Group Differences: Poverty, APRIL DRAKE

Templeton: Understanding Poverty in the Classroom

Templeton’s article on Poverty was an informative and almost instructional piece that I feel as though every teacher should read before they teach a classroom or at least within their first year of teaching.  While reading the article it seemed as though he meant for the audience to be teachers and his purpose was to inform them of the aspects of poverty, how they effect students’ educational experiences, and what can be done to help from the teacher’s side.  This article was very good and fulfilled its purpose of informing, however I feel as though the author assumed that (and expected us to assume that) each of these students wanted to learn and had all the motivation to learn but was only being stopped by these aspects of poverty.  Teachers can only solve so many issues a child may be having, and if all of the poverty issues are magically made better, I am willing to bet that the student (just like every other KID) will still have that immaturity factor of wanting to socialize and fit in with their peers.  A lot of different aspects go into a child’s educational experience, but from strictly looking at the poverty perspective with these problems and solutions,many bridges can be crossed and great strides can be made by using ideas from this article.

  Another factor about the article that I had to catch myself on because of self-knowledge, is that there was not much statistical evidence to back up the claims about how poverty affects students or if these ideas shared about fixing the problems actually have worked.  I know from personal experience in the classroom and looking at statistics of the county that poverty does have a sway over education in a major way, so I almost let Templeton slide.  As mentioned before, Templeton loaded the article with ideas on how to bridge each gap with poverty that was brought up, most of which were wonderful ideas. Some of the ideas did not seem practical, though. The article mentioned driving by students’ neighborhoods to experience their living situations, or buying each individual student a plant to call his or her own to help with the disconnectedness felt.  First of all, I would find it very odd if I saw one of my teachers randomly and coincidentally riding through my neighborhood looking around for me (and I would suspect they were looking for me because why else would they be looking lost in my neighborhood driving around). It would also be very expensive to buy every student a plant. Practicality aside, the article had a lot of really great ideas about connecting with the students and understanding that certain behaviors that may be seen as rude or “bad” behavior may be a misinterpreted sign that the student has much more problems outside of school than one could imagine.  Overall, I loved the article and thought it was very insightful. I will definitely take what I read into account and try to implement some of the ideas Templeton shared.