a summary of teaching with poverty in mind handout 1

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A Summary of Teaching with Poverty in Mind Handout 1

Before we begin, I have a few “Norms”…

Caffeine

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If you have a smart phone, get it out. If what I am teaching is not engaging and/or not relevant, you have my permission to use it. Surf the web, check your email, etc. I won’t be offended. I’ll work on being more engaging.

The one “Thing” I know you want to know…

How long are you going to talk?

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There are really two things I want you to get from this session…a understanding of how poverty impacts the brain and methods to reverse the devastating effects of poverty on the brain.

Don’t forget: You can copy-paste this slide

into other presentations, and move or

resize the poll.

What is the max yearly gross for a family of four to qualify for free and reduced lunch?

In the US, the official poverty thresholds are set by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). FR lunch form. In his book, Teaching with Poverty in Mind, Eric Jensen defines poverty as “a chronic and debilitating condition that results from multiple adverse synergistic risk factors and affects the mind, body, and soul.” 6

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Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The cost of living is approximately double that amount or $14.90 an hour.

Take a sheet of scrap paper and tear it in half. Number it 1-5 and see if you can identify the names of the movies you see on the next 5 slides.

Situational poverty is generally caused by a sudden crisis or loss and is often temporary. Events causing situational poverty include environmental disasters, divorce, or severe health problems. 6

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Generational poverty occurs in families where at least two generations have been born into poverty. Families living in this type of poverty are not equipped with the tools to move our of their situations. 6

Absolute poverty, which is rare in the US, involves a scarcity of such necessities as shelter, running water, and food. Familieis who live in absolute poverty tend to focus on day-to-day survival. 6

Urban poverty occurs in areas with at least 50,000 people. The urban poor deal with a complex aggregate of chronic stressors (including crowding, violence, and noise) and are dependent on often-inadequate large-city services. 6

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Rural poverty occurs in nonmetropolitan areas with populations below 50,000. In rural areas, there are more single-guardian households, and families often have less access to services, support for disabilities, and quality education opportunities. 6

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Write down on the other scrap sheet of paper whether you were raised in poverty, middle class, or wealth. Don’t write your name. Toss the paper at the presenter. Pick up a scrap and form a human graph of poverty, middle class, or wealth.

Those first few years are critically important in the development of a child’s brain. But the most significant skills he is acquiring during those years aren’t ones that can be taught with flashcards. The most profound discovery this new generation of neuroscientists has made is the powerful connection between the infant brain chemistry and adult psychology. Lying deep beneath those noble, complex human qualities we call character, these scientists have found, is the mundane, mechanical interaction of specific chemicals in the brains and bodies of developing infants. These scientists have demonstrated that the most reliable way to produce an adult who is brave and curious and kind and prudent is to ensure that when he is an infant, his hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functions well. And how do you do that? It’s not magic. First, as much as possible, you protect him from serious trauma and chronic stress; then, even more important, you provide him with a secure, nurturing relationship with at least one parent and ideally two. That’s not the whole secret, but it is a big, big part of it. 181

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Beginning at birth, the attachment formed between parent and child predicts the quality of future relationships with teachers and peers and plays a leading role in the development of such social functions as curiosity, arousal, emotional regulation, independence, and social competence. 15

Regardless of race, sex, creed, and culture, as humans we’ve either had or been a parent. Remarkably, despite the fact that over 107 billion people have been born, we all do it differently.

Regardless of race, sex, creed, and culture, as humans we’ve either had or been a parent. Remarkably, despite the fact that over 107 billion people have been born, we all do it differently.

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From Tiger moms to helicopter dads, there are as many ways to parent as there are parents.



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In our culture, we face a relentless media assault telling us we aren’t enough. Buy this laundry soap and your kids will look perfect. Put your child into this program or he will be left behind.


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“We live in a culture of scarcity in a “never ___ enough” world. Never good enough Never perfect enough Never successful enough Never smart enough Never safe enough Never extraordinary enough

Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack.” But as author Brene Brown continues in her book, Daring Greatly, “Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.” Brown does not claim to be a parenting expert; in fact, she doubts there are any. But she offers wisdom in encouraging parents to “parent from a place of “enough” rather than scarcity.”

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Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack.” But as author Brené Brown continues in her book, Daring Greatly, “Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.” Brown does not claim to be a parenting expert; in fact, she doubts there are any. But she offers wisdom in encouraging parents to “parent from a place of “enough” rather than scarcity.”

To grow up emotionally healthy, children need

• A strong, reliable primary caregiver who provides consistent and unconditional love, guidance, and support.

• Safe, predictable, stable environments.

• Ten to 20 hours each week of harmonious, reciprocal interactions. This process, known as attunement…helps them develop a wider range of healthy emotions including gratitude, forgiveness, and empathy.

• Enrichment through personalized, increasingly complex activities. 15

Emotional needs include attunement (parents' reactiveness to their children's emotions); attachment (safe, trustworthy relationships which builds faith in others); and emotional punctuation (to help the brain identify what’s correct, positive and worth saving).

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…which is great, if your kids won the “parent lottery”.

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WHAT ARE

YOUR

CHILDREN’S

STORIES?

Take a moment to think through the names of students in your school who face adversity. What are your children’s stories?

Chronic exposure to poverty causes the brain to physically change in a detrimental manner. 2 Poverty involves a complex array of risk factors that adversely affect the population in multiple ways. The four primary risk factors are

• Emotional and social challenges

• Acute and chronic stressors

• Cognitive lags

• Health and safety issues 7 The prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, crucial for learning, cognition, and working memory, are the areas of the brain most affected by cortisol, the so-called “stress hormone.” Experiments have demonstrated that exposure to chronic or acute stress actually shrinks neurons in the brain’s frontal lobes—an area that includes the prefrontal cortex and is responsible for such functions as making judgments, planning, and regular impulsivity—and can modify and impair the hippocampus in ways that reduce learning. 25 The production of “fight-or-flight” stress hormones in these children atrophies the areas that control emotional regulation,

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empathy, social function, and other skills imperative to healthy emotional development. 25 Chronic stress not only diminishes the complexity of neurons in the frontal lobe and the hippocampus but also increases the complexity of neurons in the amygdala, the brain’s emotion center. This increased complexity may make the stressed brain’s neurons far more sensitive to memory modulation than neurons in the nonstressed brains. In chronically stressed kids, the combined effects on the hippocampus and the amygdala may be precisely what facilitates emotional memory (the aspect of memory that encompasses highly salient memories of events such as divorce, abuse, trauma, death, or abandonment) and reduces declarative memory (the aspect of memory that stores standard knowledge and learning). 25-26

Weak or anxious attachments formed by infants in poverty become the basis for full-blown insecurity during the early childhood years. 15 In impoverished families there tends to be a higher prevalence of such adverse factors as teen motherhood, depression, and inadequate health care, all of which lead to decreased sensitivity toward the infant and, later, poor school performances and behavior on the child’s part. 15

Deficits in these areas inhibit the production of new brain cells, alter the path of maturation, and rework the healthy neural circuitry in children’s brains, thereby undermining emotional and social development and predisposing them to emotional dysfunction. 16

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Low SES children also have fewer cognitive-enrichment opportunities. They have fewer books at home, visit the library less often, and spend considerably more time watching TV than their middle-income counterparts do. 8

Hear less responsive, fewer supportive, less interactive home conversations. Get less quality time and less total time from their parents or caregivers…that’s stressful. (9 in handout) Low SES children are often left home to fend for themselves and their younger siblings while their caregivers work long hours; compared with their well-off peers, they spend less time playing outdoors and more time watching television and are less likely to participate in after-school activities. 16 The world of childrearing is changing. At the same time that parents work more hours, television is viewed more, media violence is pervasive, TV even has the “Baby Channel” and infants are learning emotional responses from other infants in child care…teachers are more pressured for high stakes academic testing which leaves little time for a child’s emotional development. (9 in handout) They need warm person-to-person interactions. 16

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Kids from poverty get less attunement time. Attunement is the establishment of a positive, reciprocal, relationship with the primary caregiver. This quality time provides the basis for learning the non hardwired socially appropriate emotions.

Toddlers from middle and upper income families actually used more words in talking to their parents than low SES mothers used in talking to their own children. (Bracey, 2006) (22 in handout)

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malleable

Build vocabulary every single day.

• Use words that are on the tests and get their attention

• Have a word for the day (i.e. Tenille’s word of the day on her shirt)

• Give students credit for sharing their weekly word with 3 others

• Writing assignments with new words

• Kids say, “caught you” for word recognition games with the teacher

• Double credit for kids speaking or writing the new word

• Teacher role models complex words

• Give examples they can use as adults in everyday life

• Build on more of the rich vocabulary of children’s book authros using pictures and predictions

• Daily manipulation of morphemes with word roots such as take “sing” (V) + er = singer or vaccine (N) + ate = vaccinate (N) or migrate (V) + ory = migratory (ADJ)

Watch how you phrase

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That seems less complicated. Sometimes, as parents we just need an idea. A prompt. And that’s what I really like about Ready Rosie. Each day, parents receive a two minute video of activities using simple household objects such as rocks and coins. In other videos, it has activities with food such as counting sugar packets or gummy bears. Others take place reading in the floor at the local used bookstore or searching for sounds at the store. And it’s real parents teaching real children in real places like a restaurant, the city bus, the grocery store, the doctor’s office, the playground, etc. Places where authentic learning occurs. Since there’s not a parenting how-to manual, sometimes it’s nice just to see how others are doing it.

Kids “download” the negatives of chaos, disharmony, poor relationships, foul language, poor manners, and weak vocabulary just as quickly and just as automatically as they would any positive or enrichment input. From ages 0-5, the world is downloaded into the brain. Highly immature frontal lobes are unable to delete or reframe any negative input.

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In impoverished families there tends to be a higher prevalence of such adverse factors as teen motherhood, depression, and inadequate health care, all of which lead to decreased sensitivity toward the infant and, later, poor school performances and behavior on the child’s part. 15

And their

brains have

adapted to

suboptimal

conditions in

ways that

undermine

good school

performance.

Children raised in poverty rarely choose to behave differently, but they are faced daily with overwhelming challenges that affluent children never have to confront, and their brains have adapted to suboptimal conditions in ways that undermine good school performance. 14

Students raised in poverty are especially subject to stressors that undermine school behavior and performance. The stress resulting from transience—frequent short-distance, poverty-related moves—also impair students’ ability to succeed in school and engage in positive social interactions. Whereas middle-class families usually move for social or economic improvement, the moves of low-income households are typically not voluntary. In addition to increasing children’s uncertainty about the future, these moves compound their stress load by disrupting their social interactions both within the community and in academic environments. 27 Children in poor families move 2x as often, get evicted 5x as much, 3x more likely to live in crowded homes, and experience more chronic stress and up to 35% more daily hassles. (16 in handout)

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A child who comes from a stressful home environment tends to channel that stress into disruptive behavior at school and be less able to develop a healthy social and academic life. Impulsivity, for example, is a common disruptive classroom behavior among low-SES students. But it’s actually an exaggerated response to stress that serves as a survival mechanism: in conditions of poverty, those most likely to survive are those who have an exaggerated stress response. Each risk factor in a student’s life increases impulsivity and diminishes his or her capacity to defer gratification. 26-27

In many cases, low-achieving high school students report a sense of alienation from their schools. Believing that no one cares or that their teachers don’t like them or talk down to them, students will often give up on academics. Kids raised in poverty are more likely to lack—and need—a caring, dependable adult in their lives, and often it’s teachers to whom children look for that support. 11

Busy, urban environments demand constant attention, decision-making, and redirection. (Analogy: Think of being in traffic and the stress it creates. Imagine doing your work in the car while driving.

a summary of teaching with poverty in mind handout 1

Self Improvement

urban poverty

situational poverty

absolute poverty

rural poverty

generational poverty

type of poverty

human graph of poverty

devastating effects