., (2005).  A Framework for Understanding Poverty.  Highlands, Texas:  aha! Process, Inc.

Key Understandings (prompt 1)

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.