No Matter Where We Serve!

Each diverse population has inherent characteristics that need understanding. At one school, I realized early on that there were issues with my staff regarding their treatment of certain ethnic groups. We were fifty percent Hispanic, thirty percent African-American and twenty percent white. A consequence of this treatment was poor performance academically for a large portion of my students. We instituted a series of training sessions on the need to be culturally knowledgeable. It was amazing the success we had when our teachers realized they were responding to certain cultural differences in a negative fashion and were not aware of it. As a result, for example, we had a forty percent increase in the performance of our African American males in math in one year! This was the result of actively seeking a better understanding of these students needs and then addressing them in a positive fashion. However, there is misunderstanding sometime about what truly impacts academic performance the most. I used to battle my colleagues when they made statements like; “they have a high concentration of minorities, so they are going to have low test scores.” This is simply a false statement! The determining factor for performance is not ethnicity it is poverty! It just so happens that many minority students are also in poverty. I can attest to the fact that white, black, or brown kids who are poor are going to perform poorly on standardized tests initially. At the same time, students, of any color, who are not poverty stricken, will perform about the same. The other major factor that impacts achievement of students is the educational level of their mother. This is logical since the mother does so much of the early nurturing of children. So are there any consequences to how we treat children of poverty vs. middle class? Absolutely! If you have not ever heard of or read anything by Ruby Payne, and you work with children in poverty, do so right away. There is a culture of poverty that pervades all ethnic groups that if you can get a handle on it in your school you will see much more success with these children. Children of poverty do not see things through the middle-class lenses of understanding. They have a complete different set of values and if you expect them to conform to your values they will never succeed. One example that sticks out in my mind is the example regarding our values regarding paying bills. Have you ever noticed that even kids of poverty many times will have one hundred dollar shoes or a designer jacket? If not, look around and pay attention, it happens. How is it that they can have something like this but still not pay their bills? The reason is their parents do not see paying bills as a priority. Instead, they are interested in instant gratification and satisfying their personal desires. The last items they pay are bills. The result, they move from one rental complex to another when the rent comes due after stretching their time out to the limit before they are evicted. If you approach a child with that kind of mindset with a middle-class value such as “paying your dues” to earn something they do not understand. Our response many times is to get frustrated with these students when they approach us with the poverty mind set. There are many other examples in Dr. Payne’s writing. The knowledge that she teaches will change the perspective of your staff if they want to be successful with poor kids in any neighborhood. It will also make you rethink some policies that have been the norm for many years. For example, let’s look at the homework. Why do we give homework and is it a reasonable expectation for us to expect children of poverty to do homework? We assign homework with the expectation that the child takes it home and completes it there. Is this reasonable? How many homes of poverty have you been in? Where exactly are they to do this homework? They more than likely do not have a kitchen table as such and probably eat, when they eat at home, in the living area. Where are they going to find a “quiet” place to accomplish this task? It is more than likely impossible to find such a setting in a poverty home. And what kinds of assignments do we give? Are they assignments that are reasonable for us to expect these children to be able to succeed. An example that always comes to mind is the assignment where the teacher says; “ go home and get some magazines to cut out pictures of…” What magazines!? We set them up to fail because we have not taken into consideration the environment in which they live! We must have systems in place that recognize the cultural differences that exist in our populations. Then we need to make sure we are making allowances for those conditions. I am currently trying to get funding for a social worker. We have come to the point in time where it is necessary to try and meet all of the needs of our students whatever they may be. I had facilities on campus is Dallas that dealt with every social condition you can name. That is where we are today!