I work at an urban school. The students who walk through my doors come from a variety of cultures, ethnicities, races, and geographic regions. I have students who are immigrants and those who were born here to immigrant parents. Most of my students qualify for free and reduced lunch. My school is surrounded by a concrete jungle, jam-packeted between single-family homes, apartments, and strip malls. We are located in an area that used to see quite a bit of violence due to gang warfare (which has luckily died down in the past 10 years #knockonwood). With all that, I have to say that I was unaware of the concept called pedagogy of poverty…but apparently, this is something I have be unconsciously supporting with my teaching practices.

That bites.

What’s the pedagogy of poverty, you ask?

Here’s the cliff notes version:

1. Teaching is what teachers do (Haberman, 2010, p. 83)
2. Learning is what students do (Haberman, 2010, p. 83)
3. Compliance is an expectation for students
4. Ranking or tracking is unavoidable due to the wide disparity in academic achievement
5. Basic skills are a prerequisite for learning and living (Haberman, 2010, p. 83)

The pedagogy of poverty rests on the idea that compliance is what students know how to do. It’s easy. All students have to do is follow the directions of the teacher. And let’s be honest, it’s also easy for teachers because it means we are in control. But that does not mean that students are learning and it certainly does nothing to empower them in their learning process.

How do we break this cycle?

While, I cannot claim any type of expertise on this matter, I do have an idea of what we can do to empower our students in their learning process. As educators we need to equip our students with the knowledge that they (students) are in the driver’s seat (Haberman, 2010). The extent of their learning and the personal growth they achieve is entirely up to them. But it’s not enough to just tell them that (in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, right?). They have to be reminded of it. Like, a thousand times.

So here’s my plan. Since student blogging is something I plan to add to my curriculum next year, I think I’ll have my students blog on ways that they can develop a mindset for empowerment (see image at the beginning of this post) or maybe it’s more a reflective piece about how they were empowered. Whatever the case, the pedagogy of poverty cycle needs to be–must be–broken and it begins with a mindset change. Both for me and for my students.

Challenge accepted.

Reference

Haberman, M. (2010). The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 92, 81-87. doi:10.1177/003172171009200223

 

I had to take a multicultural course as part of the credential program at California State University, Long Beach (#gobeach). In that class, we read the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. It was an interesting read and as a bibliophile, I naturally kept the book as I figured at some point, I’d go back and reread it.

I find it funny how the universe seems to circle back.

When looking at lesson ideas for my student blogs on the Facing History site, I came across a lesson that I think would be the perfect first day of school activity and one that would serve as the starting point for their blogging project. The lesson is called What Shapes Your Identity? This lesson has students reading an excerpt from Cisneros’ book called “My Name” which chronicles the story and feelings about what one’s name truly means. I found the excerpt from the book online and a couple of writing prompts from two different teachers. While I don’t know that I would have students answer all of the prompts, I think that giving them a few of these would be a good segue to getting them to think about their cultural identity. I was also thinking that this might be a great way to connect school and home because several of the questions require students to ask their parents about the origin of their name (Borba, 2009; Lam, 2013).

A springboard assignment is a Bio-Poem which has students creating a structured poem about their identity (also from the Facing History website). I’m always looking for fun things to do on the first day of school and I think this lesson ties together my goals of developing a culturally responsive learning environment and incorporating student blogging. The bio-poem is something that students can include on their About Me page and if they are so inclined, they can do their first blog post on one of the writing prompts or they could simply do a reflection about this activity.

Though I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do on the first day of school in August, I do know that I’ll be keeping this as one of the front-runners. Meanwhile, enjoy my bio-poem:

References

Borba, M. (2009). Caring closes the language-learning gap. Phi Delta Kappan, 90, 681–685. doi:10.1177/003172170909000915

Lam, W. S. E. (2013). What immigrant students can teach us about new media literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 94, 62–65. doi:10.1177/003172171209400416

Our school instituted six school-wide character lessons several years ago. The topics included the development of scholarly habits, the power of zero, GRIT, and ways to combat bullying on campus. We have two sets of lessons that alternate by year that way 7th graders do not receive the same lesson in 8th grade.

Some of the lessons are more powerful than others (but isn’t that the way all lessons are in the classroom?). But in thinking about the development of a culturally responsive classroom environment, I think that we have one gap in our lessons and that is on the topic of empathy.

For my classes, the topic of empathy is not new. In fact, it was a goal of mine several years ago to integrate lessons to help students develop historical empathy. According to Nieto’s (2008) levels of multicultural education support, the end goal is to develop a learning environment that goes beyond tolerance, acceptance, and respect to one that encompasses affirmation, solidarity, and critique. In fact, Nieto (2008) wrote the “most powerful learning results when students work and struggle with one another, even if it is sometimes difficult and challenging” (p. 26). This notion of working and struggling with one another will only be successful if students develop empathy skills.

So that got me thinking. What kind of character lesson could our school design that introduces students to the notion of empathy? One website that all history teachers should know about is Teaching Tolerance. When looking for lessons specifically about empathy, I came across one that might work for our school: Developing Empathy. This lesson should take about 15 – 20 minutes depending on how long teachers allot for the activity portion. But it has good bones and is something worth considering as an addition to our character lessons. One of the things I would add to this lesson, however, is a hook. It’s one thing to tell students what empathy means, but I think visuals tell a more powerful story. Check out the following videos as I think both would generate a good discussion about what empathy looks like before proceeding to the activity from the Developing Empathy lesson:

I think either or both videos are a good place to begin a conversation about empathy, what it means, what it looks like, and why it’s an important skill to develop. Because let’s face it, our society could use a serious reminder about what empathy is.

References

Nieto, S. (2008). Affirmation, solidarity and critique: Moving beyond tolerance in education. In E. Lee, D. Menkart, & M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.), Beyond heroes and holidays (pp. 18-29). Washington, DC: Teaching for Change.