Poverty in American Society and Schools

This past weekend I attended a conference put on by my university for education majors.  The conference's keynote speaker was Dorina Sackman, Florida's 2014 Teacher of the Year.  She is also up for 2014 National Teacher of the Year.  Very inspiring.

Anyway, after being inspired by Dorina Sackman, I decided to look up 2 books offered as opposing viewpoints during the conference: Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty and Jawanza Kunjufu's An African Centered Response to Ruby Payne's Poverty Theory.  After reading several Amazon customer reviews of both books, I found a blog post where someone had compiled a list of other resources: Debunking Ruby Payne.  Among those resources, I found a couple interesting articles that discuss the culture of poverty, and I found a quote I wish to respond to:

"We regard people living in poverty as the Other, and we define people living in poverty by the negatives, by those material goods they do not have (or apparently are unwilling to work hard enough to attain, the narrative implies)." -Original article

 When I read this, I remembered with a pang of guilt all the times I have thought these negatives and have even discussed them with my coworkers or my family.  What is even more hypocritical is that I have experienced some of the difficulties it takes in overcoming poverty.  By this last statement, I do not mean to let the reader assume I have actually experienced poverty because I have not, and I know that life is much harder for many others than how I have experienced it.  I only mean to show that I can begin to understand the struggle those stuck in poverty must deal with every day.


When my husband and I were married I was unemployed.  In fact, I went to a job interview the day before our wedding (and, gratefully, I was hired from that interview).  My husband worked in an entry-level position for the county government and we lived with two roommates so we still had our bills paid.  Two and a half months after we were married, I gained a similar entry-level position at the same government agency as Hubby, making about $0.75 less than him.  At the end of our lease, we decided that we made enough money together and we could afford a one-bedroom apartment to ourselves with no roommates.

Moving in to that one-bedroom apartment was quintessentially "making it".  Hubby and I had arrived at middle class.  We didn't own our own home yet, but we lived without roommates, with our dog, within our means, and we had officially arrived at married life and adulthood.  We paid our bills, put more than 10% of our paychecks towards savings, and still had plenty of fun money left over for spending on whatever we wanted.  We were independent.  It was small, but I remember that one-bedroom apartment with great fondness.

Although we didn't own it, and I feel that owning your own home is a milestone of a middle-class American, that one-bedroom apartment symbolized our entry into the middle class.  We lived in a gated community on the "rich" side of town.  With the amount of money we were able to put into savings, it would be no time before we would have the required down payment for a house, and we would enter the club of home-ownership.

But then something happened.  Hubby and I weren't satisfied with our paychecks, even though we were comfortable.  Hubby and I didn't want to work in an entry-level position for the rest of our careers, and so Hubby went back to school, taking on student loans because together we made too much for him to receive any grants and his previous grades kept him from many scholarships.

Fast forward three years.  Hubby earned his degree, looked for a job in his field, and found the job market wanting.  He took a less-than-ideal job with less-than-ideal pay working for an ethically questionable boss.  He is now back with the county government agency and is much more comfortable, but he is working in basically the same entry-level position he held before he left.  And now he's paying back his student loans.

At the same time, I have gone back to school and am working towards my Bachelor's in education.  I also have taken on student loans with one grant awarded this past school year because Hubby was out of work for much of 2012 and so I qualified for a little help.

Compared to the relative comfort Hubby and I experienced in that one-bedroom apartment 3 years ago, we are now stretched financially to the point that it is a major stressor for both of us.  We now own our own home, and the mortgage is $5 less/month than the rent for that one-bedroom apartment.  But we now have an added bill: $200/month towards Hubby's student loans.  That money used to go into savings.

Hubby commented on our situation a few months ago, noting that if he had not gone back to school and accrued student loan debt, we would have been able to buy a house sooner and we would be much more comfortable financially.  Six months after I graduate our household will take on another payment: my student loans.  As a teacher, I will start my career in education making roughly $5000 more per year than I do currently.  I can tell you from experience, that difference is only about $50-$75 per paycheck after taxes, and it won't pay my student loan bill.

My point is this: getting ahead in life, getting an education beyond high school so that you are more qualified in a professional world costs money, and if your gamble (since, really, folks, that's what it is) doesn't pay off with a much higher paying job, you end up financially castrated in a world of debt.  We regard people living in poverty as the Other, and we assume they are unwilling to work hard enough to attain anything better.  But if Hubby and I had not gone back to school and had not pursued higher degrees in our education, we could afford to raise a family, we would have much more in savings, and we would be much more comfortable financially than we will be in the coming 10 years.

Fires in the Bathroom: Middle School

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/9772974/Daredevil-Gorilla-walks-across-tightrope.html)

"'Act firm' yet 'be flexible,' 'set high standards' yet 'remember their fragile egos'... In the middle grades, everything is always 'this' and 'not this' at the same time"(Cushman & Rogers, 2008, p. 5).  Navigating middle school is like walking a tightrope, for teachers as well as for students; it makes sense, then, that we can learn and grow together, working cooperatively to make our time in middle school productive and positive.

Conflict resolution is an ever-present element of middle school culture, and educators and schools have utilized several systems over the years in tackling this element.  Corporal punishment may be one of the oldest forms of conflict resolution, meant to punish a wrong-doer for his or her actions.  There are newer forms of conflict resolution making their debut in society, especially in schools, such as restorative circles.  More and more schools are finding that problems can be resolved without physical punishment. 

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, corporal punishment is "a discipline method in which a supervising adult deliberately inflicts pain upon a child in response to a child's unacceptable behavior and/or inappropriate language" (AACAP, 1988).  The same article states, "The immediate aims of such punishment are usually to halt the offense, prevent its recurrence and set an example for others. The purported long-term goal is to change the child's behavior and to make it more consistent with the adult's expectations" (AACAP, 1988).  According to Cushman and Rogers (2008) and the children they interviewed, this sort of discipline only makes students want to act out more: "My science/math teacher always embarrasses kids.  If you forgot your math book, or if your homework is overdue for this amount of time, she'll announce it to the whole class, instead of just telling you privately.  I don't think they should do that.  It makes me feel embarrassed.  I just want to go away and crawl into a hole or something" (Gabe, p. 93).  Cushman and Rogers (2008) add that "if [your students] feel your disappointment too keenly, they are likely to withdraw or retaliate" (p. 93).

Restorative circles, on the other hand, are a relatively new idea to help facilitate a healthier conflict resolution practice, and it's found some success in schools and juvenile facilities around the world (Garmon, 2013, Making Healing Part of Justice).  Restorative circles are situations "in which authors, receivers, and community are brought together" (Garmon, 2013).  A restorative circle involves "authors" and "receivers" to come together and discuss what happened, why it happened, and the reactions and/or intentions of all involved parties.  There is a TED Talks video that better explains restorative circles (see below), featuring Ann KcKnight, who talks about an example where she has personally used restorative circles in an educational setting.

 Some of the students who talked with Cushman and Rogers (2008) also talked about systems they've used in their classrooms that sound very familiar to the idea of restorative circles.  Thea, for example, said, "We have a town meeting and the seventh graders come with the eighth graders.  Or we get a partner with the seventh graders, and then we talk about our thing and tell them how we feel and stuff like that" (p. 45).  This approach to conflict resolution allows students to explore what emotions they are putting out into their community and how those emotions are being received, especially at a time when, developmentally, middle school students are just figuring out who they are, what they believe, how they plan to act, and they're trying on different personalities and personae to see which one fits best.

As an intentional teacher, I plan to introduce my students to the use of restorative circles in one form or another as a method of conflict resolution.  I also plan to involve my students in creating their own classroom norms, and parts of their curriculum to help show them that they do have the power to affect change in a positive way.  I wish to empower my students, above all, with confidence that they can learn, they can succeed, and it's up to them to have a positive outlook.

A Moral Dilemma by Kohlberg

In Europe a woman was near death from cancer. One drug might save her, a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.  The druggist was charging $2,000, ten times what the drug cost him to make.  The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about half of what it cost.  He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later.  But the druggist said "No."  The husband got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.  Should the husband have done that? Why?

I was given this moral dilemma in 11th grade by my English teacher.  I recently read it in my educational psychology textbook while learning about Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning, and thought I might make a blog post out of it.

Okay, so Heinz's wife is near death from cancer.  This is not a new scenario to most of us.  We know cancer exists, we know people get it, and we know there really is no cure but that it can go into remission if treated effectively and in time.  A key word I see in this scenario is that the drug might save her; it's not guaranteed.  Also, do the townspeople know that the druggist is charging ten times what it cost him to make the drug?  The above paragraph does not specify whether anyone besides the druggist knows how much the drug costs to make, it only tells us the fact that he's charging an exorbitant amount.

It shows a lack of compassion on the druggist's part that he will not work with Heinz even after he explains that his wife is dying.  If they live in the same town, assuming the town is small enough that everyone kind of knows everyone else, the druggist should already know this information to be true.  At the same time, the druggist has to make a living.  How many people really have cancer in this town?  How well-known is this druggist's new drug?  Does he really even have a market to sell his discovery in yet?  Did he go into a large amount of debt while researching this new drug?  If so, he now has a pile of debt to pay back and that may be why he's charging so much for the drug.

It was wrong of Heinz to break into the druggist's store and steal the drug.  His wife may still die if the drug doesn't work, he'll go to jail for burglary and theft, and then even if the drug does work, who will be left to take care of his wife while she recovers?

The risks really don't out-weigh the benefits here because Heinz most likely won't get away with the theft.  The druggist knows Heinz wants the drug and when the druggist told Heinz he wouldn't sell it to him for a cheaper price and he wouldn't work with him, I'm sure the two men had heated words before Heinz left the store.  The druggist's first suspicion will most likely be Heinz and I'm sure he'll tell that information to the authorities.  On top of that, the only way Heinz could escape being caught would be to run.  He can't take his wife since, if she's close to death, she's most likely bed ridden and can't travel.  If he runs, then, he'll be leaving his wife alone with no caretaker, and that move is completely hypocritical to the action he just took by breaking the law to get her medication.

In any case, Heinz was wrong to steal from the druggist for a slew of reasons.

 

If anyone else would like to take a stab at this moral dilemma, leave it in a comment below!

True Story

Welcome to my Blog!

What do you write for a first blog post?

I created this blog as a second place to post my random spouts of inspiration.  I have another blog, here, that I post all sorts of mumbo jumbo on.  I wanted to get organized so I decided I would create a blog dedicated to my career in education.

Currently, I'm a pre-service teacher working a full time job while also going to school full time.  It's hard work, and I'm looking forward to the end.  I want a classroom of my own and I want to start making a difference in my students' lives.

I plan to post teacher-related ramblings on here, so watch out!