Getting to know the challenges of our students
Although we must maintain high expectations for all students (and facilitate the growth of high expectations for students with low expectations), we all know that many students have significant challenges to academic growth at school: low literacy at home, living in poverty, parents still acquiring English, working parents, divorced parents, unstable living situations, access to nutritious food/exercise, and much much more. Working with my students, I am often blown away at the casual comments that students make about challenges at home that, if I encountered in my life, would have a profound and damaging effect.
The New York Times published an article recently in which Donna de la Cruz asked her students to complete the sentence, “I wish my teacher knew…” Read over some of the responses and I challenge you (just like I will challenge myself) to do this activity with your students and begin to discover a more complete perspective on their lives.
- “I wish my teacher knew I don’t have pencils at home to do my homework.
- I wish my teacher knew I love my family.
- I wish my teacher knew that my family and I live in a shelter.
- I wish my teacher knew I am smarter than she thinks I am.
- I wish my teacher knew that sometimes my reading log is not signed because my mom isn’t around a lot.
- I wish my teacher knew that my little brother gets scared and I get worried about getting up every night.
- I wish my teacher knew I love animals and I would do anything for my animals. I would love to work at the MSPCA so I could help animals get adopted.
- I wish my teacher knew that my mom and dad are divorced and that I am the middle of 7 kids. 5 out of that 7 are boys.
- I wish my teacher knew I want to learn more about history.
- I wish my teacher knew that my mom might get diagnosed with cancer this week and I’ve been without a home 3 different times this year alone.
- I wish my teacher knew that my dad works two jobs and I don’t see him much.
- I wish my teacher knew how much I miss my dad because he got deported to Mexico when I was 3 years old and I haven’t seen him in 6 years” (Cruz, 2016)
Eric Jensen, author of Poor students, Rich Teaching, focuses on a relational mindset as the foundation for any learning relationships (particularly with low income students). Specifically, he describes how teachers must strive to develop reciprocal learning exchanges with all of their students: students must feel comfortable sharing information and teaching their teachers about themselves before they are wholeheartedly willing to allow teachers to teach them and provide them with new information. It makes sense. The best advice we ever have is from the people that we trust the most. The basis for trust is in the relationships.
Let’s try to find out a learn more about our students and, who knows, maybe they will be willing to learn a little more from us.
Holding our students to high expectations:
On the way to work this week, I heard a wonderful story on National Public Radio (NPR) that talked about Trump’s strategy to gains votes from the black community: NPR Podcast. Ron Christie - a former special assistant to George W. Bush - discussed his perspective on the hopes, ambitions, and desired changes in a diverse black community in response to recent Trump comments that the black community has “nothing to lose,” which seems to imply that all black people are living in poverty, crime, and destitute. Christie cites statistics that 25% of the African-American community is living below the poverty line, which means that 75% is living above the poverty line.
In light of the diversity within communities of racial/ethnic/cultural diversity, Christie quotes George W. Bush in a campaign speech to the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP):
“Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less–-the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Christie goes on to describe the ambitions and high expectations that the majority of black families have for their children. Immediately, this made me reflect on my own practice as a teacher that educates diverse students within diverse communities.
Looking back, I remembered a time early in my teaching career when I was talking about a student with a colleague about her academic challenges. I remember excusing her lack of academic development based on all the challenges in her life: separated parents, minimal or no literacy at home, economic challenges, and general lack of background knowledge for so many classroom topics. As I justified all the reasons why she couldn’t learn, I was essentially lowering my expectations for her academic development. I realized that my interactions with her in class might be sending the message to her that she couldn’t learn and it wasn’t her own fault. “Don’t worry, I understand its hard,” “I understand that it’s too hard for you but just try.” Learning is hard for everyone and my words were sending her the message that this is just too hard for you. I realized that it was not fair for me to not have high expectations of growth and learning for her. Despite challenges at home and obstacles to success, overwhelmingly, all parents have extremely high expectations for their children and I learned that I must hold all students to high expectations for learning and growth.
In the last few weeks, I have worked with so many teachers to initiate a home-school connection to require students to stay for study hall, to keep parents informed on their child’s effort (or lack thereof) in school, and to inform parents of their students growth. It makes me so proud to work at a school in which teachers take the extra step to maintain high expectations for all students as well as supporting students and families to understand how to achieve these high expectations of growth and learning.
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